The Lord moves in mysterious ways

This is the story of how I came to live in Australia. It’s a story I’ve told many times over the years. However, it never fails to surprise people. The person I was then is not the same person I am today. Back then, so much was hidden and so much was in flux.

I landed at Sydney Airport on Sunday, 4 February 1990. This was my second time in Australia, having previously visited for a week in November 1988. You can learn more about my first time in Australia here. Below is the passport stamp recording my arrival. Little did I know this stamp would signal the beginning of 35 years as an Australian resident, and eventually, a dual citizen.

At the time, I’d just completed a season working on a friend’s dairy farm near Raglan, a coastal town on the North Island of New Zealand. For 11 months, I’d worked as a farmhand, milking more than 200 cows twice a day. The farm itself was located at Okete, on a peninsula overlooking the harbour. You learn more about the farm here.

My time on the farm was an intentional act on my part. In November 1988, I completed my four-year university degree, graduating from Waikato University with a Bachelor of Management Studies with Honours. After focusing on academic achievement for four years, I wanted to rebalance my life experience by working with my hands rather than my mind.

The farm was owned by the Wallis family. Two of the family’s ancestors, James and Mary, had arrived in Raglan as Christian missionaries in 1835. They were the first European settlers in the area. In my first year at university, I shared a dormitory room in the student residence with Don, their eldest son.

Our room was a unique set-up in the student halls. Don and I had our own bedroom, which opened into a central study room. This three-room floor plan was located at the end of the building, with views looking out over the university’s sports fields and farmland beyond. Only four rooms in the entire building boasted a separate study room.

It didn’t take long for our study room to become party central, while its ground-floor location meant we could climb out of the window unseen for late-night adventures. Don and I became good friends. His brother Shaun, who was a year younger, became one of my closest friends during my university years. For three years, I spent most of my summer vacation living and working on his parents’ farm.  

The photos opening this post were taken on my 20th Birthday in a holiday bach (cabin) on the farm. From left to right, me, Don, Rachael (a mutual friend) and Don's mother. Yes, I had a perm then, and yes, Don is wearing a dressing gown because he'd decided it was a little cold in the bach that day. Don and I had driven out to his farm for an afternoon visit on my birthday. His Mum decided to have a spontaneous afternoon tea to celebrate the occasion at a bach on the harbour foreshore.

Don was a bit of a free spirit. He often saw rules and regulations as guidelines rather than strict boundaries. As a result, he’d sometimes adhere to them in an arbitrary manner, or at least that's how it often seemed to me. Don’t get me wrong, Don was a law-abiding citizen; he just occasionally bent the rules with a cheeky grin.

Don was also a fundamental Christian. He informally introduced me to the scriptures, and a more liberal interpretation of the bible than I’d experienced as a child growing up in the Anglican faith. In fact, if I’m totally honest, the local vicar expelled me from Sunday School about the age of 11, much to my mother’s utter embarrassment.

By simply living his life of faith as a free spirit, Don’s example encouraged me to explore his faith. I decided that I’d rejected Christianity based on my experience with a religious institution, the Anglican Church, rather than on the message it was attempting to share. To cut a long story short, much to everyone’s surprise (including Don), I became a fundamental Christian in my first year at university.

Fast forward five years. My brief stint as a full-time farmhand finished in late 1989. Shaun completed his final year of university and returned to the family farm. It was always clear that he’d be the son who’d ultimately take on the family business. As a result, I needed to decide what was next. In the final two years at university, I took a couple of Political Science courses and thoroughly enjoyed them. I decided to return to university for two more years and complete a Master's degree in Political Science.

However, fate (or perhaps, faith) intervened. In early 1990, shortly before university enrolment commenced, I decided to do an entry-level Christian Missionary course with Youth With A Mission (YWAM). The Discipleship Training School, or DTS, that I chose was based in Goulburn, an inland city in New South Wales. Several Okete friends had completed the course and spoke highly of the experience.

Hence, I arrived on Australia’s shores in February 1990, ready to study as a Christian missionary. The DTS course was a six-month program, split between three months of practical study and three months of in-the-field outreach, preaching the gospel in the community.

YWAM Goulburn operated out of a former Catholic orphanage. This was a large double-storey, red brick and white weatherboard building situated on a hill overlooking the town. The dormitories and bathrooms were located on the first floor, while the classrooms, dining hall and communal spaces were located on the ground floor.

There were 23 students in my course, from across the globe. The group included a couple from Switzerland, two Canadians, an American and a couple from Indonesia. We were an odd bunch from all walks of life. Some were solo parents, some farmers, and others, including me, were university graduates.

 

For three fun-filled months, from 5 February to 13 May, we studied the scriptures, learned effective outreach techniques and prepared to go out into the wider community to preach the gospel. This included learning a non-verbal street drama, set to music, that presented the story of salvation. Without a hint of irony, I played the part of Satan.

The time in Goulburn wasn’t all study. I became good friends with Dean, a Victorian sheep farmer, and Michele, a woman from Sydney. The three of us often ventured out for a bit of fun. This included a night at the pub, day trips to watch One Day Cricket at the Sydney Cricket Ground (SCG) or go swimming in the Shoalhaven River near Braidwood, and a day trip to Canberra to watch the AFL. I also spent Easter weekend on Dean’s farm near Portland.

In late February, YWAM held its annual conference in Canberra. Our class attended the event each day. A guest speaker at the conference spoke about Eastern Europe opening after more than forty years of Communist, by extension, atheist rule. He highlighted an emerging opportunity to share the gospel with millions who’d been denied its message for decades.

A month or so later, YWAM decided to send its first outreach missionary team into Eastern Europe. I was chosen to join the group. On 14 May 1990, about a dozen of us flew to Vienna to embark on an extraordinary three-month journey through Hungary, Yugoslavia, Romania and Bulgaria, preaching the gossip on the streets of Eastern Europe. That’s a story for another time.

I’m often asked if I’m “still religious”. The honest answer is no. I’ve chosen to embrace my sexuality as another expression of a fundamental truth I’ve come to terms with in my life. However, it would be another three years after my return from Europe before this phase of my life unfolded. That’s also a story for another time.

I’m also asked if I regret my experience as a fundamental Christian. The honest answer is no. I loved my time on the Wallis farm, the friends I made in Okete and my time at YWAM. I learned a great deal about myself and the wider world. I found love and acceptance in abundance, which often gave me a purpose and a focus that I otherwise lacked in my early twenties.

This was also a time when the AIDS epidemic was sweeping the globe. The first antiretroviral drug used to treat HIV arrived on the scene in 1987, followed by highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) in 1996, a protocol that boosted the life expectancy of someone with HIV by 15 years. In other words, HIV was doing its worst during my university years, and its treatment was largely ineffective until six years after I arrived in Australia.

This high-risk era for young gay men coincided with my fundamental Christian years. I would have come out at a younger age had it not been for my fundamental Christian experience. I’m certain I would have seroconverted without its moral constraints. In other words, I believe without a shadow of a doubt that Christianity saved my life.