In November 1999, Rochelle and I flew out to America. We had with us three suitcases, a laptop and printer. Little did we know that we were arriving just before Thanksgiving, and all that implies in America. We had nowhere to stay. We were going to begin a new venture in our lives. We believed that God had called us.
The church that I began to pastor then was made up of no more than 20-30 people. The name of the church: Trinity Baptist Church.
It had originally been planted in the 1970s. Since then it had first grown a little bit, then floundered as it attempted to buy a building and in the process of paying the mortgage became embroiled in political disputes. During those years the church became notorious locally for getting rid of new young pastors at an alarming rate. One of its more veteran pastors upped and left literally in the middle of a service one morning, unannounced and without explanation. There were bleeding bodies coming out of Trinity searching for healing, rather than the other way around.
