Tussi Lujabe is a lecturer in Social Work at the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University in Port Elizabeth. She is busy with a doctoral degree on the contribution made by churches’ social work in combating poverty. But she also has a very personal story about her and the Dutch Reformed Church which she shared with Neels Jackson.

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Tussi Lujabe says it twice, as if once is not enough to fully express her feelings: “It has been amazing. It has been amazing.”

She is an elder of the Bluewater Bay Family Church and a delegate to the Eastern Cape Synod of the Dutch Reformed Church, and she is talking about the journey on which God lead her up to here.

In 2014 she moved into Bluewater Bay. She saw the building of the Dutch Reformed Church, but it meant nothing to her. She originally comes from Umtata and she thought this church was only for white Afrikaans people. “It felt out of bounds for me.”

Then Johan van Zyl called her. He said he was the pastor from this church and God called him to cross bridges. So they met at the coffee shop.

Tussi came with her preconceptions. “You know, we have this history of black and white, especially Afrikaners. And it is even worse when you get to the NG Kerk. I expected people who are onto themselves, not reaching out to my colour.”

But the welcoming she received was so different from her preconceptions. And that first impression counted.

“He had a deep relationship with the Lord. We connected due to our belief in Jesus. We shared our testimonies and he invited me to come to church.”

She attended the English service and really enjoyed it. Then Johan asked her to share her testimony.

She tells the story in her gentle, soft-spoken way.

She worked for Eskom in Midrand.

“There was a white guy and he hated me with a passion. He said my place was in the kitchen. He had a gun and I feared him. Sometimes he would spit on the floor when I came in. We hated each other.”

But her story has a turning point: “Then the Lord found me.”

She tells how she went to the office one day and something, the love of Christ, happened in her. When this man came in, she suddenly felt so much compassion for him. She saw his childhood. Then she bowed at his feet and cried.

She said sorry for all the hurt that she caused in his life.

He wanted to know what happened to her, and she said she had accepted Christ.

Then he said that his family were all Christian. He is the only one who is not a Christian, and they hated him.

He also told her that he had killed his wife. He shot her. And how he began to drink, because he couldn’t get over it.

“My compassion increased and I asked: ‘Don’t you want to come to Jesus?’”

He wept and said yes. Then they prayed together.

“There was such a bond between us,” Tussi says. The other people in the office knew they were ene-

mies. And now they were holding each other. They couldn’t believe their eyes.

When she left Eskom, he organised a farewell party for her. And he said he is probably the next one to go, because he wants to go and attend a Bible School.

Tussi says that before sharing this testimony, she asked God what she must share. He gave her the words from Jesus’ prayer in John 17: “… that they may be one”. And God told her that she must show one-ness by washing the people’s feet.

So she asked Johan if he will allow her to wash his feet.

“The tears were rolling down my face. I could feel the stereotypes breaking down.”

It was a solemn service. She washed perhaps twenty people’s feet. The presence of the Lord was there in a way she can’t describe with words.

Since then she is a member of the Dutch Reformed Church.

“I sensed a call from God to come into the church,” she says. “I did not know why, but I said: ‘Lord, where You call, I will go.”

And the journey has been “so wonderful”. The love she has experienced there, she has never experienced in any other congregation. Love across ­races.

And when she says Johan is like a blood brother to her, it is more than just words. That you can see when they encounter each other during tea time at the synod, and they stand there, talking to each ­other, each with an arm around the other one.