I was raised in Adelaide. In 1962 at the Age of 23 I started working as a door to door encyclopaedia salesman for an American publishing company which had just started operating in Australia. I was married with two children. I called on a young couple who witnessed to me about the healing power of Jesus and after a couple of hours of questioning their beliefs I asked Christ to be my Lord. At the same time I was filled with the Holy Spirit and immediately delivered from smoking and alcohol. I left my sales job because our sales methods involved too many lies and started working in my father’s plaster factory. But I missed the sales business and eventually backslid and left the church. I moved into management with the encyclopedia publisher and went back to all my old ways. For the next 12 years I continued with great success in the book sales business, however my marriage became a mess as a result of too much money, too much alcohol and not enough morality. My wife left and we divorced. By that time we had four children.
Eventually I met Patty. She moved in to the house and helped me look after the children. When I met Patty she was trying to find God; I had never forgotten my experience when first saved and so we started going to a different church each week as I tried to find a church that preached the same gospel that I had been taught.
How God then led us to Him is a miraculous story but sufficient to say we found the church where we both found forgiveness and became born again. That was 37 years ago and we praise Him for all His goodness. Although I wasted 12 years as a prodigal son, nonetheless, I believe that wilderness experience helps me to have abundant understanding and compassion for the young men in prison.