Diederik Johannes Botha (Jr) – Dian for short – was a fighter.

In 9th grade, he broke the school record for the most canings in one year – 60 lashes. As a teenager in South Africa, he got into fistfights with grown men at pubs.

Dian (right) was a cheerleader in high school.

At 14, he joined the youth league of the Afrikaner Weerstands Beweging (Afrikaner Resistance Movement), a neo-nazi fascist group championing white supremacy.

It was the 1970s and, fed with racist ideology, he started his own gang that abused people of colour. The gang had several run-ins with the law, from traffic violations to assault and theft. But each time, his lawyer dad bailed him out. 

The friend he never wanted

While Dian was busy with his fists both in and out of school, his classmate, Frank, was living an opposite life. 

Frank was an A* student and a top rugby player. Despite his many talents, Frank – a Christian – was known to be humble and kind.

Dian’s classmate Frank (left) irked Dian by being different from everyone else.

As he behaved differently from the rest of the students, many of them – including Dian – could not tolerate him. Once, a drunk Dian was on the verge of yet another fight when Frank went up said: “You can’t live like this. Repent and give your life to Jesus.”

In return, Dian whacked him on the head with a club. Frank got up from the floor and said he forgave Dian but he would still need to repent.

Dian made a note to stay away from the “loony”.

In the days ahead, Frank continued to show Dian brotherly love. Once, in a lodge together during a trip, Dian wanted to smoke. Frank, who had asthma, wordlessly headed outside to wait in the freezing winter cold instead of making a fuss. When he returned, shivering, he even offered to make Dian a cup of coffee. Dian was flabbergasted.

Shortly afterwards, in Dian’s final year of high school, he tragically lost three of the closest people in his life: His father died of a heart attack, his best friend smashed into a tree in a drunken stupor, and his then girlfriend committed suicide. It was one of the lowest points in Dian’s life.

One Wednesday during that time, Dian happened to pass Frank’s room in the boarding school. Guitar music streamed from the room.  

Though Dian intended to walk past, he was inexplicably drawn towards the room. Peeping in, he saw Frank worshipping God.

When Frank saw him, he beckoned Dian into the room. Looking straight into Dian’s eyes, Frank said: “You are going to receive Jesus, right here and now.”

To his surprise, Dian felt ready for that and quietly agreed. He asked matter-of-factly: “What must I do?”

Frank told him to kneel down and confess all his sins to God. As Dian opened his heart to God and began listing his sins and asking God for forgiveness in repentance, something changed.

Frank led Dian to the Lord in the school boarding house.

“I felt as though a mountain of guilt and darkness had been lifted off my shoulders. I felt free. I felt new,” Dian told Salt&Light.

Going through two weeks of a brutal selection process to qualify for the parachute brigade.

Selected for Officers School, he was also eventually picked to be part of an elite unit, the Pathfinders, a specialised team of soldiers dropped or parachuted in behind enemy lines for reconnaissance or missions.

Their training routine involved jumping out of a plane, steering to the target and then regrouping.

Dian recalled that, at one time, he was caught in an upward draft of wind and was enjoying himself until he realised that his teammates were not with him but were way below.  

The Pathfinders paratroopers airborne.

Quickly, he began his descent but realised that at the rate he was going, he would not be able to reach the target. Below him was terrain hostile to safe landing, with high voltage power lines and fences. Very soon, the sirens of the military ambulance began blaring as a signal of the danger ahead of him. 

“Depending on whether I landed on the power lines or fence, I would either be turned into Kentucky Fried Chicken or satay. No matter how I manoeuvred, I knew I just was not going to reach my target,” recalled Dian.  

Desperately, he let go of his steering lines and shouted: “Jesus! Help!” 

With yes tightly shut, he felt a gust of wind lifting him up before his feet landed gently on the side of a dirt road, a little from the power lines and fences.

“I couldn’t believe the miracle. I realised then that, even when we make mistakes or act foolishly, God is gracious and merciful to rescue us,” said Dian.  

During the Angolan border war, Dian and his team were called to conduct night operations. With helicopter gunships hunting down communists, his team was tasked with parachuting in to “finish the job”. 

The 24km pole run with the 1st Parachute Battalion.

Initially, Dian saw his participation in the war as his national duty. But as the death count – including civilians – rose, Dian began to wrestle with the ethics and morality of war.

Doing a stakeout at Kunene River.  

Dian would find himself praying as he parachuted into border areas or enemy territory at night, bullets flying everywhere, knowing that this night could very well be his last.

As he saw pregnant women and the terrified faces of his enemies up close, he was filled with conflict. 

In one way, he felt he was born to be a soldier, and yet he was uneasy with the decision he needed to make – whether to sign on with the Special Forces for the next 10 years.

What happened next would end up changing the trajectory of his life.

From one chariot to another

In September 1984, the South Africa Defence Force held its biggest military exercise since World War Two. Codenamed Exercise Thunder Chariot, it involved 11,000 troops and hundreds of paratroopers in a conventional set-piece battle.

It was cold and windy that particular night and Dian and his team had waited hours to jump from the plane. As the platoon commander of the Pathfinders, he was one of the first to jump.  

Then Neil continued: “Go to the south!”

Dian’s hair stood on end and his heart leapt. God had spoken!  

The group got their hands on a map of Taiwan and asked God: Which city in the south?

All of them picked the same city: Taichung. And so they left for Taichung the next day.

Enroute to Taichung, they met an older missionary at a bus station, who handed them a directory of all the missionaries serving in Taiwan.

Their group arrived in Taichung at about 7pm but they had no idea where to get off the bus. Eventually the bus driver pulled into the bus depot and all of them alighted.

By this time, night had fallen and they could not read the signs which were in Chinese, not even to find a hotel.

Searching for a payphone, Dian opened the directory of missionaries they had been given earlier in the day. Their call to the first number went unanswered. The second number belonged to a Mr and Mrs M Balk from the Finnish Foreign Mission.

An old lady answered the phone and, Dian began telling her their story, adding that they needed accommodation and were willing to work for it.

“Praise God you have finally come!” she excitedly exclaimed, cutting him short.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

Dian and his late wife Dawn cycling to the Chinese language school.

“We talk later. Where are you?” she replied. After calling a Taiwanese person to the phone, they were successfully located and picked up.

They would later learn that the couple whose number they called was in their 80s and ready to retire. But no replacements from Finland had been sent to relieve them. They had been praying for three years that God would send someone to come and help them.

Dian and his late wife, Dawn, with their graduation certificates from the Chinese language school.

“Imagine if we had not sought God’s direction, or if we had rationalised things and not gone to Taichung,” said Dian, now 58, adding: “One reason Christians may not experience the supernatural is because they don’t respond to the leading of the Holy Spirit. Someone called it the ‘paralysis of analysis’ – analysing things instead of moving.”

During his time in Taiwan, God would send many people and resources to support him in his missionary work, including his late wife, Dawn, who was also from South Africa, and a Chinese “mother” who fed them and opened doors to many churches for them. 

Dian and his late wife taught at Glad Tidings Bible College.

Dian and Dawn faced many challenges in their early years in Taiwan. They would cycle to Chinese language classes, even through life-threatening typhoons, because they did not want to waste the precious school fees that were paid out of their meagre savings. 

There was also a time when they were sent to support a blind church pastor. They lived in a little room at the back of the church. Understandably, the grounds were not very clean. Come night time, cockroaches would emerge by the hundreds and run all over them. 

Dian baptising the first converts from the church he and Dawn started.

“Dawn never, ever complained. She knew that, with Jesus in the boat, we can smile at the storm. I thank God for her,” said Dian. 

In his 14 years in Taiwan, Dian gained enough mastery of the Chinese language to read the Chinese Bible and preach in Mandarin fluently. 

He and Dawn also taught English and preached God’s word at Glad Tidings Bible College, later establishing a church for students who were new believers. 

Because you are mine

In his early years in Taiwan, Dian recalled being “very religious” and having a deep desire to please God.

He would stay away from alcohol and fast for 40 days a year. Every day, he would pray for two hours and read at least 20 chapters of the Bible.

One day, he heard God telling him: “Stop reading the Bible and praying. Go to 7-11, buy a beer and drink it.”

Dian was stunned. He wondered whether the instruction was from the devil, but recognised it as the voice of God.

Seeking to obey, Dian did not read the Bible or pray for three days but found that was the longest he could go without doing so. In order to resume praying and reading, he forced himself to go to the 7-11 convenience store opposite the Bible college where he taught at and bought a Budweiser.

He took his first sip, then a second and a third.

Dian on a scooter that was provided by God.

“It was the most anti-climax moment ever. I thought when I drank it, there would be lightning in the sky, goosebumps or some kind of spiritual epiphany. But nothing happened,” he said. He threw the can away after three sips.

The next morning, he woke up early and saw the silhouette of a figure at the foot of his bed. Immediately, he knew it was Jesus.

Dian with his late wife, Dawn, and their three children in Taiwan.

“He said to me, ‘Dian, I love you not because you don’t drink or because you fast and read the Bible all the time. I love you because you are mine. You cannot do anything to make me love you more than I already do,'” related Dian, tears welling up in his eyes even as he recounted the memory of three decades ago.

In the years ahead, God would reveal more and more of Himself as a loving Father to Dian.

In 2006 when Dawn, aged 45, died suddenly from heart failure right in front of Dian, his heart was shattered.

He became a single parent of three children, then aged eight, 12 and 14. 

As he wept in his car, he felt a deep embrace and he lost track of time in the hug. 

“The God of comfort came into my car and physically hugged me, though I didn’t see Him. When I came round, the deep pain in my heart had disappeared,” said Dian.

10 Ah Ma’s

One day, in the late 1990s in Taiwan, Dian was praying on the rooftop of his little house, which was just next to a rice paddy field.

He was feeling insignificant in the work he was doing, as his church had only 50 students at the time, while the churches in Korea were seeing mass revivals. 

Dian’s two sons outside their house in Taiwan.

Suddenly, he heard a voice saying: “Thank you for coming to Taiwan.”

Before he could make sense of the voice, he saw a vision of himself before God on Judgement Day.

Jesus was standing before him, in a glistening white robe, asking Dian: “Where are the 10 Ah Ma’s (old aunties) I asked you to look after?”

In the blink of an eye, the 10 ah ma’s appeared in heaven and Jesus said: “Very good. One hundred marks.”

Then Jesus turned to a man in black suit and tie who was next to Dian. Somehow, Dian knew that the man’s assignment was not 10 Ah Ma’s, but a million souls.

When Jesus asked him about his assignment, the man replied: “I have brought 800,000 people to You.”

“Well done. Eighty marks,” came Jesus’ reply.

Dian was puzzled. How could he get full marks for 10 old aunties while the other guy only received 80 marks for 800,000 souls?

Jesus told him: “What this man has done, he has done by his own power and by his own virtue.”

Dian interjected with: “Lord, we have also started an orphanage.”

“Never asked you to,” Jesus replied with a smile, and the vision ended.

“It was a reminder for me not to compare myself with others, but to stay focused on what He has called me to do, and we will be judged solely on that basis,” said Dian soberly.

“Nobody can boast of anything since what needs to be done can only be done by His power and grace.

“We may do things that appear good, but that may not be what He asks for.”

Changed by the Father

After 14 years of living in Taiwan, Dian was called to ministry work in Singapore via New Covenant Ministries International (NCMI) in 2003.

He started a small church – New Covenant Church – in Singapore, which in 2014 merged with Cornerstone Community Church.

Currently, Pastor Dian is in the executive team of Cornerstone Community Church. The three children are now young adults. 

As part of his work, he preaches in various churches here, including the Chinese churches. He also taught at Tung Ling Bible School and the School of Supernatural Ministry. 

Pastor Dian preaching at Cornerstone Community Church.

In light of the Judgement Day vision that he had earlier, he is focusing his energies on inhabiting a fathering role to the individuals, leaders and churches which he mentors.

He hopes to bring people into the fullest potential of their calling by discipling and revealing the Father to them.

“When we truly experience God as our loving Father – knowing that not just by intellectual assent but deep conviction – it changes us,” said Pastor Dian.

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