Thirty years ago, on 28 September 1996, I boarded a plane in Durban with my sixty-year-old Aunty Betty.

Destination: San Francisco.

Route: Durban to Singapore, and then across the Pacific to the United States.

I thought I was going on an adventure.

I did not know that I was walking into an assignment.

There are moments in life whose significance we recognise immediately. Then there are others which only make sense when we look back many years later and discover that what appeared to be a collection of coincidences was actually a trail of footsteps.

Thirty years later, Psalm 37:23-24 speaks to me differently.

The steps.

Not merely the destination.

The steps.

And when I look back over these thirty years, I can see something of what Romans 8:28 looks like when it is lived rather than merely quoted:

“And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.”

The pieces of the puzzle had begun coming together months before I boarded that plane.

On 16 June 1996, we were commemorating the 20th anniversary of Youth Day at the sports ground in Limit Hill. My Aunty Betty, who recently celebrated her 90th birthday, was visiting my late Aunty Claire in Ladysmith.

Aunty Betty had just turned 60.

Her daughter Wendy had been living in the United States for a few years, and Aunty Betty was planning her first overseas journey to visit her that September.

She asked whether I would like to accompany her.

I did not have to think twice.

Visiting America had long been a dream of mine. Whether through study or work, I had imagined myself getting there somehow. But dreams and airline tickets are two different things, especially for a young man from Limit Hill without the money to finance such an adventure. 

Yet suddenly a door had opened.

Aunty Betty’s other daughter, Charmaine, knew Steve at Everest Travel Agency, who could arrange a cheaper ticket if we travelled on Singapore Airlines via Singapore. I approached my insurance broker and discovered that I could borrow against a fledgling life policy that had been running for only three years.

It was enough.

Enough for the ticket.

Enough for perhaps a month of very lean living.

And someone Wendy knew from Pretoria, who was working in Alameda, was willing to accommodate me for that first month.

Looking back now, I see Acts 4:32-35 in that story long before Acts4Transformation had a name.

One person knew somebody.

Another person opened a home.

Someone provided information.

Someone made a telephone call.

A sixty-year-old aunt needed a travelling companion.

A young man had a dream.

Everybody had something to contribute.

That is how God often builds a destiny.

Not through one person possessing everything, but through many people placing what they have into the story.

And so 28 September dawned.

As many members of our Panthers Basketball team and youth group as could fit onto the back of the bakkie came to see me off.

Their excitement was almost as great as mine.

Tim was going to America!

But there was something deeper behind their excitement. They expected me to come home with something -new knowledge about basketball, youth development, perhaps some new ideas and possibilities which could be shared with them.

Those young people were entrusting me with something precious.

Their dreams.

Our journey itself seemed strange.

We were travelling east to get to the west.

And Singapore brought a stopover of almost twelve hours.

At first, I probably understood why the ticket had been cheaper!

After freshening up and making sure Aunty Betty was comfortable, I began wandering through Singapore Airport. 

Eventually I found myself in a bookshop.

And there, one book caught my attention.

Street Soldier: One Man’s Struggle to Save a Generation, One Life at a Time.

It told the story of Dr Joseph Marshall and the Omega Boys Club in San Francisco.

I began reading.

And reading.

And reading.

The irony was that I was reluctant to buy the book. I had only just begun my journey and every dollar mattered. But I could not put it down.

Then I noticed something.

The story I was reading was taking place in the very Bay Area towards which I was travelling.

So I did something simple.

I wrote down the contact details.

That small act changed my life.

After arriving in America and recovering from the discombobulation of jet lag, I telephoned the Omega Boys Club.

To my amazement, the man who answered the telephone was Dr Joseph Marshall himself.

I told him who I was.

I told him I had come from South Africa.

I told him something of the work we were trying to do with young people back home.

And he listened.

Then he invited me to attend the weekly meetings at Omega and, even more remarkably, to participate in the upcoming Omega Institute Violence Prevention Intervention Skills Training Workshop.

I still have the programme.

I still have the notes.

I still have the newspaper articles.

I still have the visitor badge.

Thirty years later, these are more than souvenirs.

They are Ebenezers.

Markers along the road reminding me:

Thus far the Lord has helped us.

And another piece of the puzzle had actually been put into place two years earlier.

In December 1994, the Panthers participated in the Nando’s National Streetball Tournament in Cape Town. There we met René Brown, then assistant coach of the University of Kansas women’s basketball team, who 

was in South Africa scouting talent.

For some reason, when I packed for America two years later, I took René’s Kansas University card with me.

When I telephoned Kansas, I discovered that she had moved.

She was now Director of Player Personnel at the newly formed WNBA.

I was given her new contact details.

When I reached her, she was delighted to discover that I was in America. I told her that I would spend my first month learning from the Omega Boys Club.

And then another door opened.

René arranged for me to fly from San Francisco to New York after completing the Omega Institute.

From the West Coast to the East Coast.

It was September and October 1996.

The United States was living through the heightened tension of the East Coast/West Coast rap rivalry. Tupac Shakur had been shot in Las Vegas earlier that September and died days later.

And here was a young man from Limit Hill, Ladysmith, suddenly moving through that same America - not as a spectator of celebrity culture, but learning about the terrible realities behind the drugs, gangs, violence, bullets, broken families and young lives which were being lost.

At Omega I encountered ideas which seemed years ahead of what we were facing at home.

One page from that old training manual was headed:

“EXCUSES FOR KILLING, DYING AND GOING TO PRISON.”

Among the excuses were:

“The streets are a war zone.”

“I grew up in it.”

“It’s all I know.”

“We can’t change till society changes.”

Thirty years later, some of those sentences could be spoken by young people in communities across South Africa.

That is perhaps the part which moves me most.

We were learning about a crisis in America which, in 1996, seemed far removed from our newly democratic South Africa.

Yet it was not long before drugs, gangs, violent crime, hopelessness and the destruction of young lives became painfully familiar in our own communities.

What I had thought was an exciting American adventure was becoming an education for an assignment back home.

At the NBA offices in New York, still more doors opened. I met people and encountered programmes I could never have imagined meeting when I boarded that plane in Durban. I came home carrying NBA shirts, caps, vests, towels and other merchandise. 

But the greatest things I brought home could not fit into a suitcase.

Ideas.

Relationships.

Possibilities.

Hope.

I attended memorable pre-season basketball tournaments at Stanford and Cal and watched young college players, some of whom would later become major names in the NBA and WNBA.

For a basketball-loving young man from Limit Hill, it was almost too much to comprehend.

But thirty years later, the famous names matter far less to me than the lesson.

The lesson is that God is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine.

I could not have scripted that journey.

I could not have arranged those connections.

I could not have known that wandering into a bookshop during a twelve-hour stopover in Singapore would lead me to Dr Joseph Marshall.

I could not have known in 1994 that meeting René Brown at a Streetball tournament in Cape Town would become significant two years later on another continent.

And I certainly could not have known that the sixty-year-old aunt whom I was accompanying on her first overseas flight would become one of the people God used to reposition my own life.

That is why, thirty years later, I refuse to dismiss the apparently small intersections of life.

A conversation matters.

A telephone number matters.

A business card matters.

A bookshop matters.

An aunt matters.

A group of children sitting on the back of a bakkie matters.

One person believing in another person matters.

This is Acts 4:32-35 lived out across generations.

We do not all have the same gift.

We do not all have the same resources.

We do not all occupy the same space.

But when we become of one heart and mind, what one person possesses can become part of another person's journey towards destiny.

That principle eventually became embedded in the heartbeat of Acts4Transformation:

Believe. Pray. Love. Share. 

And perhaps that is why the words attached to Dr Marshall’s work have remained with me for thirty years:

Saving one life at a time.

Over these years, I have experienced the joy of watching young people succeed in careers, business, sport and ministry.

I have watched dreams become realities.

I have watched young people whom others may have overlooked discover that their lives mattered.

But I have also known the pain.

Some did not make it.

Some fell victim to the streets.

Some to drugs.

Some to violence.

Some to bullets.

Some to blades.

Some names still hurt.

Some stories remain unfinished.

And perhaps after thirty years I understand something I could not have understood in 1996:

Saving one life at a time does not mean that you will save every life.

It means you must never allow the lives you could not save to persuade you to stop reaching for the next one.

Today, I look back at that young man boarding a Singapore Airlines flight from Durban with his Aunty Betty.

He had borrowed against a three-year-old life policy.

He had enough money for perhaps one month.

He had no grand international strategy.

He certainly did not know what awaited him.

He simply took the next step.

Then another.

And another.

Thirty years later, I can testify:

The hand of God was there all along.

Romans 8:28 was happening before I understood what was happening.

Psalm 37 was unfolding one step at a time.

Acts 4 was being demonstrated through ordinary people sharing what they had.

And Ephesians 3:20 was becoming a lived experience:

“Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine…” 

So this anniversary is not merely an opportunity for nostalgia.

It is a prayer.

Lord, for however much time You still grant me, give me the strength to continue.

Give me the resources to continue.

Give me the people with whom to continue.

And above all, give me the faith to continue.

There are still young people sitting metaphorically on the back of that bakkie.

Still dreaming.

Still trusting somebody to show them that another life is possible.

There are still streets claiming our children.

There are still drugs.

There is still violence.

There are still bullets and blades.

But there is also still hope.

There is still purpose.

There is still the transforming power of one person placing what is in their hands at the disposal of another.

And there is still a God who orders steps.

Thirty years ago, I thought I was travelling east to get west.

Today I realise:

God was taking me exactly where I needed to go.

28 September 1996 - 28 September 2026

Thirty years later, the prayer remains:

Lord, complete the work You began.

One heart. One mind. One life at a time.

Believe. Pray. Love. Share.