| BACK |
Since leaving school, life has been more than interesting. I married Helen, my wife of almost thirty five years, have five children, ten grandchildren, and am currently living in Colorado USA where I work as “Associate Director of Counseling and Staff Care” for a large mainline Christian Missionary organization called The Navigators.
I became a Christian in my first year at Uni of NSW in 1970 through the Australian Navigators, joined the staff in 1978 and have been with them ever since in a variety of roles that have taken me all over the world.
Just to fill you in on this most unlikely story, for those who knew me. School for me was hard work. I struggled with health issues, a lack of sense of direction and was pretty angry all round. After leaving school for the second time, I repeated sixth form I followed a scholarship to Newcastle Teachers college which totally put me off teaching. Life was a pretty lonely affair at that time. The next year I moved to Sydney, UNSW to do something more constructive. I met some Christian guys who seemed to have life together a little more than me. I was pretty antagonistic until someone actually asked me my opinions on life and what I thought a real Christian was. I gave some fairly inane answers and realized that I didn’t have much of a clue about either. This guy was really helpful. We actually got into the Bible together and I discovered that being a Christian wasn’t about leading a good life but a relationship with God through Jesus. Well, I invited Jesus into my life, experienced His forgiveness (a new beginning) and began on a road which has been quite exciting, extremely purposeful and very fulfilling for the past forty one years. I might add that life has had considerable traumas, as it does but having God in the mix has made the difference.
From Uni I worked in the NCDC as a Sociologist and then in1973 went to Adelaide to help start a Navigator ministry at the University of Adelaide. I also worked a full time job as a Medical Social Worker at the Royal Adelaide Hospital. Five years later, 1978 I left Adelaide with a wife, Helen and our first child to start a ministry at Macquarie Uni in Sydney. For the first three years I also worked for the Baptist Homes Trust who ran Nursing homes, homes for the aged, children and ex prisoners.
After twenty years at Macquarie, working with Australian and international students I focused on Mainland Chinese. During that twenty years we saw many lives transformed through a relationship with God. These folk are scattered around three continents as ministers, missionaries and secular workers as well as mums and dads in the suburbs. In the early 1990’s I went back to school, to retrain as a professional counselor. I worked in private practice for about fifteen years, specializing in marriage and family counseling, sexual abuse, anxiety, depression and the like, along with consulting for government and private industry. My practice ran alongside work with the Navigators, which included being a Director, and establishing “Staff Care and Development.” This took me to the US, various countries in Asia, and exotic places like Outer Mongolia. In 2008 The US Navigators asked if we would work with US and international staff totaling about 4600 in 170 countries, a big step for us. So here we are having left family, packed up my practice and living in beautiful Colorado. We do get home two months a year to work with our Australian staff and see family.
At this point we have no plans for retirement and are just enjoying what we do.