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« on: April 03, 2022, 07:05:03 AM »
Although I have been a member of Creation Liberty Evangelism Church for quite a number of years, I haven’t so far submitted my formal testimony of how I came to Christ and so I thought it was about time that I should do that. My apologies to all for taking so long. With all that has happened in the time that I have been a Christian I haven't looked forward to putting it in to written words.
I grew up in a family as the youngest of six children, three older brothers and two older sisters that were born in that order, and we never had anything to do with church or religion or anything like that except for my mother who was British and had to attend church as a child and it seems to me that the most she knew was that it was useful to be able to say to Jehovah's Witnesses or Mormons when they came to the door that we were Church of England and that got rid of them, so I really grew up knowing next to absolutely nothing about Christianity or the Bible. The only things about the Bible I knew was that there was a guy called Jonah and he got swallowed by a whale and the whale was called Moses, (yes, that’s what I thought) and I knew there was an Old Testament and a New Testament, the Old Testament was written way back whenever and the New Testament was written in the 1600's I thought it was. I guessed the religious leaders in black robes decided they needed to come up with some new religious rubbish for whatever reason because the old religious rubbish was no longer enough. I had heard of the ten commandments, but if you had asked me to say what any of them were I would have been lost but I might have been able to guess a few of them correctly. I knew of course that Jesus was born of a virgin (apparently) and that Jesus eventually got crucified for whatever reason I didn't know and that he rose from the dead about three days later (apparently). After his rising from the dead I had no idea what happened to him after that, I guessed in due time he must have just died again.
In the house I grew up in there was a Roman Catholic family living across the road and the couple had a daughter that was the age of my sisters and their son was my age and I went to primary school with him until I started intermediate school and then he went to a Roman Catholic school and I continued in the state school system. If there was ever anything that definitely put me off anything to do with religion back then it was him and his parents. His sister was OK, but I always found him to be so arrogant and argumentative and although I used to play with him sometimes often he would come over wanting to play and my sisters would be angry with me because I would just tell him to go home and I wasn't playing. So, no, that Christian rubbish wasn't for me, I wouldn't like to be like him or his parents.
So God for me was something I never gave a thought about, I wasn't in to that sort of thing.
When I was at high school my main interests and the subjects I took were engineering and technical drawing and what I really wanted to be was an aircraft engineer. In my last year of high school I applied to two airlines in New Zealand for an aircraft engineering apprenticeship, Air New Zealand and NAC (National Airways Corporation) that was taken over by Air New Zealand a year later anyway and I also applied to the RNZAF (Royal New Zealand Air Force). However, there were so many applicants every year that only a very few applicants secured positions and so I would have to do something else. I did some other jobs and gained lots of skills and while working I still continued to apply for engineering apprenticeship positions and finally got one with a large company in my home city of Christchurch in the South Island of New Zealand making front end loaders, forklifts, gear boxes and rock crushers and plenty of other agricultural and horticultural type equipment.
Then one day, just a normal day at work in the machine shop in about late 1981 or early 1982 it happened. I was machining a quite large item and I had stopped the lathe and had just turned around and looking across the workshop at nothing in particular and all of a sudden God told me in an unmistakable non-audible way "you're a liar" and right there, standing in the workshop I had a summary given to me of lies that I had told over the years. I was sort of astounded and I immediately knew, this isn't me just thinking this, I wouldn't just do that for no reason, why would I, no, this is external to me. I have the image of standing there and that happening to me permanently etched in to my mind to this day. I also immediately knew that this is God talking to me and everything that was brought before me I knew was one hundred percent correct and immediately I knew I was guilty. Nothing like that ever mattered to me up until then and it was really of no importance, and now all of a sudden it was of paramount importance and I felt a bit like a rabbit caught in the bright beam of car headlights. I was ashamed of myself and had that heart sinking feeling inside because I knew that I had done wrong and up until then I didn't even believe in God or know that God existed. I was being watched and there was an account being kept of everything I had ever done or said. I actually felt quite a comfort in my new found situation in all of a sudden believing that God does indeed exist even though I was guilty and I was most happy to plead guilty. I thought to myself, it's probably best I don't tell anyone else about this, they might think I'm crazy.
Over time, I did start to think about a whole lot of things I had never given a thought about much before, like evolution and man's origins. I spent quite a lot of time programming and operating the computer numerically controlled machines (CNC) and then realized how ridiculous the concept of evolution is because if you just go randomly changing computer code then the results are going to be disasterous (I know that because on my first day on the CNC I had the lathe carriage and the tool post slam at full speed in to the chuck that was spinning at about 3000 RPM, luckily is wasn't really my fault but there was major damage to the lathe and even that turned out to be a good thing) and you're never going to make anything better, it can only ever get worse. Just to follow up further on my doubts about evolution I thought it was worthy of some further investigation. I had only ever done biology and chemistry to a basic level at high school, it was really of no interest to me, engineering was my thing, but nevertheless there was a bookshop in town that sold some medical books that was beyond and quite different from the sort of advanced first aid I already knew so I thought I might go and see what sort of books they had and maybe I might learn a whole lot more. I thought, hmm this God thing is getting quite interesting, I really think I'm on to something here, this could be quite big. So I bought a biochemistry book and two physiology books, that should keep me going for a while and I might be able to learn a thing or two. I read those books from cover to cover so many times and sucked up the information like a sponge. At the beginning of 1983 I had already completed Trade Certificate and Advanced Trade Certificate for fitting, turning and machining and was part way though the New Zealand Certificate of Engineering, none of which were necessary or compulsory for my job. Because the Polytechnic was just across the road from my work place it was easy to take unpaid leave and attend classes and the workshop manager was always happy when someone wanted to educationally further themselves because that was good for the individual and good for the company. So it was enrollment week at the Polytech and I walked over at lunchtime in my rather dirty overalls and steel cap boots to see what engineering courses I was going to take that year. I looked around and there was a desk with a guy sitting at it and a sign above saying 'Biochemistry'. Hey wow, they have biochemistry, sign me up. So I walk over to the desk and enquire about the course and when the lecture times are etc and the times are fine for me, so I tell the guy I would like to do the course. He looks me up and down and asks "what do you do for a job"? and I tell him I'm a fitter and turner and machinist. He's not too impressed. He informs me that the course is for the trainees who work in the labs at the hospital and other medically based occupations. That's OK, just sign me up, I'll be OK. So he asks me how much chemistry and biology I did at school and when I told him he told me that basically I was just wasting my time and I was wasting his time as well and that I should go and do something else. What he didn't know is that I was also a well trained soldier and that I wasn't going to be taking 'no' for an answer just that easily. It sort of got into a bit of a shouting match. I told him that unless he had a full class and there was no room for me then he had better sign me up otherwise he won't have heard the end of it, and if I can't keep up with the others that's OK and I promise I won't be a disturbance. Very very reluctantly he signed me up. Great. I also went to another desk and signed up for Medical Biology while I was there.
I had a bit of explaining to do when I got back to work and told the works manager that I had signed up to do biochemistry and medical biology and that I wasn't going to be completing New Zealand Certificate of Engineering anymore and that I was changing to New Zealand Certificate of Science and was wondering if I could still have time off to attend classes and labs during work time. I tell him that all education is a useful thing and diversity is very useful because it gives a person a wider spectrum of understanding, or something like that and he agrees to let me have the time away. I thought I had a bit of a nerve telling him that but what I was saying is actually true and the boss liked my work attitude a whole lot compared to the other apprentices anyway.
So I went along to the first class when the teaching year started and there were only five of us in the class and he sort of sneered a bit at me when he saw me. There were actually two biochemistry classes run at two different times because the hospital couldn't let all of the trainees go at the same time because they were required for doing the routine work in the labs as a part of their training, but there were only five of us in my class. So we get into the teaching and over the weeks we are looking at usual biochemistry and I'm finding it all very easy and every so often the lecturers, (we had two lecturers, class was twice a week, one during the day and the other 7pm night school) the lecturers would ask "Can anyone tell me what disease this enzyme failure or other abnormality would cause"? I was a bit disappointed with the trainees that worked in the labs because although they knew the answers they wouldn't apply themselves and so using a bit of courtesy and with me being an outsider after waiting for them to answer and them not doing that I would put my hand up and give the explanation. And the answer was always, yes, that's correct. Easy stuff.
After months of this happening I was out at the indoor ice skating rink one night and I recognised a young lady and I knew she was in the other biochemistry class and she recognised me. And she says, "hey you're that guy from the other biochemistry class". "Yeah, hi, I recognise you too". And she tells me "everyone's talking about you" and of course I'm wondering why. It turned out that they were puzzled and so were the lecturers that they had a guy in their class who was an engineer but he knew all of the answers to the biochemistry questions the lecturers would ask right from the start of the year but the trainees knew none of the answers. I was really surprised. And of course she was then asking me how I knew all this stuff and so I told her that I had bought a biochemistry book and had spent quite a bit of time reading it. I told the lecturers that too but at first they didn't believe me. It took a bit of convincing them that I had just learned it out of text books. That was Stage IV biochemistry and I finished up top of the class that year in both the biochemistry and medical biology and then signed up the following year and did Stage V biochemistry and microbiology and hematology and blood banking.
I have to laugh. It was in class one day and we were talking about a medical condition and I mentioned that I was talking with one of the doctors about that one night blah blah blah. What do you mean you were talking with one of the doctors? Oh, I used to work in the Accident & Emergency Dept at the hospital. (You see, when you're a soldier in Recon you can't have someone from the Medical Corp come along with you on a reconnaissance mission unless you want to get the whole team killed, in Recon, you're it, you do everything yourself.) That surprised them, this engineer had done a bit more than they had gathered. Maybe I should have mentioned that to him when I was at the sign-up desk. Ooops.
One of the reasons work was quite OK for me to have time off unpaid during the week was because there was quite a big downturn in engineering at the time and they were finding it difficult to get jobs in to the workshop and had even started laying people off. I thought I had diversified at the right time because I could see the writing on the wall. (Where the engineering works had been is now a big supermarket). What I now wanted to be was a Medical Laboratory Technologist like all of the other trainees in my classes and so I applied to the hospital to become a trainee and told them all I had done and they turned me down and commented that the jobs are mainly for school leavers and that I should do something else. No wonder New Zealand has so many problems, I was only in my early 20's and had already proven myself and was enthusiastic to do an excellent job and they rejected me.
I completed Stage V biochemistry etc and got good marks and at the end of the two years the five of us in the class all knew each other really well and we would all be going separate ways and the lecturers had become our friends as well as our lecturers. At the end of that second year one of the lecturers invited all of us around to his house for a barbeque, it was the end of an era. While at the barbeque I said to him, hey do you remember when I came in to sign up and we had that confrontation at the sign-up desk. He laughed and cringed at the same time and commented that he hoped I was never ever going to bring that up. The others in the class knew nothing about what we were talking about but they soon understood and that behaviour I soon had realised was way way out of character for him because he was one of the best natured and humble people I had ever met. He commented that they had never ever had a student like me before and I had completely surprised them. I let him know that things were looking to too uncertain in engineering and I was interested in going to university to do Medicine and if I failed to gain entry in to Medical School then I would do biochemistry and microbiology and see where things led on to from that. That lecturer did so much to help me in telling me what I had to do etc instead of me having to find out everything for myself and I was so appreciative. This is 2021 that I am writing this and I looked up that lecturer online about five years ago to see what maybe he was doing, I figured he would have been retired, but what I didn't know was that he was also an Olympic gold medallist. Wow, I don't think he ever told the class and as I commented, he actually was really humble and not like the people I was to meet and have interaction with in later years.
So in early 1985 I moved 360 km south from Christchurch to the city of Dunedin to attend Otago University. Although by this stage I hadn't found out anything extra about God, I had figured out that he definitely existed but any interaction he ever had with people beyond pointing out their wrong doing was beyond me. I had already worked out by myself while working in the engineering workshops that there is nothing any other person can do for you to make up for wrong doing against God, no matter how good someone seems to be they will have told a lie or done something wrong in their life, so who are they to make things better, we are all in the same boat and no person is ever God and God is never a person like us, so that's pretty much the end of that. (As mentioned earlier, I still knew nothing at this stage). I likened the situation to be like that of a cutting tip on the lathe, the tip is never made of the same material that you're machining, it has to be something completely different and much much stronger, so to be OK with God on the face of the earth it would have to be something that he does to overlook the wrong that we have pleaded guilty to and then we just carry on living until we die and then we stand trial and at least I could say that I had already pleaded guilty and there was nothing more that I could do. There was the problem then of the usual day to day things that I became aware of that those things were also the result of a core problem in all of mankind that basically we are completely broken and no matter how hard you try yourself there is nothing you can do apart from not doing major things like murdering someone or stealing something and then just continually pleading guilty for the smaller things.
And as for people actually interacting with God, after all, {shrug} what answers can there ever be, the world is full of people all with their religion and all claiming that their God stuff is right and that the others are wrong, there's Hindu's and Muslims and Christians, and plenty more. I'm not so sure these people have had the same experience happen to them though as I had happen to me.
I was waiting outside the lecture theatre one day, waiting for a physics lecture, and a guy comes up to me and starts talking about Jesus Christ. He's asking a few questions and I'm just wishing he would buzz off. And he asks if I know that Jesus died for our sins etc. I'm thinking to myself, maybe this guy has never heard of World War Two, lots of people have died for us and what's more I'm an ex-soldier myself. Anyway, I got rid of him. A few days later I'm sitting in the same place and here he comes again. Oh grief, I wish this Jesus freak would just buzz off. You might be thinking that this is the stage at which I became a Christian, but no. Although what he was saying was correct, it had no context to it. If he had told me that Jesus Christ was both man and God and that he was actually God in the flesh and God had told man through prophets that he himself was going to be coming to earth then he actually would have had my attention.
It was months later that I overheard two people just talking in one of the University buildings and one saying to the other that Jesus Christ was God in the flesh and that he came with the express purpose of teaching people and showing himself to be God by performing miracles and then intentionally getting himself crucified to propitiate for the sins of mankind. Now this really had my attention. In my second year I met up and got talking with some guys who were living in a Christian hostel and from talking with them I was able to get the major of the gospel message. That's it, I was a believer.
Well I thought, since I'm a believer, I don't really know anything but I guess I should go to church and no doubt I'll learn everything as I go along. So I went along to the church that these hostel guys went to and it sort of seemed to be junk really. I never met up there with the guys I had been talking to but one thing the "pastor" taught just didn't at all seem right with me. He was teaching that if people are ever in trouble they can always call on angels to help them. Anyway, after the "service" was over I got talking to some of them outside and I had let them know that I was a new Christian and it was the first time I had ever been to church and I mentioned about what the "pastor" had said about calling on angels and I commented that surely that can't be right and a person should call on God and if he chose to send angels then that's his choice. Right there, they scoffed at me and told me that what would I know, I'm a new Christian and he's a "pastor" and that he would know far more than I do. I wasn't at all impressed and their behaviour and in my books was just outright rude and arrogant, and to go with it, that was to a new Christian. Anyway, I went back the following week and basically knew who to keep my distance from. And when the "pastor" got up to speak he pointed out that a few people had spoken with him and that he had made an error the previous week blah blah blah. Afterwards when I was outside, I saw those guys and pointed out that I was correct. Their response between them was to try and ridicule me and then said "oh you're a student, it's not all just a text book exercise ya know". (These kinds of people, their sentences always end with "ya know") Then one says to the other, "his textbooks are his God". Things seemed to be a bit different on their planet than I was used to because I happened to be a well trained soldier and a skilled and well qualified engineer and a biochemist and microbiologist and I had absolutely no time for that kind of behaviour. That was it for me there and I never went back. They sure knew how to get rid of people. Little did I know that I was going to find that such behaviour is typical of what goes on in the church buildings.
By the University there is an old stone building Anglican Church so I thought I would give that a try. At the beginning of the "service" this "Priest" walks in and along the isle holding a big cross and he's got all his ridiculous Anglican religiousware on and the whole lot is so dead from start to end and I never went back there again either. It was amazing because that place was actually full, mainly of older people but some younger too. Yawn.
A while later I heard about another church called The Assemblies of God and that was a Pentecostal church. My first reaction was, wow, what is Pentecostal? What does that mean? And the reply I got was that they believed the Bible and did things according to the Bible not like other churches. Well, that sounded just like what I was looking for. So still knowing next to nothing I went along to this Pentecostal church and hmmm, seemed OK I guess but because I didn't know anything I wouldn't have known chalk from cheese. There were some things I didn't like a whole lot and the people were superficially friendly. The teaching was of a very poor standard and I was only to realise that much later on as I started reading the Bible for myself. Sadly there was a young lady there who recognised me because we were in the same biochemistry class at University. She seemed nice and over time I got to know her but the other thing I knew nothing about was something called narcissism and I was going to find out all about that in time to come. I started going out with her and in Dec 1987 we got married. As soon as we were married her behaviour started in a definite downward spiral against me. In 1989 my daughter was born and I continued to think that over time my wife's behaviour would get better because surely you can't continually have a good input on to someone and for them to not change over time and be much better for that. Oh how little did I know.
In 1990 we left the Assemblies of God church and went to a Baptist church (All Wolves Baptist Church). I was hoping this was a good new start and that my wife would sort herself out. Little did I know that even before we went to that church she had already been bad mouthing me to people she knew there. As soon as we went to that church she arranged for so-called marriage counselling for us, but of course that is not at all what she really wanted. I was happy enough because all I had to do was tell what her bahaviour was. Little did I know that the "pastor" and other "pastors" were like her and people of very low moral integrity and basically they were feminists and started with the premise that the man is always the one in the wrong. I brought up about her behaviour and especially about her lying but with them that was like red rag to a bull. In the end I refused to take part in their so-called marriage counselling because all it was was husband abuse and undermining my role as the husband and the father of my daughter and the leader of my home. That was then also used against me because, oooh he refused to carry on with the marriage counselling. I knew I had come face to face with evil.
While all of this was going on 1991 my son was born and by that time my wife had continually made every attempt at character assassination against me. I was devastated because I was totally innocent and yet here she was constantly abusing me and then going away and telling people all sorts of lies and that I was abusing her. Not only that but then they also joined in with her against me and made me out to be some bad husband and bad father to my children who I loved dearly.
These people didn't care that I still had to go to work every day, my wife didn't care that every day she was eating the food and wearing the clothes and everything else that I was working to provide. They didn't care that I was trying to be a loving caring father to my children.
After all of my trying to reason with my wife and she realised she wasn't getting as far as she liked in trying to totally control and destroy me, in 1995 when she was pregnant with our third child she decided she was leaving me and she had lots of people to support her. I've been through a lot in my life but these people rank as the most dishonest un-Godly evil people I have ever had the displeasure of meeting. Especially because they have the audacity to call themselves Christians and they are nothing at all of the sort. In time when I learned more I was to liken this to Israel who became more evil than the nations they were supposed to displace. I still tried reading and studying my Bible during this time but no matter which part I was ever reading these people were always grossly in violation of it. I even thought that I had invented the word "churchianity" because I began to call these people "churchians" to myself. I found out later that the word was common but of course there was no internet in those days. In the "churches" I had been in I sometimes asked people how they became a Christian and the answer was always the same, being "Oh I grew up in the church". My feeling towards them became "yeah, I don't believe you're a Christian and I don't believe your parents are either", but I never verbally told them that. Every time I heard that phrase "Oh I grew up in the church", I became more disgusted than I already was.
So in October 1995 my third child a second son was born and I was most unhappy about having another child that I was now separated from. I was at the birth and as soon as he was born I saw a bewildered look on the doctor's face and I asked if something was wrong and his reply was, "ummm, yeah". All of a sudden he decided he had to go and make a phone call to some other doctors and they immediately got involved and even though nothing had ever been picked up on the scans, he had been born with X-linked myotubular myopathy a genetic disorder. So for the next nine days I would spend my evenings at the hospital in the neo-natal intensive care unit sitting by his incubator and keeping as far away from my abusive wife/ex-wife as I could. After those nine days the doctors had a meeting with us and told us that the only realistic option was to turn the life support off and allow my son to die as his disorder was such that he would never survive. So on that evening the breathing tube was removed by the paediatrician and he was allowed to quietly pass away. It might seem unusual but in many ways it was a big relief and I definitely think that God was involved in this happening the way it did. The medical staff were in their own turmoil as to how this was never detected before the birth so they at least could be prepared for the situation.
I continued going to that same "church" but it wasn't for fellowship in any way with the people there, I was just there to show my own resolve and to still have as much contact with my children as I could. By court order I had my children every second weekend and every Wednesday night they would be at my house for dinner. My wife/ex-wife took every opportunity to be difficult and to hinder the picking up and dropping off of the kids and everything else to do with my time with them.
My ex-wife went to Teachers College and became a high school teacher and then I was even more devastated when she graduated because she decided she was taking the children to Auckland City more than 1000 km away in the North Island for her new job she had found. I tried to fight it in the courts but as the father my words meant nothing and I was just crushed in to the ground. I was devastated. As soon as my kids had left Dunedin here I left the Baptist Church straight away, there was no way in the world I would have wanted to stay there for even one more minute. I was the victim and they were saying things to me like, "well you've only got yourself to blame. If you weren't an abuser you wouldn't be in that situation". At that stage I had still never heard of narcissism and I had little idea of what I was dealing with.
So after all of this, it was actually a lot of years again until I even opened my Bible again. I was totally shattered. My kids would only come down for the school holidays to visit and because I had work I only had the usual annual leave holiday time and so as well as paying airfares and still having to rent a house suitable for them to come and stay and I had to feed them then I also had to pay for someone to look after them while I was at work and feed that extra person as well. Oh and of course I still had to pay so-called Child Support even while the kids were staying with me. I was almost totally financially broke and I was constantly bombarded with letters from the Inland Revenue Dept even though they always got their money but they were just totally useless at organizing their own system. These evil people didn't care one single little bit that I was a father with children to care for. I now have a very deep seated dislike and distrust for New Zealand. Each individual person is judged by me on their own merits but my opinion of the nation is that it is trash.
So between 1998 and 2004 my kids would come to stay for the school holidays and I would try to make things as much fun as I could. But in early 2004 my daughter who was 15 at the time decided that she didn't want to come to Dunedin any more for the holidays and she wanted to be with her friends and then my son who was 12 decided that since she wasn't coming then he wanted to also stay in Auckland. Years later in 2007 they made a trip to Dunedin with their mother and I caught up with both of them in town for about one and a half hours and that was the last time I have ever seen them. I loved them both dearly and my son was especially dear to me being my boy and that's all I've seen him since he was twelve years old.
Life goes on. I was still shattered. There was a guy who started at my work in 2001 and within a time I began to notice that his behaviour was very much like that of my ex-wife. Even the phrases he used was the same but a good thing was that other staff didn't like his behaviour either. I got to thinking that this must be some type of known condition. I never used to watch TV much, but one night in the listings it had a program on about narcissism and although I didn't know what that was I watched the program. Well that got me started and then I started looking up on the internet and then I began to understand exactly the kinds of evil people I had been dealing with. I realised that the "churches" I had been in were full to the brim with totally unrepentant narcissists and that our politicians and the whole Government and those in the Government departments such as the Inland Revenue Department are basically narcissists too. So although that guy at my work was very nasty and manipulative and dishonest I am very pleased I had the dealings with him because of what it taught me.
It was only in about 2012 that I was ever able to open a Bible again and start reading and again that was very painful because no matter where you read, those in the church buildings are in violation of what is written and they don't care and if you tried to tell them you would just get word salad thrown in your face. After all that had happened I was surprised with myself that I wanted to even consider reading the Bible and carry on being a Christian, but there was something inside of me and I wasn't a quitter. I figured then that I was never again going to waste my time with people who call themselves Christians and from then on I was just going to be a Christian by myself and keep well away from anyone else who dared to call themselves a Christian. Problem solved.
In my workplace I had been the IT technician for a numer of years and it seemed a shame that computers that were still good but had been replaced at my work were going to go to the electronic waste recyclers. I got in touch with an organization that supported at risk youths and asked if they wanted the computers if I set them up for them and the answer was a resounding "yes". Due to the Microsoft licencing I couldn't give away the computers with MS Windows on them so I totally erased the hard drives and loaded them up with Linux. The real reason I wanted to give the computers away was because I wanted to put sound Christian teaching materials on them in the hope that at least one of these youths or their families would pick up the Christian message. I would have to have a look through some hard drives but it was just some basic stuff I put on because I didn't want to make it too much and just swamp any reader. I never heard anything back except for lots of thank you letters that were passed on to me from families that were so grateful to have a computer and they loved it.
Because the origins of man is a core issue and is taught completely wrong in schools, I thought that would be a good thing to address and if I could find some good teaching materials online I could put that on the computers, especially audio because these at risk youths might not like reading a whole lot. So I was searching one night for mp3's and quite near the top of the Google search there is a website call Christian Liberty Evangelism. I downloaded some of the audios and listened to the first one myself. Wow, that's not bad. And then listened to the next one. I'm thinking to myself, this guy sounds OK, but the trouble is, I know I'm only going to have to listen to a few more and then the usual rubbish is going to come out and this is just going to be one more and there's no way I can pass this along to young at risk youths. The more I listened the more it dawned on me, I've met up here with real Christians. At this stage no-one at CLE even knew I existed and had been listening to the teachings and I was most impressed not just with the teaching, but with the attitude as well. I had never before heard such good teaching and the humility that went along with it and there weren't any requests for money and the usual guilt-tripping that used to go on in the church buildings. I had had enough of churches though and so I still wasn't going to get involved and I would just listen to all of the teachings and keep to myself. One day Chris who started and mainly operates CLE put out a video explaining and showing that his wife Lorraine had a deer run in front of their car while she was driving and the car was badly damaged and they were in need of help to get their transport situation sorted out. These people had been a blessing to me in much more of a way than they could probably know and I knew there was no way in the world that I was going to hold back and not help these people out. I sent a quick email to Chris asking about donating and I got a reply back and so I sent a donation. I know now that Chris gets lots of emails and so mine wasn't much different but he got quite a surprise when I gave a donation that was a bit more than he expected and then he invited me to join the forum. I had never looked at the forum at all up until then, I hadn't even opened it because I wanted to stay away from other people. So I went to the forum and introduced myself and I have been here ever since. The people there have been an absolute blessing to me. Jeanne, you were one of the first people I met in the forum and you have been much more of a blessing than you could imagine. And Lorraine and lots of the others too. Over the years I have missed my kids so much and all of you have been a lifeline, a true Christian family. A good thing I learned in time though was the true meaning of repentance. I had no idea what had happened to me that day in the engineering workshop where I worked. I had no idea why I was different than all of the people in the church buildings and why I never fitted in with them and that was because I had come to repentance that day and those in the church buildings were more than likely all just church goers who had never come to repentance and were there to socialize and feel good about themselves. Although I have been a Christian for quite a number of years, I had a lot of lost years over that time due to the turmoil I had to go through and I have had a lot of catching up to do. A big thanks to everyone for putting up with me as I have been through tough times.
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