From Argentina With Love

“You may not have my eyes or smile, but from that very first moment, you had my heart.” Say hello to our next #JewelInHisCrown, Verena Read, an entrepreneur mom who lives and works on her family farm in Malmesbury, Western Cape. By Tamsyn Cornelius

As a young Argentinian girl on the cusp of adolescence, the idea of life in South Africa was a foreign concept to Verena, but over three decades ago, she packed up her life in Buenos Aires and trekked across oceans to start a new journey with her family in the Western Cape of South Africa.

Little did Verena realise at the age of 12 that this move would be the beginning of a beautiful journey as a wife, entrepreneur and most importantly, as a mother, living and working in the Swartland.

Today Verena is happily married to her husband Terry and for the past 22 years, they have lived and worked on their family farm in Malmesbury where they run two businesses. Although motherhood was not always a part of Verena’s plan, God’s plan ultimately prevailed, and today she is mom to two beautiful children, Mia (age 10) and Joseph (age 6).

Verena’s motherhood journey:

“I wasn’t really into babies – I had a busy life with my husband and our business, and besides, we had our pets. It took a very horrible work accident, burn-out and depression to get me to reconsider the priorities in my life and eventually we decided to start a family.

I now consider Mia my little miracle baby – I was an ‘older’ mum when I had her, and sadly, it was not to be repeated. I struggled to find the balance between work and being a mother and eventually I withdrew from our family business.

A few years later, after a lot of prayer, we decided to adopt. Our prayer was simple – ‘God, whatever is Your will for us… You make it happen.’ And so, Joseph joined our family. He was 9 months old when we collected him and we all instantly fell in love with him.

Our kids are just that – our kids. It does not matter how they became our children, whether I gave birth or not, whether they look like us or not. What matters is our bond of love and that God brought us together.

I want them to be children of God, to have good moral values, and to be able to function and flourish in an increasingly difficult world.”

A creative outlet…
“We are blessed to live on a farm and to work from home. While hubby looks after our vegetable business (we grow and chop up veggies into those beautifully practical little packets you can buy in the supermarkets), I make rustic furniture and décor items.

My business is called Goeters and I love designing new décor items and trying out new materials in a creative way. We work mainly with wood, but we are incorporating cement now as well as metal. See what we have to offer at www.goeters.co.za.”

*This interview first featured in the Autumn 2018 issue of The Christian Lifestyle Magazine.