The best way to get to know someone is to know their story. Here is mine: My name is Jacoba, but you can call me Kobie (pronounced qwih-bee... it's Afrikaans). I have been the pastor at Wilshire Presbyterian Church since 2012 and love pastoring this amazing, diverse, and loving faith community. I am like so many of the other people who attend our church an immigrant. I emigrated with my two children in 2001 from South Africa and became a USA citizen five years later.

My faith story begins with God. I do not have a Damascus (like the Biblical story of how Paul came to faith after meeting Jesus in a blinding light) experience to share. My story is similar to the story of Timothy in the Bible. Frankly, I cannot remember a time in my life when I wasn't aware of God’s presence in my life. Just like Timothy, my grandmother planted and nurtured my faith. Above my grandmother’s bed hung a framed verse from 1 John 4:19 in which the writer profoundly states, “We love (God) because God first loved us.” This basic truth about God would become the very foundation my faith was built upon. My grandmother was my first faith mentor. Although she never even finished elementary school (I was the first in my family to attend college), she possessed a wisdom and knowledge that cannot be found in books. I can describe her faith in one simple statement: she loved God. It is from her that I learned how to pray. I loved hearing her sing hymns in church. When she lifted her voice up to God in praise I could hear that same adoration I felt when I was overwhelmed by God’s presence in a beautiful sunset.

Looking back over my life I can name two realities that were major influences in shaping me as a person of faith and as a pastor today. The first was growing up in poverty – as in not being able to go to sleep at night because of hunger pains. The other reality was coming of age during the height of Apartheid in South Africa. Growing up poor can be brutal. I discovered at a young age that not only children but even grownups can be really cruel. Feeling both ostracized and invisible at the same time, harboring resentment in my heart, I turned to Jesus for comfort; he was the only constant presence in my life that I could trust in. The story of Jesus blessing small children always spoke to me on a very deep level. I understood that Christ Jesus came to earth for people such as me. People that needed his help that could not help themselves - who desperately needed the presence of his compassion, care, and love in their lives. Through the Holy Spirit I not only received strength and comfort, but also peace and joy. My faith in Christ was indeed like having a house built on a rock, no matter what life would throw at me, no matter how fierce the storms, my house would stand. This brings me to the role the church played in my life. My church was the one place where I experienced the love of Christ in a tangible way. I was welcomed into the community of faith with open arms and loved, despite the fact that I came from the “wrong side of the tracks.” It was in those formative years that I became a follower of Jesus and started to strive to model my life after the life and teachings of Jesus.

But all was not well in the world around me. To grow up in South Africa meant I grew up in a church which condoned Apartheid. I slowly, by the grace of God, realized that something was wrong. How could the church to which I belonged be a true church if it didn't practice justice for all, if it didn't work earnestly for a just world? Tiny cracks were appearing in the makebelieve world that was created in the society I was growing up in. Reflecting back on my childhood, it all seems a bit surrealistic. Amidst all the turmoil and suffering Apartheid caused, life went on as usual - a world in which everyone I knew thought that this segregated world we were living in was good and right and that it was beneficial to everyone. An ideology sanctioned by church doctrine. The realization that I lived in an unjust world came slowly, piece by piece. It caused me to question everything I was taught, to question everything I thought was real and true. This realization would shake my very trust in the church and institutionalized religion.

I think my saving grace was that I picked up on the hate underlying the ideology. I can still remember riding home from school on the bus. Some of the children would hang out of the window and shout the most horrible insults to the Africans walking next to the road. They were walking to work because they did not own cars. Everything in my soul revolted. Growing up poor I also had been on the receiving end of such hateful insults. I was able to identify and empathize with these people walking along the road, everything was screaming in me that this must be wrong. Sometimes I spoke up, sometimes I defended, sometimes I stayed quiet, but I never stopped searching for the truth. I turned to my faith and was just more confused. Paul taught we were all equal in Christ. John taught me I cannot claim to love God if I don’t love my neighbor. Jesus challenged me to love my enemy. Jesus came to establish the kingdom of God where all are welcome. In Sunday school I learned about the Good Samaritan, yet my African brothers and sisters were not allowed to attend my all-white church. Eventually, it was from the example of great men of God, such as Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu that I learned a great deal about true forgiveness, acceptance, and loving your neighbor and enemy in a Christ-like manner. It is an ongoing learning process – it will take me a life time to deconstruct and dismantle the learned racism of my past. I am a work in progress, deeply depending on the God of second changes.

Coming from such an exclusive society, knowing how much pain, suffering and evil it leads to, I appreciate a church who strives for inclusiveness, which welcomes all persons who respond to God’s grace and love in Jesus Christ. Such a church mirrors for me Jesus’ message of restoration, justice and love for the world. A church which does not proclaim to be the sole keeper of the truth, but earnestly seeks the guidance of the Holy Spirit to show us how to live out God’s all-inclusive love in and for the world. Wilshire Presbyterian Church strives to be such a church. No matter where you are on your journey of faith, you are welcome here! No matter where you come from, no matter who you are, you are embraced here. I would love to know your story!