The Family Outpost, Episode 3 | Pillar 1: Multigenerational Vision (feat. Hannes & Alma du Preez)
What does it actually look like to build a family that lasts beyond one generation? In Episode 3, Rance Bland and Kevin Morrison open Pillar 1 of the Kingdom Outpost framework, Multigenerational Vision, with guests Hannes and Alma du Preez. Originally from South Africa, Hannes and Alma now live the very thing they have built for decades.
Hannes and Alma both grew up in deeply dysfunctional homes, married young, and had no manual, only God’s Word and a conviction that they would not repeat what they had lived. What followed was decades of intentionality: saying no to hobbies and social calendars so they could stay fully present at home, hosting Thursday night dinners where debate and disagreement were expected, and staying relationally invested long after their kids left home.
Now retired and traveling the country in a converted van, Hannes and Alma offer the vantage point Rance and Kevin are still running toward: six grandchildren, adult kids who still want to talk, and a family culture strong enough to survive the test of in-laws, distance, and time. The episode closes with a challenge that stops both hosts cold: write down God’s vision and Scripture for each of your children.
Episode Chapters
00:00 Intro and Theme Music
00:31 Pillar 1: Multigenerational Vision
03:24 Outpost Challenge Field Report
07:28 Meet Hannes and Alma du Preez
09:42 A Different Family Story
16:37 Models Worth Repeating
21:18 Multigenerational Vision in Practice
23:34 What They Said No To
27:39 Family Culture at the Table
29:32 Faith From Deep Conviction
34:05 Staying Relationally Invested
35:23 The In-Law Test
39:53 Letting Go as Parents
42:15 Outpost Challenge
44:44 Downloadable Resource
45:41 Closing and Next Episode Preview
Outpost Challenge
Challenged by Hannes & Alma du Preez:
Write down God’s vision and God’s purpose for each one of your children.
Ask God for a Scripture for each child. Write it down. Psalm 127:4 frames it: “Sons are like arrows in the hand of a warrior.” But you can only shoot an arrow when you know where it needs to go, and that requires sitting with God and seeking His direction for each specific child. Rance and Kevin are doing this same challenge with their families and will report back in Episode 4.
Email us at familyoutpost@all4one.org to share what God spoke to you about your children. We read every response.
Episode Transcript
Transcript lightly edited for clarity.
Rance: Is the character and the habits and the values that we're forming in this child today strong enough to be passed down tomorrow?
Kevin: You've got grandkids, maybe even great grandkids. You can have them teach their kids that then creates the investment early.
Alma: Your multigenerational family doesn't end with your kids. They get spouses. Be very intentional on how do you bring that person into your family.
Rance: Well, welcome to the Family Outpost Podcast. This is a show, about families built for more. I'm Rance here with Kevin Morrison. Kevin, good to be back.
Kevin: Yeah, man. Good to be here with our first guest of the season.
Rance: I am really excited to get into this. You know, in the last episode, we were explaining this Kingdom Outpost framework and the Four Pillars. And today, we're opening up the first of our Four Pillars, which is multigenerational vision. And before we bring in our guest, I just want to reframe something and just go back to what we mean by multigenerational vision. Because I think most of us are operating with the wrong target as as parents. You know, we've been conditioned. I've I've been conditioned to think of childhood as the job. My job as a parent is just to raise good kids, get them to 18, launch them out of the nest, and check. You know, it's done. My responsibility ends there. But the multigenerational mindset says something different that I'm actually part of an ongoing family story, and I'm building something that's meant to outlast me. And that shift just changes everything because the moment that you start thinking that way, you can't just ask, is my kid happy right now in this moment? That's not your only filter for making decisions. You start to ask, is the character and the habits and the values that we're forming in this child today strong enough to be passed down tomorrow? And that's a totally different question and a much harder one, but it changes how you measure success. Because if the finish line is just independence, kid moves out, can support himself, check, then you'll optimize for that. But multigenerational families measure something else entirely. Are my kids becoming the kind of adults who can build and sustain healthy families of their own? That's what we're aiming at. And so what we're going to be sharing today and what our guests are are going to show us is that 18 isn't the finish line. It it may, in many cases, be the starting line. and so that's what we're going to get in today into today. Families who think generationally, not just when kids are young, but even in their twenties, their thirties, their forties, they stay in during those years relationally, practically. They don't just disappear at graduation. So pillar one, multigenerational vision.
Kevin: This is one that you and I obviously can have a vision for and start living out with our young families, but not one that we have seen come to fruition. And so it didn't take us very long to figure out who we wanted to ask, come to give some of that insight for us. So we've got some pretty awesome guests that provide their vantage point and share the ups and downs of the whole journey all all along.
Rance: That's right. But first, we've got to get to our field report from the Outpost Challenge in episode one. So let's share that. So in the last episode, our Outpost Challenge was to go through the Four Pillars that we described and have a conversation with your spouse about them and pick one that was the weakest and, just to discuss that weak point or or weak pillar. So Kevin and I did that, over the last several days. Kevin, how did it go? Tell us what was the pillar that you chose.
Kevin: Yeah. So we did ours during our regular weekly Sunday, Monday meeting with our family. And so we had everybody there. I actually made it twofold. I didn't want to just be like, what is our weakest. It was a what's our strongest and what is our weakest.
Rance: Nice.
Kevin: Kelly and I zoomed in on what is our weakest, because right out of the gate when I asked it, our oldest son said, our strongest is adventure, which was encouraging. It was great for him. Like, I mean, he he spoke up first. It was great. But Kelly and I both agreed that our weakest is adventure. And so we took time going through each pillar and talking about each pillar.
Rance: And
Kevin: for us, adventure in the way that we want adventure to be in our family. Because we do a lot together. We have many adventures. My son probably answered that way because, like, the day before, me and all the kids went on an adventure through our, you know, our 11 acres where we were acting like we were cavemen and shenanigans and doing all kinds of stuff. And Yeah. That felt like adventure to them. But, Kelly and I understand adventure is us serving the king in big and little ways. And so ours was adventure, and so we're looking ways to reshape that.
Rance: Right there with you. Actually, if you remember the first Outpost Challenge that we did, it was about what do we need more of and less of. And Stacy said we need more adventure. And so as we as we talked about this, you know, we drill down into that again. And we do have, in in some ways, a lot of adventure in our life in in terms of we've done a lot. We you know, we'll go on hikes and we, you know, do things like that. But I think what she was really talking about and what we're lacking is sort of sort of like you. Yes. We need more of those really high quality times together where we get out of the grind and we try new things and we're out of our comfort zone. But I think the part that is, the higher area of improvement for us is sort of the more spiritual component of mission when it comes to adventure. Not that we don't do that, but I think, you know, especially when you have young children in the home, I'm thinking more even of you guys than than us with a seven and 10 year old. But there are just some some capacity challenges to getting outside of yourself. It does get a little more complicated. I definitely feel like that's an area. One of the things that even has come up over the last few months was, we a family, my son in particular wanted to he was like, could we have, like, a big gathering just like we invite a bunch of people, have, a cookout and you know, which is great. And we're like, yes. We want to foster that and be hospitable. But then when when it's come down to, like, all right. Well, when are we going to do that? It's like, well, we can't do it that week, and we're going on this trip. and so I feel like just capacity wise, it's been a struggle. and so it's an area that we need to prioritize more as well. Grateful for the challenge. Yeah. Exactly. to be able to talk through that and go, okay. Well, this is an area that now we can, tweak some things and we can try to grow in.
Kevin: So if you still haven't had that conversation in your family, there's no bad time for it. We will have another Outpost Challenge at the end of this episode. But write that one down. Put it somewhere. Put it in your phone calendar, whatever it takes. Have that conversation. It's worthwhile.
Rance: Our guests are Hannes and Alma du Preez. They are originally from South Africa. They now live in in the U. S.. And between the two of them, they've built careers that most people would consider a full life on their own. Hannes has been a successful business owner. Alma has spent her career in senior leadership at Apple. Between the two of them, they've operated at a high level for a long time. But what I really admire about them is they've both been building a multigenerational vision for decades. And now they're in the grandparent seat, which as Kevin said, we don't know what that vantage point is like yet. And so we're going to get to hear from them today. Also, Hannes has been a a very significant voice in the 4MUS movement, and heavily involved in a lot of our events from the Xtreme Character Challenge to the fatherhood challenge to, several of the others. And, that means he hasn't just thought about this for himself, but he spent years sharing this with other men. He's passionate about raising up other fathers. And so I'm excited to have him share some of that with us today. and then the last thing, and I'll I'll let Hannes and Alma share more about this, but they are now retired, and they have been on this amazing sabbatical trip traveling around the world and around the country in a converted van. We'd love to see pictures of that, Spending time with their kids, their grandkids, living the exact thing that we're talking about today. So, this is not just theory for them. They're, they're in the midst of this. And so Hannes and Alma, welcome to The Family Outpost.
Hannes: Thank you. it's a real honor to be here, Rance, and, you know, to sit with you guys. I mean, we've been traveling a while now, but just to see you guys again is incredibly it's very refreshing. Thank you.
Alma: Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. We see it as a privilege.
Rance: Well, wonderful. we are really grateful for your time here, and we'd love to just dive in to hearing a little bit of your story. Tell us about your family and how did you get to where you are today surrounded by kids and grandkids?
Alma: I'll start by saying, you know, Hannes and I grew up in very dysfunctional homes, extremely dysfunctional. And it's interesting, Hannes and I met, I was 16, and I actually had the honor to lead him to Christ. So he became radically converted, and we were just, you know, these incredible friends. I mean, we couldn't stop talking about God and the word. You know, this relationship just evolved and time goes by and we got married. But it was interesting. We both came from these dysfunctional families. And one thing that we both knew, that wasn't right. That wasn't what family should look like. We didn't know what it should look like, but we knew it wasn't that. And so we really used our experience to say, we don't want that. We want to change the direction of our family. We want to change the direction where we're going to take our family and the way we're going to do life and the way we're going to live for Christ and the way that we're going to make an impact on the world. And we had no manual. There was no manual. The only manual we had was God's Word. And we really used it as a plumb line. So that's where we started. And so through the years, we were very intentional. I mean, we were extremely intentional at what we do. We didn't know what to do, but we knew we had God's Word, and we spent a lot of time there reading, understanding how God sees marriage, how God sees family.
Hannes: The structure.
Alma: The structure. And the first thing and this for me is kind of a foundational thing, is the first thing, and it was very hard for me because I was in a very dysfunctional family, but I knew that God had a structure for the family, had a structure for a married couple. And the first thing that I learned was my husband is the head of the home as Christ is the head of the home. And that's the foundation in a marriage. It starts there. I took his name. I became one with him. There has to be that structure. And then from there, we started building. And we made I want to I want to put this in as a disclaimer. We made a lot of mistakes.
Kevin: Oh, yeah.
Alma: I think if we had the opportunity today to redo it, we would do a lot different. But in our ignorance and with the desire to change the direction of where our family is going, you know, we did what we could. But but that was the foundation. The starting point was getting structure in the house right.
Hannes: The structure from the word of God. And then the second thing was the roles. Because God put two individuals together, each with their own giftings and each with their own personalities. And God put the husband in this role, and he put the wife in that role. We embraced it. We studied it. we really made that our own because we know going forward having children that will come through, That will rub off. Because this is all about impartation. It's what you live, what they see and hear. That is what they're going to pick up. And so to us, I had to come to a place, and that's where I missed it a lot, to understand Olma's role. You know? Because I'm a little bit dictatorial. How do you say that in English?
Alma: Dictator.
Hannes: Yeah. Something like that. But I had to really embrace and understand because she's way better with so many things. She's a very good leader, strong personality, work with money incredibly well, stuff like that. All that sort of thing, I like all over the place, impulsive, and that sort of thing. So the two together, we made we we really found from the word of God in the beginning how to get those things down. So Wow.
Alma: So yeah. And then we and then we just built from there. Right? Mhmm. And our vision was, I want to say that our vision was, we never thought You said it early on, Rance, that, you know, is our mission just to get our kids to 18 years old and then, you know, we can check the box? You know, I'm going to make a confession. I never knew that was a thing until I moved to North America. And this is just being honest. I never knew that. When we moved to North America, I was like, why do people, like, aim for 18 if their kids can just be 18? And we're like, that's so weird. Why do people do that? But it was never in our mind. Our mind was always around, we are we are here to support each other. We are we have each other's backs. We are here to take each other from this point to that point, and then from that point to that point. It's for us, it's like a continuation where it never stops. Right? So so that was the vision.
Kevin: Oh, we got to slow down here because we're ten minutes into this, and we might be done. This might be enough because you guys just you guys gave us so much so much that's encouraging too because you started with the fact that you both came from dysfunctional homes, which means, okay. It's okay if I come from a place that doesn't have it altogether. You both stepped into this without a clear vision, just only understanding that you wanted to do it differently. I think one of the keywords was you were intentional. And sometimes that didn't work out so well, I bet, but it didn't stop you from being intentional. But that component of understanding the foundational roles of husband and wife because, you know, that's not necessarily anywhere within the framework to say that's what it takes to have a multigenerational vision. But if you don't understand your roles in the marriage as the foundation, the core, even if you have a vision, if you don't understand where you work together, how you work together, how you're called to lead, Hannes, not as a dictator, but just as a leader, it makes it even harder. And so the fact that you guys somehow stumbled upon that by the grace of God is is huge. And so how old were you guys when you got married?
Alma: I was 19, and Hannes was 22.
Kevin: Did you guys start having these conversations around this vision before you got married, like, afterward?
Alma: Yeah. We always said we don't want to repeat what we've lived.
Hannes: So where where it started yeah. So, Kevin, that's a good question. You know, do we have conversation around this multigenerational concept? We didn't coin it as that.
Alma: No. We didn't
Hannes: know. Use those words. But where it started for for me is and I'm I'm going to tell a little story here, but I had a very godly grandfather. And he was a farmer. He had vineyards up in the Northwestern Part of South Africa, a rural area, desert area. And so I visited him often. And I was about 13, 14 years old. and one morning, it was winter, one morning we walked down to the vineyard. And I noticed previously that he doesn't smoke his pipe anymore. We always used to smoke a pipe. and as we were walking, I asked him, Grandpa, why don't you smoke anymore? What is that? He said, No, he's a very tough old man. So I had a lot of respect for him. And he looked at me and he said, not good for me. It's an addiction. And I had to stop it. I said, but how do you I mean, that's addiction. How do you stop it? He said, I asked God. I prayed about it. And I dared to ask the silly question, Can God really help you with stuff like that? And he stopped. He looked at me, very disappointed, looked down to, you know, to me, and he and he and without condemnation, he just asked me, aren't you believing? And he turned and he walked on. And I felt extremely embarrassed. I caught up to him, and as we were walking he took my hand and he walked with me. I can tell you that acceptance by that action made me desire to be like Him, to be a godly man, to be a godly grandfather one day. First of all, a godly father, and then a godly grandfather. I wanted to be like him, and I wanted to pray, and I wanted to serve God. So, you know, that is where the multigenerational concept, without coining it as, you know, like that, that's where it started. And Alma had much the same sort of experience with grandma.
Alma: Yeah. With my mom's mom. So I had to live with her for a period of time. Like I said, I had my family was very dysfunctional, way more than Hannes', but I lived with her for a year. And she made such an impression on my life. She was such a godly woman. I always say there was no lazy hair on her head. She can do anything. She could, Doesn't matter what you put in front of her, she would figure it out and she would do it. She was a hard worker. She was resourceful. She was creative. She was innovative. And then on top of all, she was a godly woman. And in the year that I lived with her, she made such an impression on my life. And I was only four years old. And I will I carried I still carry it. I'm 60 years old, and I still carry it with me today. I refer back to my grandmother. With my grandkids and with my children. I want to say on a weekly basis. Like that's the legacy that she left. And it did the same to me. I always looked at my family, my parents, my household, and looked at it and thought, this is not what I want. If there's something that I wanted, something there. And I think that's where the seed was planted, the same as with Hannes. And when we got together, we both knew there was something different, but we never coined it as a Multigener. We didn't know what it was, but we just figured out we're going to figure out what this is.
Hannes: We could just see down the line. Yeah. We could just see down the line, and that's where we're going.
Rance: Yeah. I just want to underline, you both had a grandparent who modeled something for you. Yeah. and then, Hannes, you mentioned that a moment ago that you knew that your vision had to be more than something written on the wall. You had to model it. It had to be an impartation to your children. Before we go any further, could you just tell us how many children do you have? How many grandchildren do you have?
Alma: So we have two children, a son and a daughter. And then my son our son has four sons, and our daughter has two girls. So we have six grandchildren and four adult kids with their spouses.
Rance: Okay. Beautiful. So you guys were both, you know, very successful in in your work, in your careers. How how did you navigate that with raising kids and then eventually, of course, grandkids as well and stay focused on this multigenerational vision that you had?
Hannes: I'm going to start with that answer. We're creative, or try to be creative, and never apologize for hardworking, for working hard. Never. Not one day. We try to make them proud of that we are hardworking people. And if you want to say you work hard, it comes with long hours. And basically suck it up, buttercup. And then we made it up by cutting other activities out of our lives. We were home cell leaders in our church for thirty years or whatever, but that had its limits. That's the time we spent into, you know, for church activities, and this is family time.
Alma: Yeah.
Hannes: But we we didn't we didn't give our children the right to say, Oh, I should feel sorry for myself. We never did that. Now, by that, I know it sounds terrible because you can be a workaholic and you can just work all the time. But I don't think that's what we should
Alma: But I think it's prioritized.
Hannes: There was repercussions.
Alma: There were repercussions and we'll talk about that. And going back to being a working mom and that kind of stuff. But it's prioritization. We were confronted multiple times by our leadership at church because we didn't do more in the church. We only had a home sale and we went to church on Sunday. But we weren't involved in anything else. And we were confronted on that multiple times. We were also confronted at a time where we didn't socialize a lot. We didn't have a lot of friends at that time. And we just felt that we chose to have our kids. And we, sitting in a business, that's sucking up a lot of time off us. We don't have time for hobbies. We didn't have time for hobbies. We didn't have time for a massive social life. No hobbies. We had no hobbies. We went to work, but then when we got home, we were home. We were completely engaged. We were present. We were I mean, there was a lot of fun in the house. I mean, that's one thing Hannes is really good at, is creating an atmosphere of fun and making it fun to be home during all ages. Being relevant parents at the different ages. Like what is important to the kid at five? What's important to the kid at nine, 10, 12, 15? So we focus on those things. But yes, did we do it perfect? No, we didn't. I mean, I heard from my daughter ten years ago that they were key latch kids. And I was like, what is a key latch kid? I don't know what that is. Can you explain that to me? Please. And, you know, she explained it to me, and I'm like, oh, is that what you were? You know, I'm so sorry. She's like, mom, I'm better off than many kids that moms were home the whole time. You know? So but it's the
Kevin: end the I don't know what a key latch kit is. I
Rance: think you mean latch key, but
Alma: it we'll forgive you because you know? You see you see you see, that's not much I know about it, Rod. I couldn't you know, I put
Hannes: What is the latchkey?
Alma: Latchkey is they get home and the the gate go close behind them. There's nobody home. But but what I'm saying is
Hannes: Luca, that's very
Alma: in that situation, you know, we didn't take our time that we had available and spent on all other stuff. We were very selfless. I want to say we were selfless in that time because we had a vision and we knew it was going to take an extraordinary amount of intentionality and that kind of stuff. So we tried to do as much as we can of that. And I think it did pay off today. Was it perfect? No. Did it pay off perfect? I don't think so. I think there's more that can be done, but we stuck to our vision.
Kevin: There's probably a lot of people that want to raise a multigenerational vision. And whether they come from little and feel like they've got to work to make up for it, or they just fall into this workaholism that they get stuck into the grind. And especially as men, it's easy to justify our decision. So if you were if you were talking to somebody that's in the grind, that's putting their time in at work and maybe not being as intentional at home and want to find themselves justifying their decisions right now, from somebody that's been in the middle of it and done it successfully and also failed at it. If you could either go back and talk to yourself at that time or talk to that person, how would you try to shift the framework of the thinking for them or give them advice how to balance that?
Alma: If I can redo it okay. And this is not a regret. This is just if for your question, Kevin. If I had to redo it, I would have stayed at home the first ten, twelve years of my children's life. I would have been an at home mom.
Hannes: As a mom. Yeah.
Alma: As a mom. Circumstance didn't allow that. We could have changed circumstance as well. You can you can always control it. Right? You can always do things differently. But I would have changed that because you can never get that time back. You never get it back. And yes, we spent a lot of time with the kids in the situation that we were in. And we made very intentional decisions to go away and do things and be there at night and all that kind of stuff. But I think I missed out a lot in that first twelve years. And I think they missed out a lot in that first twelve years.
Rance: It sounds like there were definitely things you had to say no to in order to pursue this vision that you're talking about. What what were you mentioned, you know, there were things like fun that were important. you were prioritizing. What were the things you were saying yes to? What were some of the values you were you were prioritizing while saying no to the hobbies and some of the other things?
Alma: Creating an atmosphere of fun, giving them identity in the house. Right? Something that we also believe
Hannes: Freedom to discuss.
Alma: Freedom. We were all about discussions. We were all about debates. We created an environment that they can freely disagree with us. And then dinners, food, sitting around the table is a big part of our culture.
Hannes: Yeah. Every Thursday night, it was a tradition from I don't know. From Many
Alma: years. Where where we had dinner together, but we opened up our house. And they could bring their friends in. They could bring whoever they want on a Thursday night and on a Sunday afternoon We after made the food. I would get home and I would cook and do all these things. And they are all welcome to bring their friends. And we would end up for five hours around a dinner table having hard conversations, having fun, listening to music, being silly, and then other nights being very serious, talking about religion, talking about politics, talking about philosophy, talking about the ideas at the different ages that they have. And there were many times where there was a lot of disagreements where I sometimes said to Hannes afterwards, I was like, wow, I don't know if this is a good thing. We are creating problems for ourselves down the road with these kids disagreeing so much with us. But it created a space where they had freedom to talk. And I think that is a very important thing. It's so easy for us as parents to manipulate them into the way we think and what we believe is right and what we believe is true. But when you leave them to tell you what their opinion is and challenge the status quo, challenge your thinking, you create an environment where they start acting out of conviction. The day that they believe the truth, they believe it from a very deep conviction. And that was one of the things that we wanted to do was to get our kids I mean, the number one priority for both of us was to get our kids to serve God 150. For us, that was like the 18 year old thing. If there was a checkbox, it was to serve God. Right? But we wanted them to serve God from a very deep conviction because we knew it would stick. And I think those evenings and days when we had these conversations, a lot of the conversation was around this type of stuff.
Hannes: Yeah. The thing is that we saw lots around us is you as a parent can manipulate circumstance and situations where the kids got no he's like he's like outsmarted and outsmarted to such a point where he has to agree with you.
Kevin: It's I love that you guys started with the fun because what I hear in that is this relationship equity that you built up with them. And so when there was hard conversations, the relationship was strong enough to handle the hard conversations, create an environment where, having those conversations was open, and I would venture to guess probably normal. And Andy Stanley and his right wife wrote a book called Getting It Right. And the point of the book was everybody has their it, whatever it is. As they raise kids, they want to get it right. For them, it was being parents that my kids want to talk to even when they don't have to. And so there is a multigenerational vision to that because so many people, to the point of raising them to 18, I did my job. They're on their own now. They don't need to talk to me because they've kind of leave Cleve, did their thing. But for them, it was I still want to have that relational equity. I still want them to come to me when things are hard. And so you guys built that with your family at young ages. Are you seeing that now fruit years later where they're still able to come to you as grandparents?
Hannes: Brother, you want to
Alma: Thousand times.
Hannes: You want to talk about opinionated? Because we really
Alma: You don't want to see the de Preez around the table.
Hannes: we we were very intentional, and and we trained them from a young age to always challenge the dogma. What's the doctrine here? You know, if this girl this guy says that or that, then then the kid needs to say, says who? Because I've got my belief. But here's the deal. That's how you catch a a child. It's what is your belief?
Alma: Yeah. You can't challenge it without a point of Exactly.
Hannes: Yes. So you want to call this guy this or call that. What's your belief? Yeah. How true are you to the truth? Yeah. You know, so And that's always we challenge Bible stories, the whole story of Noah's Ark and whatever. Birds flying into the Ark and walking two by two up the ramp. Is that a bit ridiculous? Or then it's a discussion around a fire, you know?
Alma: But a lot of fun, you know? It wasn't always like a serious thing, it was a lot of fun as well.
Hannes: We had rock bands in our house.
Alma: Kevin, your question is do we see that now? I will say a thousand times. I think that's the biggest reward for us is to see the relationship now. And it's all about relationship. It's all about trust. It's all about being confident in each other, feeling that you have one another's back, that you're there for each other. And you can only build that through relationship, through conversation, through understanding each other, know how each other think. And to do that takes time, right? That doesn't come over one conversation. It is hours and hours and hours of investment that you do. And so from our kids' perspective today, I would say we see it a thousand times, and now the job is to do the same for the grandkids.
Rance: Could you guys speak for a moment? You mentioned Thursday night, dinners. Was it sounds like maybe that was something that started when the kids were young. How did some of your rhythms evolve as they became adults and then maybe as they started having kids? I don't know if they were always living near you or if they moved away. What were some of the things that you did to continue to have the that relationship and trust and openness that you're talking about?
Alma: So the oldest is our son, and so he got married first, and he literally bought a place right around the corner from us. Like, literally, like, we were on this corner and he was on the next corner.
Kevin: Mom's dream.
Alma: So, actually, they my son and his wife, which we say is our daughter, they never moved away. We, like, just followed each other wherever we go. And today, we actually live in the same house, right? We've got a section of their house and they've got a section of ours. So they were always there. And it just grew. The relationships just grew. And I mean, there can be a whole another conversation, which I don't know if we have time for this, but your multigenerational family doesn't end with your kids. They get spouses.
Hannes: That's the thing.
Alma: They marry into families and they bring someone new in the family, and that's a whole different dynamic. And you have to, again, be very intentional on how do you bring that person into your family. Because I'll tell you, we've got a daughter-in-law and a son-in-law. And our situation, the way we did things, were weird to them. They were like I mean, the son-in-law is from North America, and it's very different, right? And so we are weird. We were very weird, you know? I think today we're less weird. But but but, you know, there's a lot of work and sacrifice that comes from us as the parents to bring that spouse into our family and to make room for that spouse.
Hannes: And to respect him or her Yeah. For who he is, for who they are, and build a relationship from there, you know, to get
Alma: The same dynamic.
Hannes: Yeah. On on our daughter's side, Raj, to your question, we because she married when she was also young, and we and she got married
Alma: And immigrated.
Hannes: And immigrated to the U. S., and we moved to Canada. Okay? So we were always separated. But so to your question there is constant communication
Alma: and
Hannes: to make an impact on the grandkids and prayer, you know, and just knowing that the investment that you made in her and in my son-in-law, you know, that investment and the investment that we are busy making now on the granddaughters, it's a constant thing that never stops. You know, sometimes you'll be far away. But it takes innovation, creativity
Alma: Time.
Hannes: And time to make it happen.
Rance: Yeah. Thank thank you. I love that. Just for me, you know, my experiences with young young children, but I love listening to you guys thinking about the day that they have their own spouses and how that changes the whole dynamic. and I've seen that relationship with in laws go well, and I've seen it not go well. But you talked about really making room and bringing them in, you know, to the family, and also, know, they have their own they they also bring things into the family.
Alma: So Absolutely. Can I add one thing there, which I feel is very important? So, you know, we raise You guys have got young kids. You invest all this time and values and faith and everything in your children, and you're putting all these building blocks in to eventually push them out into the world or see them fly, right? But here's the thing, when they come to an age and they start dating and they start looking for a life partner, and it might be someone that you look at and you're like, I can't believe he chose this girl. Like, what does he see in her? That's not the girl that I would have chosen for him. That's where the test comes for us as parents. Because if you really believe that you've done everything possible with the help of God to build your child into the future child that you want him to be as an adult, you got to trust his judgment. And we experience that where I so many times say to Hannes, we got to trust their judgment. We've invested in their lives and now it's our test. Now let's see if they can make the right decision, right? There's ways and means to do that. But the one thing that we did very intentionally is we befriended. When we saw that this is a serious relationship and this is not going to go away, we befriended those girlfriends and boyfriends or whatever because we knew, you know, we want to open our house to this person. We want to make that person part of our lives. So there comes a very big test during these things, is when you are tested in your education and in your upbringing in your children.
Hannes: I just want to quickly say something to that point. I know we're just labeling the point here big time. But fathers,
Alma: I
Hannes: made that mistake as a dad, especially with your little girl. You hold on too long. I held on too long. And caused a lot of hurt in my daughter and with my son-in-law. And I tried to befriend and all that stuff, but I couldn't let go of my daughter. That's my little girl, man. And I would die for her. So if I could have that time back, I would've I'll do it now. But, I mean, it's I mean, the relationship is there, it's all good, and it's wonderful.
Alma: Took a
Hannes: long time to fix that.
Kevin: This has been awesome. One thing that I think is interesting in this kind of the last thing that you guys went back and forth with is how you both use the word investment. Because for those that are listening, there's really maybe there's more than these three groups of people, but I think of the premarried or pre kids where they're in the position you guys were at the beginning where they're starting to have conversations around framework, how we want to do it, how we don't want to do it, who now can say, okay. I have this clear vision of what we want without things getting muddied. We can start from this place, which is awesome. It's a gift. It's an early investment. And then those who are in the middle of it, Rance and I in the middle of it where whether it's diapers, kids games, whatever it is, like, it starts to get hazy and that vision starts to go. But then to hear you guys encouraged, like, no. Keep investing. Keep investing. Keep in those those distractions, they can wait. They'll be there. Keep investing because it pays dividends. And then there's the grandparents that are maybe do have regrets. Maybe they do look back and say, man, if I knew this earlier, if I'd done this differently. But what I hear is and what I know to be true is it's never too late to invest. Right? Never too late to invest in the relationships because that's what you kept going back to. It's the relationships with your kids. It's the relationships with your grandkids. And so that's the beauty of this multigenerational vision. Even if you're starting from premarried to, you know, you've got grandkids, maybe even great grandkids, you can still teach a vision that you can have them teach their kids that then creates the investment early. And so we could go on for a while, and we could ask you all kinds of things about the adventure you're on. So we'll probably plan on doing that again. But at the end of every show, we get to get challenged. And so for the first two episodes, Rance and I were able to challenge each other on a couple things. We asked you guys as our first guest to prepare a challenge for us, something that's within a framework that we can handle that doesn't require going to Zimbabwe with a fan unless you're planning on providing it for us. So something that we can work with.
Alma: So we gave it a lot of thought and we didn't really talk about it today, but the challenge that we have for you is so I'll just quickly frame it and then I'll give you the challenge. So one of the things that we were also very diligent in doing is hearing from God, what is God's vision and plan for each one of our children?
Kevin: Oh, it's so
Alma: important. And we wrote it down. we asked God for a scripture, and we wrote it down. And it was based on the scripture that says, sons are like arrows in the hand of a father. But you can only shoot an arrow when you know where it needs to go. And you can only know where it needs to go when you sit with God and you spend time on that to get the direction. And so our challenge to you and Ranj, Kevin, is write down the vision, God's vision, and God's purpose for each one of your children.
Rance: Wow. I got chills. Yeah. That is so good. Thank you. Yeah. We'll we'll do it, won't we, Kevin? That sounds good. Well, thank you again, Hannes and Alma. There's so much more I wish we could ask you, but we'll have to have you back on another episode. You know, I also hope for those of you who are listening that you'll take that challenge as well and consider this week what what has God made your children for? What's his vision for them? What are the gifts that he's put in them? And if you would like to share that with us, that would be amazing. There's a link in the show notes, and we'd love to hear from you. And next episode, we'll share what the Lord spoke to us about our our children.
Alma: That's awesome.
Rance: Well, Kevin, how should we wrap up today? Anything else?
Kevin: Man, that was powerful. I know that there's probably a lot more questions that people have, but I think just a simple step of asking God is a great way to handle it. That's what Hannes and Alma did years ago, so why not start there?
Rance: That's right. I do want to just mention we have a tool that you can download. Link will be in the show notes, and it's called the discerning your family vision worksheet. And so if something stirred in your heart today as you heard Hannes and Alma talking about their vision for their family and their experiences, and you need a a guide just to help get you started to seek the Lord for your vision, for your family, this will be a great tool for you. So, take a look at that. Hannes Alma, thank you again, genuinely, for sharing your time and your story and your your wisdom with us. we're really grateful, and it was a great reminder there at the end that it's never too late. Yeah. We can always start now, and God can continue to fulfill his purposes in in our family. So well, thanks again, guys, and we look forward to seeing you on the next episode.
Alma: Thank you. Thank you for having us.
Kevin: Thank you so much.
Hannes: Appreciate it.
Kevin: Thank you guys for listening. Don't forget to tune in to the next episode where we got Yuri Jean-Baptiste joining us to talk about pillar number two, the priesthood of the family, and the wonderful reminder that you don't need a seminary degree to lead your family spiritually. So don't miss it.
Downloadable Resource
Discerning Your Family Vision Worksheet
Links
The Family Outpost Podcast: https://www.all4one.org/the-family-outpost-podcast
All4One: https://www.all4one.org/
4MUS: https://www.4mus.org/
SportQuest: https://www.sportquest.org/
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