Brian and Elizabeth Rensford current news

G'day, everybody. Here's our current news, and whereabouts. Stuff older than two years is filed under older updates. And remember, you have to be over 50 to understand that….

"God instructs the heart, not by ideas,
but through PAIN and CONTRADICTIONS"

for the reason we have this seemingly masochistic saying at the head of our personal website, go here

This is NOT a blog site; normally, we post only stuff that is of some significance, rather than rambling thoughts and observations. And as we get older, the rambling would be even more irrelevant to anyone reading our website! So the gaps are deliberate. To save download time, most photos are hyperlinked..... click on them for a full-sized one.

January 2012: Christmas was not the same without Joyce (Mum). She so enjoyed them, and we missed her this year. Elizabeth didn't arrange our traditional early Christmas lunch for family and some friends who have no family here in Sydney. Next year, we'll do it again. And we gave up sending around a Christmas letter this year. Modern communications have taken us from 20 years ago when a Christmas letter was photocopied for friends and family far away with a few hand-written lines added, to today's ceaseless flow of too much information! In replacing a mobile phone at present, I informed my tech-friend that I don't want to be able to read my email while sitting in our toilet, like some I've known who got trapped into never turning their phone off!!!

Great true comment to start the year.... our friends who live near our holiday cottage 100km north of Sydney had an overflow of family staying at Christmas. We offered our sleepout for their son and pregnant daughter-in-law and 5 y/o son (no room at the inn updated?). When I asked the 5 y/o did he prefer a baby brother or sister, he immediately and firmly replied, "I want a dog!" My kind of boy!

June 2011: It has been a long, long time since the last posting only two months ago. In the meantime, a week after I (Brian) left for Africa, and just before Elizabeth joined me, my mother (Joycey to all who loved her) surrendered to the respiratory infection and died in her sleep at Westmead Hospital. There was someone beside her every moment for her final three days, and her grand-daughter (Tamara from Shepparton) was holding her hand and singing worship songs to her as she died. What a way to go!

We had agreed beforehand with her that we would not come back from Zimbabwe for the memorial celebration service she had planned (and replanned again and again!) - no coffin, no body, a live band from church, and plenty of eulogies! Plenty!?? The service went for nearly two and a half hours! Longer than Kerry Packer's! So many people wanted to speak and share a Joyce-moment. How good a memorial is that??? Including some of Mum's favourite expressions - like "we go back a long way together"; "are we any good!?!?" (she would call me on my mobile phone after every Sydney Swans win as we walked from the ground - after she ceased coming with me - at the age of 75), "Brian! Give me the microphone!" (in church from the back row). Jordan had them in stitches as he recounted how we climbed up and over her balcony into her room most Mondays after I picked him up from school. With the dog hoiked up too! Have a look at the report in Jan 2011 after her 90th birthday bash for some further "fond memories".... Many friends and family gathered, together with her Retirement Village friends to say farewell to her. Awesome....

We have put a (PDF) webpage tribute up in her memory - click here 660kb with pics; 60kb no pics). We were only back from Zimbabwe one day before the speakers for our annual church camp flew in from the UK. An exhausting 10 days followed and we are slowly coming up for air - to address the myriad issues that arise on the death of a close relative.

April 2011: This morning, I am flying out to Africa again (for the 19h time) and Jordan climbed into our bed at 5.30am to remind Elizabeth and me how blessed we are to have family around us who love us.... even when we snore! Deb, Craig, and Michelle joined us for dinner last night, as I (Brian) continued the arduous job of packing, repacking, and repacking again - some medical stuff, and other bits 'n' pieces to go with us both (Elizabeth comes over on May 9) as part of what the Founder of Lifeline called - years ago - "tokens of God's love". Heck! We even have a supporter who donated several Sydney Swans' caps to distribute!

Joyce has aged greatly since her 90th birthday, and as we leave, is back in hospital with a respiratory infection. Thank the Lord for the many folks in our church who help us care for her. She has averaged over a visitor a day for the two years in her visitors' book - more than anyone else among the 400+ residents of her aged-care facility.

ANZAC Day has come and gone again. This year, we were asked to participate in the local memorial dawn service and got a very positive response by people to the message on sacrifice for others, and turning around to love our enemies (as Ataturk did to the ANZACs when he erected the memorial at ANZAC Cove after he become Turkey's President). More on that under Friday Food 'n' Therapy on the menu bar. Now it's off to Joburg, and then to Harare, and then to the bush in Mozambique!

January 2011: last week, my mother (Joyce) turned NINETY!! She got a “Dear Joyce, congratulations!” letter from our nation’s Prime Minister (the Queen will wait till she turns 100), and has now outlived all relatives we know of (alive and dead). We were involved in arranging an appropriate festival of celebration – but we stopped short of lighting up the Sydney Harbour Bridge with fireworks (been done before too many times)……

Friends and Family came together at a special party in her honour. She made a speech – somewhat along the lines of actor George Burns who said, when he turned 100; “I am so glad to be here today. Heck! At this age, I am glad to be anywhere!”

A highlight was the arrival of one very special guest – who was actually older than Joyce – around 100 years old in fact. He won’t let on just exactly how old he is, but Jerry Scarf graced us with his presence – all the way from Christchurch, New Zealand (via about 20 years in Shepparton, Victoria). I told Mum a few days before we had this special guest coming – one she would never guess the identity of. She went quite hypo trying to work it out…. But, Jerry is in fact my grandfather’s ventriloquist doll! Granddad (Joyce’s father) was a ventriloquist and magician (vaudeville, sleight of hand, etc., not occultic), and his star turn was his rubber-faced doll with the wicked, naughty grin.

My brother, Keith, has “converted” him from his old scary ways, and developed an uncanny knack of replicating Granddad’s ability to have a somewhat schizophrenic conversation with himself and the audience via the doll. Jerry was the star-turn at the party. He (Keith, er, Jerry) was brilliant! Mum was rapt! Such a blast from her past!

Many people spoke honouring her – including two of her great-grandchildren…. and family members who travelled from New Zealand and interstate. Others wrote from far away. It was very moving.

And then of course, if you knew my mother, you would know she is – shall we say – notorious for unintentionally mangling the English language – Spoonerisms (letters reversed – Dr Spooner’s classic was in one sermon he preached, “The Lord Jesus is a shoving leopard!”). For many years she passed by the “dog on the tuckerbox, 5 miles from Gungadai” – somehow bypassing the more famous location known to the rest of Australia as “Gundagai”. And her mispronunciation of Australian placenames by giving them a Maori accent is also legendary.

Her funeral Order of Service has been changed so many times we have given up writing anything down…. especially her choice of songs to be sung. We have all been threatened (light-heartedly, I hasten to add) to be cut out of her will several times over the years. I recently offered to bequeath her false teeth – mounted in a glass case - to a relative after the funeral, after they asked to be written into the will (something she had jokingly referred to at the party).

If this sounds somewhat bizarre, you don’t understand our family... Including how the lack of fear at death affects the way we treat the final stage of life once Jesus Christ has taken over. It’s put this way in Hebrews 2 - Since the children have flesh and blood, [Jesus] too shared in their humanity so that by His death He might destroy him who holds the power of death--that is, the devil - and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death. The Apostle Paul put it this way in 1 Corinthians 15 “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting (literally, poison)?" The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory [over the fear of death] through our Lord Jesus Christ!

For many years, her express wish to me as her eldest son has been to scatter her cremated ashes on the lake near our family holiday cottage 100km away (although that final location too has temporarily been altered several times!). Her emphasis has always been, “celebrate someone’s life with them while they are still alive! Don’t make a big event of a funeral for someone you rarely bothered with while they were alive. It’s hypocrisy to do so”. On this, Mum and I and Elizabeth wholeheartedly concur.

December 2010: It must be the pervading influence of Mark Zuckerberg this year - Time's Man / Person of the Year award; release of a very unflattering film "The Social Network", which outlines his inability to make real friends; and his invention of Facebook and a torturous new meaning to the word "friends".... Whatever it has been..., while the ministry side of our website continues to grow (and produce an increasing amount of responses), this personal side of our website has been in freeze-frame for six months! Are we over-reacting to the increase in useless trivia being twittered onto the public domain? Are we so blahed out by this and the drift into fantasy (about ourselves as much as about the pseudo-world about us - see the Friday Food 'n' Therapy series) that we have gone into a cave with nothing to publicly say at all? Most people we know hate reading useless trivia online, and so do we.

Christmas is only a week away, and for the first time in memory, we are not planning to send out a Christmas Letter! How serious a reaction is that to the plague of too much trivial information???

It's two months since Brian came back from a second 6-week trip into Zimbabwe. For once, in better health than when he left. This was a big trip (Lifeline's second bi-annual Indaba he helped establish in 2008 was the main focus, with Kefas and Gavin going too). More on that in the Ministry side of our website.

We are getting ready to celebrate Joyce's 90th birthday in mid-January. She is holding on, frail in body, quite alert in mind and spirit. Family are coming from interstate and New Zealand too. She is looking forward to seeing all her great grandchildren together in one place.

June 2010: After yet another trip into Zimbabwe and Mozambique - and the customary health decline that seems to accompany these trips - Brian has slowly regained some semblance of strength.

The next bit of news has to go on the personal section of our website - because the family involved are not just "ministers" with us in Zimbabwe.... Richmond Chiundiza is a wise man, a true friend - even older than us - and now he has suddenly endured the awful loss of his youngest son - Kundai. The 17 y/o Zimbabwean sports wiz was hit in a heavy tackle while playing for his high school here in Sydney, and died 36 hours later in his mother's flat. She only discovered his cold body at 4am when our friend Richmond rang to see how his son was doing after the accident. The Sydney Morning Herald carried the story today. There is much pain, tears, and prayers here today for the family. We knew Kundai - he loved all sports (great Aussie, even though he had lived here for less than 5 years) including Aussie Rules... And now, suddenly, he is gone.

January 2010: And a happy New Year to all our cyberspace colleagues, critics, and surfers!

After we settled in back home three weeks ago, we set about replacing our last Cavalier spaniel (see dog stories on the menu bar) with another. For the first time, we actually went out and paid for a puppy... The rest have been rejects that others had given up on - we have taken them on as part of their rehabilitation (and ours too, to be honest)! So, yes, Elizabeth adopted two month-old Toby Rensford (named in honour of Toby - our dog-nutty friends the Elliotts' own 4-legged family member, in San Diego.

Toby has already half-chewed his basket to bits, discovered he loves the beach at Budgewoi, and chases Jordan all over the place! Most Cavaliers are dumb, but this one has got us worked out already....

November 2009: We travelled again into Zimbabwe late Sept and all of October. Jeremy went with Brian into Mozambique for a week, then Deb and Elizabeth flew in a week later; We all headed to the Midlands and the South after that. An extensive update series is now filed under the Lifeline website; it was an exhausting, different, and very diverse trip. A big thanks to everyone who prayed for us off the itinerary. And we have added a page for African safari photos for broadband users.

In the meantime, we started updating our website while stuck inside away from the cold and miserable drizzle in our friends' - Ernie and Merrilyn Culley - house in Vancouver. You will enjoy the 2009 - Paris Calling webpage...

We drove 120k up the Fraser Valley to Chilliwack (visiting Dave and Fran Huebert - where we ended up sleeping on the floor after our combined weight managed to destroy their guestroom bed!!! And no, not from what you may be thinking either...). They drove us up to Lake Harrison - a glacial moraine lake with an enormous hot springs hotel. >>>

Then we stayed with the McElhoes's in Abbotsford, where we ministered in their very friendly church. More drizzle. But their hearts were so warm. it didn't matter! San Diego looks good after the weather here and we can understand why our friends, ex-Kiwis, Bruce and Anne Elliott, migrated there from Vancouver some years ago. It was so good to put shorts on again and walk in the streets in, wait for it... yes! Sunshine!! In winter!! And even take up jogging again, after a 12-week break - the bones protesteth at 64.

July 2009: Since the last update, we have been back in Zimbabwe again, and was it a trip with a difference! Not a lot o public pleasantries to be relayed on, but a lot of "sorting out" among the areas represented at our last LifeLine leadership get-together (10/08). Wow! A prophecy came our way before we left that God was sending me (Brian) like an auditor while His fire (a la 1 Cor 3) burned up the rubbish in His church in Zimbabwe! How do you handle that, I asked myself! Well.... A day at a time it turned out, as a stream of things went belly-up (sort-of) and Loxley and I did lots of one-on-one stuff with many people. We even got shafted in one area by a discontented former leader, who we didn't know was angry at being replaced in a ministers' fellowship by another leader. Sabotage wasn't too strong a word in that situation! Go to the ministry side for a more full report and pics.

Kefas has moved out from our home after nearly three years boarding with us. He says it has taken him that long to understand Aussie culture (too true). He has moved into our church office flat (with Ebenezer, a young Christian Ghanaian recently baptised). He is planning to be married before Christmas (THIS YEAR!), Why not? Proof attached!

Jordan continues to sprout. 5 in October and school next year. We will so miss not having our time with him every Monday. Starts with (second for him!) breakfast (in bed or in our African Room (proof attached). Elizabeth's Monday breakfasts have become legendary! Jordan is such a happy kid, a real joy, and our hearts burst with love for him (and Craig and Michelle too). They are a great blessing to Mum (Joyce) with their weekly visits to her hostel around the corner. Elizabeth calls almost every day, and the old dowager queen is still in good shape mentally, although at 88 the bits n pieces are wearing out... Brian still picks her up for church every Sunday and she lives for all that worship, fellowship, and food!

Brian turned 64 on July 6; so our church played the Beatles "will you still love me when I'm 64?" on Sunday as Gavin and David (two of our elders) pretended to prop him up behind the pulpit!

A FAVOURITE OLD PHOTO - HEADING BUSH IN MOZAMBIQUE 1997, Brian's first visit to Africa - 150 km up a sand track to Inhaminga with LifeLine supplies for an orphanage and rural churches. With Brian Morris and Joao Madeira (interpreter).

You couldn't even walk off the road to have a pee (fun for the ladies), as there were landmines everywhere from the civil war. The old rail track had trains blown up in the jungle for many kms.

Nearby, a wood cutter was eaten by a lion not long after our visit

(UPDATES OVER TWO YEARS OLD ARE FILED SEPARATELY - GO HERE - UNTIL CREMATION)