Biography

I grew up in a Christian family so came to know about Jesus at an early age. I fully committed my life to Him in my mid teenage years and was baptized when I was 19 yrs old.

From a little girl, I have loved music and singing. I was given a small radio and would carry it around the house with me. “Mary had a little lamb” vibes 🙂

I always loved music with a good beat and my Mom would say “there goes Jen with her doof-doof music again!”

I remember getting a record with the words on the cover. I used to have great fun singing and dancing around the living room and pretending I was a singer with a pretend microphone. I would sing my heart out while playing the record.

I joined the choir at the Presbyterian church, my family and I attended, as soon as I was old enough.

I was the youngest member of the grownup choir and was given all the high harmony parts to sing!

When I went to university I started to teach myself the guitar, and my friend and I would sing most afternoons in our rooms.

I started going to a Church in Pretoria close to where I studied and joined the worship team as soon as I could.

I met my husband to be at University where we both studied. We married after we had graduated.

It was around the time of the first democratic elections in South Africa, with Nelson Mandela. While I was watching television the one day I saw a lady, called Liz Pass, singing a song called ‘God Bless Africa’.

It was so beautiful and captured my attention. I suddenly thought that maybe I should take some singing lessons as she sang with such ease.

I knew there was a lady at our church who went to someone for singing lessons and I thought I should ask her who she goes to when next I saw her.

I just happened to pass her that Sunday going into the tearoom after church. I didn’t know her very well but I proceeded to ask her about her singing lessons and who taught her.

She told me it was a lady called Liz Pass!

I was so surprised  I could hardly believe it!

That was the same lady who I’d seen on television, so clearly this was the Holy Spirits leading!

This lady told me that Liz Pass was starting interviews for new students that week and she gave me Liz’s number and said I should phone for an interview.

This was October and so I spoke to her and was asked to prepare a song for the audition. After my audition she said I could begin immediately as she had a place for me in one of the classes where someone else had just left. So I started the next week instead of January. One of the girls in my class, lived around the corner from me. This helped a lot, as we could share lifts as Liz was quite far away – about 45 mins drive. God really is in the details!

It was a truly blessed time of growth and training with Liz once a week for 5 1/2 yrs and practicing 6 days a week.

A few years into my training Liz wanted to redo the original ‘God Bless Africa‘ video, where I had first seen her. She invited her students to be in it if we wanted to. So what an incredible opportunity, there I was in the remake of the video I had fist seen Liz in! God is so good!

Not only myself but my two young children at the time, are in the video, as she needed some children in one of the parts. She had happened to ask at our Church’s nursery school if some children could be in a short section of the video. I went on to have another baby several years later so have three children. Philip, Aimee and Joshua – my treasures!

So those were my vocal training years and we used to have to put together programs  in which we sang some songs and shared scripture and testimonials in between. At the time, I did not have my own songs, but used backing tracks of songs that I felt God lay on my heart to sing.

I then went to train at Rhema Psalmody Academy for a few months, where we did some song writing.

At the end of the course, the class was asked to choose the best song that would be made into a backing track. They chose mine! Initially it was called “Where do I go from here” but I have since changed it to “The Battle is Won”.

While I was doing vocal training with Liz Pass, I felt God laying it on my heart to sing in the prisons. A few weeks after I’d had this thought, Liz had a singing seminar for all us voice students.

You can imagine my surprise when she announced that a lady from prison ministry was coming to talk to us about how we could now go in to the prisons as Christian artists.

She said that if we were interested we could write our names down and she would get back to us. I was so excited as I just knew this was what God wanted me to do.

She phoned me a short while afterwards and asked me to go in for an interview which was the better part of 2 hours. I received clearance to go in and started to prepare my program to share with the ladies. I was given the opportunity to sing in one of the large woman’s prisons. It was very profound for me and the women were deeply impacted by the ministry as God moved in their lives.

During my training I was also asked to sing at an end year church group function. We had just got back from holiday and I had a day and a half to prepare a program and practice whilst looking after my two small children at the time. I remember saying to the Lord” if just one person gets to know you through these songs and sharing in between, then it will be worth all the effort! 

Shortly after I finished the program of 6 songs with scriptures and sharing in between, I noticed a man weeping and talking to the pastor. As I walked past he looked up and said this is all because of you. He had just given his life to the Lord- God is so faithful and so good!

Through the years I continued singing where I had opportunities, as well as in the Church worship band. I also had the opportunity to sing on an outreach to Barcelona in Spain, with an American team we joined, for a few weeks.

Obviously raising 3 children takes a lot of time but I still sang where I could.

We moved to Madrid in Spain, in 1997/98 where we did a little mission work for a year and a half.

I still continued to write some songs using my guitar to get the melody but never had the opportunity to record them.

Then a few years ago,  during the pandemic of 2020, a friend of mine was out of work and had nowhere to stay so she came to stay with us for 7 months during the pandemic. Her son, Deon is an extremely talented musician, sound engineer and music producer. He said he wanted to thank me for having his mom stay with us and so he said he could record my song and add other instruments with software. I then started with my first song, which as I say,  I renamed “The Battle Is Won”. I also changed some words and added a bridge section. 

During this time, Deon received a bursary to study music production at Abbey Road Institute in Midrand. He then asked a friend and co – band member of ‘Saving Arthur‘, Michael Moller, to help us continue with the recording process of ‘The Battle Is Won’ and then send the recordings through to Deon for further manipulation. By this time I had taught myself the piano and continued my song writing and recordings with the piano.  I could no longer play guitar due to having broken my wrist badly. It now has a titanium plate and screws and limits my playing of musical instruments.

It took a while for my song to be finished as Deon was still studying at the time, but thankfully it was finally released in 2022 onto online music platforms!

Since then God has provided the most incredible team to work with me. Deon referred me to Wesley Van Der Westhuizen a.k.a as Wesley West, also an extremely talented multi-instrument musician, recording engineer and music producer. Wes now does all my recordings as Deon moved to Kwa-Zulu Natal after his studies in Gauteng and can’t physically be in the Western Cape to record me.

Deon also referred me to Neil Smit, whom in the past contributed French Horn for the KZN Philharmonic orchestra for quite some time. He is also an extremely talented multi-instrument musician and music producer that contributed to many of the production as well as music scores for the different orchestral instruments for e.g. cello, violins, French horns, etc. for my songs.

My songs are very scripturally based. I use these songs as a tool to share the gospel with as I also want to bring a message of hope and encouragement and to tell people how much God loves them.

My heart is that God would use these songs to touch and change people’s lives and also that they would encounter His presence whilst listening to them.

I have just started ministering out, once again, with my own songs now. I also share scriptures and testimonies between the songs.

I love the Lord Jesus, I love people and I love music and singing so I am truly grateful to God for opening up the opportunities for me to do this and to be able to use my own songs at last!

God has given me the most amazing team to work with, each one is a massive blessing! I am also very grateful to my husband Gary who is supporting me in this and has also learnt to help with the sound when I sing out!

All thanks and glory go to my Heavenly Father – forever grateful to be on this adventure! Tons of work but such a blessing and privilege!