Through It All: Mercenary to Missionary Only by God’s Grace

By Jc Linde

Life is not always what meets the eye and can be very deceiving. Living a double life is more dangerous than fighting a war, and the secrets involve consume your mind and take tremendous effort and energy. The greatest relief ever was to give those secrets to Jesus and to receive his life, which makes it possible to live the life He created you to live and to become the person He purposed you to be.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Jun 17, 2019
• ISBN: 9781546289159

Jc Linde

JC Linde is currently leading a church, El Shaddai Fellowship, in the Kingdom of Bahrain, with the mandate to seriously help finish the Great Commission and to father and equip missionaries. He is married to Sharon and has six sons, living in South Africa, the UK and Bahrain. He was saved on 1 August 2007 in Bahrain at the age of 51, resulting in him quitting his aviation career of 31 years as a military and commercial pilot.

Book preview

THROUGH IT ALL

MERCENARY TO MISSIONARY ONLY BY GOD’S GRACE

JC LINDE

AuthorHouse™ UK

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403 USA

www.authorhouse.co.uk

Phone: [phone] (Domestic TFN)

[phone] (International)

©

2019 JC LINDE. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 06/14/2019

ISBN: 978-1-5462-8916-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5462-8915-9 (e)

Scriptures marked NLT are taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW LIVING TRANSLATION

(NLT): Scriptures taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW LIVING TRANSLATION, Copyright©

1996, 2004, 2007 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House

Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

Scriptures marked ESV are taken from the THE HOLY BIBLE, ENGLISH STANDARD

VERSION (ESV): Scriptures taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, ENGLISH STANDARD

VERSION ® Copyright© 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

Used by permission.

Scriptures marked CEV are taken from the CONTEMPORARY ENGLISH VERSION (CEV):

Scripture taken from the CONTEMPORARY ENGLISH VERSION copyright© 1995 by the

American Bible Society. Used by permission.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

14335.png

Contents

Preface

Introduction: Testimony

Chapter 1: Growing Up to End of School

Chapter 2: University Days

Chapter 3: Compulsory National Military Service

Chapter 4: Officer’s Course

CFS Dunnottar Ground School

Chapter 5: C Flight CFS Dunnottar

Chapter 6: AFB Langebaanweg

Chapter 7: 87 Helicopter Flying School

No. 19 Squadron AFB Swartkop

AFB Rundu

No. 31 Squadron AFB Hoedspruit

AFB Rundu

Chapter 8: Instructor’s Course CFS Dunnottar 1989

87 Helicopter Flying School Alouette Instructors

AFB Durban

Chapter 9: Executive Outcomes

Forest Fire Association Nelspruit

Chapter 10: Moving to the Middle East

Chapter 11: My new life

Chapter 12: Boys leaving the nest

Chapter 13: Some more pruning to be done in my life

Chapter 14: Planting our first church

About the Author

About the Book

To the almighty God, who inspired and strengthened me to complete this project.

To the Pupil Pilot Course 2/78 members for the inputs you chiselled into my life eternally. I will never forget you.

To everyone reading this book, may God bless you all abundantly, and may you all know Him for who He is.

May the love of the Father, the grace of Jesus Christ, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all forevermore.

Preface

It is 17 March 2015, and as I sit here writing, I am overloaded to the max with excitement. It is exactly one month to the day until my thirty-five-year reunion with an exceptional group of people very dear to my heart. They are the members of the Pupil Pilot Course 2/78. Our reunion will be at the Langebaan Country Estate over the weekend 17–19 April 2015.

We met as strangers, scattered as brothers, laughed and cried together, got married and divorced, and are about to meet again, and I can guarantee a train smash of note (a bit of air-force slang): The boys are not scared.

***

What a weekend it was. I fail to have enough words to describe the moments we had—chatting, singing, dancing, reminiscing, and also realising that time has moved on at a rate of knots.

I write this book to this amazing bunch of aviators, but it is for all to read, as it is a story of a life and how God changed it. One golden thread runs from the beginning to the end of this book: Immanuel, God, was with us … through it all!

Introduction: Testimony

May this testimony serve to only show the unfailing love our Father has for us. All the glory goes to Him forever and ever. Amen.

In 1963, at the age of 7, I was standing outside our house in 63 Briggs Street, Westonaria, South Africa, while watching kids in the street fighting and using foul language. In an instant, the presence of the Holy Spirit came over me. I turned to my mom and said that I wanted to become a child of God and did not want to be like the kids in the street. I felt an amazing powerful love for my mother. It was different from before. I just wanted to please and honour her, to see her joyful and pleased with me. I really wanted her to know that.

For the next three years, this was the case, and I had so much joy and peace even at that young age. My dad was often away at that time, studying for his master’s degree, so we did not see too much of him. He had to travel to Johannesburg by train as he was studying at Wits University. I suppose I missed him, but it did not bother me too much, and I did not make any issue of it; boys at that age have to get on with life. Little did I know where this would take me through life’s journey.

With my father back at home full time, I wanted to know about him, including what he was like at my age (now around 12 years old), but he was a closed book. I started to rebel. For the next ten years, this rebellion went into full blossom. I was already smoking and drinking and could not wait to go to high school, where I would attend boarding school. I was head prefect in primary school and did very well on the sports field in rugby, tennis, and athletics. On the outside, we were a very normal, happy, close-knit family. My parents would attend our sport meetings and support us in whatever we were doing. I say our because I have two sisters. I am the oldest, and we are all roughly a year apart. We also had just received a new baby brother, who came eleven years after me. Still, this did not fill the void. I had to know my father. I wondered, Is he like me? Does he think like me? Was he also naughty sometimes? Was he ever drunk, even if it was only once? Did he like girls? But I never got answers.

I left for boarding school the next year and was very excited to do my own thing and enjoy my new freedom. I would only go home at vacation times and the odd weekends when something was happening at home, like a birthday. My parents still supported the sports weekends, and things seemed to be OK among all of us. I can add here that I felt a bit disappointed in my mother because whenever my dad was at home, I felt that she was siding with him. She was a subservient wife as it was, but also, she did not know what was going on inside me.

I had a successful high school career, being academically pretty average and better on the sports side. My main interests were parties, booze, and girls. I was sexually active from the age of 14 and really thought I had discovered life.

Coming to the end of my high school career, the relationship between my parents and me was pathetic; we could hardly go through a three-week holiday without having a complete explosion with tempers flying. Of course, I always lost, but it did not matter much for two reasons: I was utterly indifferent at this time and could not care less, and I was leaving school soon and was on my way to university to study medicine. I would be three hundred miles away from home.

I enjoyed university immensely, and at the end of my first year, I was not allowed to write exams as I did not have enough credits. My dad was footing the bill, so that was the end of my medical career. I joined a university back in Johannesburg, close to home, as a day student and worked part-time for my dad on his milk farm. I also worked at a training hospital next to the university as a nurse on Friday and Sunday evenings, from seven o’clock in the evening until seven o’clock the following morning. This gave me enough money to support my lifestyle without having to get support from my dad. I was living a very wild lifestyle that included drinking, partying, and very dangerous (i.e., unprotected) sex. I never attended classes. I just played rugby in the evenings and Saturdays and bridge (cards) during the weekdays in the cafeteria.

This lasted almost three years. With no academic successes, I decided to leave the university and start my compulsory military service. After my basic training in the army, I transferred to the air force and qualified as a helicopter pilot after two years. All this time, I had a Bible and read it occasionally. I attended church as well, especially when I had a new girlfriend, since that would impress her. I was also aware that my lifestyle was very wrong. Never did I think it was OK for a young man like me, but I had no intention of changing.

My career was successful. I ended up as a VIP pilot, transporting the president and various heads of state and military chiefs of other countries. South Africa was involved in a border war in Angola, and I tried to spend as much time as possible on the border, as I just loved that lifestyle: fighting and killing in the day and drinking at night.

This lasted easily six to seven months of the year. Pornography, in the form of books and movies, was a daily occurrence, and on my off time at home, it was just party time. Group sex, booze, and pornography were my entire life, and sport was important too.

After three years as a single officer, I got married to my first wife, as I felt that I needed some stability in my life. But I had no intention of changing my lifestyle. We remained married for my entire air-force career, which lasted fourteen years. Three years into our marriage, we were blessed with the first of three sons, all roughly a year apart. We attended church regularly, and I served in the church as a deacon and later a scribe. In the eye of man, we were a normal, happy family with the normal hiccups, nothing serious.

My hidden lifestyle had moved on from fornication to adultery. I later qualified as an A1 category instructor and was a member of the National Harvard Formation Aerobatic Team. This meant I was away most weekends, flying the air show circuit around the country, which was really good for my secret lifestyle. I was very happy. During my career, I was awarded seven medals, and nothing scared me. Nothing was too wild or too fast or too rough. The more, the better. But I also had a hidden fear of death because I knew in no uncertain terms that I was heading for an eternity without God. I shared this with nobody. I used to say it was actually a blessing to get a disease like cancer because that would give you time to fix up your lifetime to repent and come clean before the Lord.

I was gambling with my life and with God. I resigned from the air force when the border war ended, as the air force without a war was not a place for me. It was far too tame, and the routine work and lack of action were not for me at all. I needed life on the edge and the rush of adrenalin, which was nothing other than just focusing on business and not having any time to think and hear that still voice calling for a change.

I was recruited to a mercenary outfit and did not waste one second before I was on my way to another war, extremely happy. This was even better for me; it included lengthy times away from home, lots of money, being totally free in the off-months, and spending most of my time with prostitutes. They were all over the show, in all the countries we would go to, willing to do anything a perverted mind would fantasise about. And they wanted nothing more from you than your money. They didn’t want your attention or your time, there was no responsibility involved, and they did not mind group sex and pornographic movies. I had practised unsafe sex with prostitutes from all nations, races, and colours. Only God protected me from contracting a deadly sexually transmitted disease, which were rife in countries like Central African Republic.

My first marriage ended in a divorce after fourteen years, and I was thrilled to enter my new life of a bachelor. I enjoyed my work tremendously because it was wild enough to my liking. There was only one rule: There are no rules. Nothing scared me. I would take any challenge, and I was brave in the eyes of man (flesh). The money was sufficient, and if by chance I took a bit of a break, I could go and visit my boys and spoil them to bits.

This lifestyle continued for the next ten years. I moved on to bigger aeroplanes. I ended up flying Boeing 727s, transporting frontline personnel to all the different countries and war zones. This brought a new addition of pleasure with all the air hostesses travelling with us, and now, having the comforts of home with us, I almost had no need to go home, unless I was missing my boys. I lost my job over fighting with management and had to settle back in South Africa for a local flying job. I was single for six years. It was at this time that I met my current wife, Sharon, while flying as an aerial firefighter and bomber pilot in Nelspruit, South Africa.

This is a good time now to rewind and reflect on some perilous situations I ended up in. I realised I was spared only by the grace of God throughout my military career, which spread over twenty-four years. If any of these occurrences had resulted in death, I would have ended up in eternity without my precious Saviour, forever. The following are some of my recollections:

One day, flying into a very hot combat zone to offload special forces troops, we came into the hover right behind the front line. Our troops left the aircraft and ran about ten metres in all directions, forming a circle and dropping down on their stomachs in a firing position, facing away from the helicopter (this was a safety drill for helicopter drops). I looked through the dust and three metres right in front of me stood a terrorist with a shoulder rocket launcher, an RPG-7, aiming right at us. All he had to do was pull the trigger. Because of the noise of the helicopter, we could not contact our troops to look back and shoot the terrorist. I think our time is up, I told my crew. We had no chance. He couldn’t miss from that distance. He was so close, I could see the colour of his eyes. The rocket was powerful enough to destroy the entire helicopter. We did not dare try to fly away, so we just sat there staring at each other, he with his one eye through the sight of the rocket launcher, with his finger on the trigger. Seconds ticked by, which felt like hours, and the next thing I knew, he just threw the launcher on the ground and stuck both his arms in the air to signal his surrender. I could not believe my eyes. By this time, our troops had grown irritated with us for not moving out swiftly, as we normally did. They looked back, saw the terrorist, captured him, and tied him up, and we gave him a free ride back to base for torture and interrogation.

In another instance, I was called out one afternoon late to uplift casevacs from a mechanised column which drove into a minefield (a field full of landmines). They had journalists with them, and we had to get them out urgently as the whole column of armoured vehicles was now stuck in the minefield and had to wait for the engineers to sweep with mine-detecting equipment before driving any farther, lest they risk any damage to vehicles or loss of life. On our arrival, we had a problem with our radios. We