Today we’d like to introduce you to Pieter Keyter
Hi Pieter, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
My three older brothers and I were born and raised on
a farm in South Africa.
Attending boarding school from grade one taught me to be
very independent, but also exposed me very early to things of the
world I was not ready for. In the boarding house, the boys were in
a separate wing than the girls. We had rooms for the younger boys
and down the hall where the older boys slept. They had free access
to us, and this is where a lot of the exposure started. P*rnography
was introduced to us long before I knew what it was called.
We had a day of prayer in the church when I was nine years
old. Traditionally, only the men and women who were seasoned
in the faith would pray at such a meeting. However, there was this
urgency in me to get up and pray, but I lacked the courage to do
it. Thinking about it, suddenly I stood up and started praying.
My grandfather was part of the national government, and I knew
all the cabinet members by name. Prayer flowed out of me for
every member, people behind the iron curtain, and international
leaders with a passion I had never experienced before.
Unfortunately, this urge to know or experience more was
soon filled with earthly distraction.
After graduation, distractions of this world prevented me from finishing my college course. In 1995, a friend and I decided to travel to the USA and see what there was to see. At this stage in my life, I was fully hooked on p*rnography and living a promiscuous lifestyle.
Returning home, it was time to settle down and do what everybody does–get married, have children, work hard, and start earning a living. I married and we had two beautiful children, but the feeling of belonging or worthiness still eluded me. Working on the family farm for my father, I thought would bring stability to my life. We built a home and a life on the farm, but the restlessness in me bubbled up soon after.
The anger inside me was like a ticking bomb. Anything and everything would trigger it. My relationship with my wife suffered as I started controlling her as much as I could.
During this very rocky road in our marriage, my son got sick,
and my wife took him to the doctor. The doctor put him on
antibiotics, but a few days later, my wife had to rush him to the
emergency room. He had a very low oxygen level and had to be
given some oxygen. The tests revealed that he had pneumonia.
He was almost two and so thin and frail. His little body was so
weak, he picked up a diarrhea bug as well.
Convinced God was punishing me for all the wrong things
I have done in my life, I never went to the hospital. One night,
after the call came telling me my son was fighting for his life, I
went outside and started screaming and shouting at God! I even
cursed God for picking on the weak and not taking me on. My
limited understanding of God was the cause for my reaction.
My wife phoned the next morning early and told me my son
made it through the night and had made a turn for the better. He
was strong enough they could start with physiotherapy to relieve
the congestion in his chest. He made a full recovery and I sighed
with relief.
The inward struggle was becoming an outraged war and I found myself doing and thinking things I hated. Sometimes, I just felt like my mind had no control over my actions. Downhearted, depressed, and lost, I could not see a way out. A few times, this feeling of “just waking up” would happen and I’d realize I had a pistol shoved in my mouth. The fear that would grip me is something I do not wish on my worst enemy. This would just cause my anger and frustration to rise up and spill over on my family.
Little did I know that after three years of marriage, my wife was so broken down by my attitude and verbal abuse, she could not take it anymore. We were drifting apart, and I did not even realize it. She had reached her limit and had the divorce papers drawn up. She did not serve me with the papers out of fear of my reaction. I would always threaten her that if she ever left me, she would never see her children again. She did verbalize her actions to my brother. He asked her to just hold off on filing for divorce until we could visit them.
My brother invited me to go with him to his church. Not excited by this, I tried to stall him as long as I could. He kept on asking and eventually I agreed to meet with him in March the next year. It was November at the time.
When the end of March approached, I had to follow through. So, we packed our bags and went to visit my brother at the end of March. They had a meeting on a Thursday at his church, so we opted to go to that service. As I was from a very traditional church, this more Pentecostal approach was very uncomfortable and new to me. We had church for more than two hours. This
was a very long time, especially for me being a smoker at the time.
When they said, “amen” at the end, I rushed outside to have
a cigarette. While I was standing in the parking lot having my
cigarette, my brother casually suggested I could always ask God
to deliver me from cigarettes and to ask in the name of Jesus, as
He was the way to the Father. I heard his remark but did not pay
much attention to it. I just smiled and enjoyed my cigarette.
Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No
one comes to the Father except through me. (John 14:6 ESV)
My oldest brother and second brother both live on the same
ranch. They farmed vegetables under irrigation. Their houses
are situated a few hundred feet apart. While visiting my second
brother on Friday evening, my wife had gone back to the other
brother’s house to put the kids to bed. Walking back to the house,
I wanted to smoke one more cigarette. When I opened the packet,
it was empty. Then, I walked over to one of our guards who was
doing his rounds and asked if he had a cigarette for me. He said
he didn’t smoke but the other guard on the other side did.
When I turned to go ask the other guard, the first one shouted,
“He only smokes handmade cigarettes and uses newspaper to
make them.”
Out of desperation, I have smoked something like that before,
but I was not too far from a 24-hour gas station, so I figured
I would just go buy some real quick. As I passed the shed on
my way to the house, I started thinking about the whole church
service and asking God to come into your life thing. I went into
the shed and started my idea of a prayer, though I had no idea
what to say or where to start. It went something like, “God please help me….”
Before I could finish, I was attacked by a swarm of mosquitoes. They have a lot of standing water on the farm, so there are a lot of mosquitoes. They started biting me and I started swatting. Trying again, the mosquitoes were just so distracting, I finally gave up. Finding the car keys, I headed outside. As I passed through the lounge area, I found myself thinking, “There are no mosquitoes here, why don’t you try to pray again?”
Suddenly, I felt like the burden of the world rested on my shoulders and fell to my knees crying.
“God, the tax collectors and prostitutes are going to enter heaven before me,” I cried.
Then I remembered my brother said to always ask in the name of Jesus, so I cried out, “Jesus, help me!”
As I said that, I could hear this grumbling voice saying, “You should never have said that name!”
Suddenly, I felt a presence with me in the room. This person laid me down on my back and put his hand down my throat and started pulling out things. These things did not want to come out. They screamed and scratched and then I could hear them go away in fear. This continued for a while. To describe the process, it would be the easiest to say it felt like throwing up, but the stuff that came out was not physical, it was unseen. However, I could feel them come out.
This process got intense to such a stage where I could not breath. “God the night I choose You, You are killing me?” I asked. The next moment, something wonderful, amazing, almost indescribable happened. I could feel the love of God enter my
heart and pump through all my veins.
How do I know it was God’s love? I just knew!
“God what about the p*rnography?” I asked.
“That is why I died on the cross.”
“What about me shouting at You and cursing You?” I asked
Him.
“That is why I died on the cross,” He answered.
As I listed all my sins, all He kept on saying was He died on
the cross for all of it.
So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. (John 8:36
ESV)
After a few hours, I realized what just happened to me was
supernatural. When I got into bed, and it was like for the first
time, I saw how beautiful my wife was. Watching her sleep, I was
so thankful for her and my two kids on the floor next to our bed.
I could not believe how amazingly blessed I was.
The next morning, I could not wait to tell my brother my
whole story. When I started explaining what happened, he just
looked at me with an astonished look on his face. Then, he started
crying and laughing with me. We must have looked a little crazy
if someone would have seen us.
He told me he started praying for me two years ago. He prayed
for my salvation and then he asked God to touch me physically.
He said he knew if I was touched physically, there wouldn’t be
any doubt in my mind as to what happened. He said he could see my struggle and knew the only way out would be God. He was so right! Though I could not sleep, I told him I felt at peace, but also a little incomplete. He looked at me and smiled. Then he explained the scriptures speak about being baptized after repenting and giving your life over to Christ. When he said it, I immediately knew I had to do it. The following Monday, my wife, who wanted to divorce me a few days ago, was baptized with me. It was the start of a new covenant between the two of us. A unity where God was the center.
This was the start of my journey. It was the start of my connection with the Maker of the universe who loved me so much, He sent His only Son to die for me. Reading my Bible every day, I could not get enough of what this amazing God had to say. What He wrote in His Word was for me every day. The feeling I had as a nine-year-old boy praying in church returned, and I will never ever let go of it again. This feeling was the true love of the Father for His son.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
The road has definitely not been a smooth one. The way we did things after my salvation changed drastically. We still had all the normal challenges, but how we approached them was where the difference came in. The challenges become harder to overcome if it is within your family.
When my son, Henry, was seventeen years old, his cousin and
some friends were on the farm to visit us for a weekend. They
found an old laser pointer in the house and were playing with it.
As I walked passed them, I told them to be careful not to shine it
into their eyes.
My teenage son responded, “Dad, we know all this.”
My wife had to leave early the next morning to take Henry
back to boarding school, and I did not think much of it when
he was slow to get into the car. My wife dropped him off at the
boarding school and returned home.
Tuesday, my wife received a panicked call from our son. After
we went to bed on Sunday night, the teenagers dared each other
to see who could shine the laser into their eyes the longest. Henry
won the competition but now could not see out of his left eye.
We called our daughter who was in college to go pick him up
and take him to an eye doctor. We were at home calling eye doctors
to try to get an appointment for this emergency. One of my
school mates was an Optometrist and said he could see Henry.
Our daughter took him to the eye doctor to look at Henry’s eyes.
The news was not positive. He said there were dark spots on the retina that should not be there. He told us to immediately take him to a specialist he’d called for us. Our daughter took Henry to an Ophthalmologist.
She examined his eyes and took photos of the damage. She told us Henry had burned 100 percent of his left eye’s central vision through to the nerve endings on the brain. The right eye had 20 percent of the central vision gone. She told us he would continue to lose the little sight he had left over time. The burn wound on the retina had caused swelling and that would increase.
We were devastated. Later, we learned this specialist called in her whole staff and told them to look at what irresponsible thing this young man had done. His sister told us he just started weeping.
After a few weeks passed, Henry became extremely quiet.
Normally, he would be outside doing something, or he would
be playing a game on his Xbox, but now he was just lying in his
room, doing nothing. We took him to see a Christian counselor
which helped a little.
Late one winter afternoon, I went looking for him. My housekeeper
told me Henry had left around nine that morning with a
bottle of water in his hand and headed towards the mountain.
Immediately, I started worrying knowing he was not himself,
really struggling, and I was not sure what was going through his
mind. We had all the farm workers drive around the mountain. Our manager and his wife stayed with our other kids so we could go look for our son. We drove up the mountain until the road ended. We split up and went by foot around the mountain calling out his name. It was already getting dark so we were walking with flashlights and calling out to him. We called, shouted, and searched. The neighbors were all preparing to join our search and the search and rescue helicopter was getting ready to take off. The weather was turning cold and Henry did not have a jacket. My mind began playing vicious games with me.
Just then, I received a call from my manager’s wife saying Henry had returned home. He was tired and worn out, but alive!
This is when I felt led by the Spirit to start spiritual warfare for my son. Ever since he was three years old, all he wanted to do was farm. We would go look for him and find him with one of the workers on a tractor or being pushed in a wheelbarrow. He would run outside if he thought he heard a tractor nearby. He would get in my tractor and sit on my lap asking a million questions. His dream was to farm like his dad, but now his dream lay shattered because he was losing his sight.
As I started looking in the Scriptures to see what Jesus did with the blind, I read about the blind man who shouted out as Jesus walked past him in Luke 18:38-41.
And he cried out, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” And those who were in front rebuked him, telling him to be silent. But he cried out all the more, “Son of David, have mercy on me!” And Jesus stopped and commanded him to be brought to him. And when he came near, he asked him, “What do you want me to do for you?” He said, “Lord, let me recover my sight.” (ESV)
Acting this out, I would stand in my room and shout like this
blind man. Then, I would walk over to the other side of the room
and ask, “What do you want Me to do for you?”
Then, I would cry out as loud as I could, “Lord, let my son
recover his sight,” and end up in tears on my knees.
This war for my son went on for months.
A good friend of mine asked me to minister in his church on
Good Friday. As I was preparing my message, I opened my Bible
and the letter the specialist wrote about Henry’s eyes fell out. In
my spirit, I cried out to God again.
The Holy Spirit took me to 2 Kings 19:10, where Hezekiah
was in Jerusalem surrounded by the Assyrian army. Hezekiah
was trapped. The letter from King Sennacherib was given to
Hezekiah stating: “Say this to Hezekiah king of Judah, ‘Do not
let your God on whom you rely deceive you by saying, “Jerusalem
shall not be handed over to the king of Assyria” (AMP).
The enemy raved about all his victories and how the gods of
the other nations did not help them. He was very assured that
even this nation will be taken like all the others.
What happened next is what got my attention. Hezekiah took
the letter from the King to the temple of the Lord and spread it
out in front of the Lord and started pleading his case. He mentions
to God all the Assyrians had accomplished and acknowledges it
is true. He states the gods of all the other nations were just wood
and rocks. He pleads to God to help them and deliver them from
this evil king who had the arrogance to insult the Most High
God Then Isaiah the prophet, who knew Jerusalem and its people were in trouble and needed a word from God, sends this message to Hezekiah.
Therefore thus says the Lord concerning the king of Assyria: “He shall not come into this city or shoot an arrow there, or come before it with a shield or cast up a siege mound against it.”
And that night the angel of the Lord went out and struck down 185,000 in the camp of the Assyrians. And when people arose early in the morning, behold, these were all dead bodies. (2 Kings 19:32, 35 ESV)
If you google “Assyrian torture tactics” you will see they would take out the eyes of their enemies and destroy their vision.
During worship on Good Friday, I took out the letter from the specialist and put it on the altar of God, and prayed like Hezekiah asking God to please heal my son’s eyes.
A few weeks later, my son started saying he was not struggling as much anymore and felt his eyesight had improved. He started to play sports again and would give us a good report of how he was seeing better. At first, I thought he was just starting to cope with his disability and trying to cheer us up.
My wife made an appointment with another eye specialist. We did not know it at the time, but the specialist we were taking him to was a born-again believer.
As my wife walked in with Henry, the specialist touched Henry’s back to usher him in and said, “A lot of prayer has gone up for you young man.” He looked at the pictures and reports of the previous specialist
and mentioned to us what he was reading and the picture he
was seeing was very serious, but God! He then took over 7000
pictures of our son’s eyes.
He called my wife in to look at the pictures. What happened
was impossible medically speaking. The nerves on the brain that
were burned away, were now there, fully functional. The swelling
on the retina and surrounding area was gone! The specialist asked
our permission to use these photos to show students around the
world that God is still alive!
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
My wife and I have the privilege to run the farming hub of North Palm Church, called North Palm Farms in Orangeburg, SC. I also have the opportunity to preach in North Palm Church and in our Myrtle Beach hub as well. We have written a book about our testimony and our journey to the United States. Currently we are building a group to start a church hub in Orangeburg as well.
https://a.co/d/a2KSrgH
Is there any advice you’d like to share with our readers who might just be starting out?
For any person starting out in any profession or job I would tell them this:
– Never think you know everything, stay teachable.
– Always surround yourself with people who have the same value system as you. People who will celebrate you and not people who break you down.
– I would strongly suggest that you be part of a Bible based church community that has your well-being at heart.
– Make sure you do your research in the area but most importantly: What is God instructing you to do? If you have a wife or husband, ask if they are in unity with you in your decision. If you are single, make sure you have a prayer partner that prays with you for guidance.
– Always have a place of accountability towards someone.
– Have a spiritual mentor, have a business mentor.
Pricing:
- $25
- $14.95
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.northpalmfarms.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/blanchefromtheranch
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/peter.keyter.5
- Youtube: https://youtube.com/watch?v=naEqEas7q1k&si=8dQeCnC0eq5NhrVO
Image Credits
I own all these photos
