From Alcoholism to India
Heading down the stairs and nearing the sewing factory, the constant chatter and laughter of the local women is contagious. The room buzzes as the women help one another sew and package the next batch of school uniforms to be shipped overseas. My heart is so full of joy. Our dream has materialized, and it is so much more than anything my wife, or I, could have ever imagined. We are creating jobs, empowering men and women and impacting the community. We are making a difference in our small section of India.
Then there is the School. The children’s enthusiasm and excitement for learning is medicine for anyone's soul. I love hearing their melodious chants in the playground and the collective shouts as they vigorously umpire their own beloved cricket matches. As we know all of India loves cricket. I look over the four hundred students gathering daily for morning assembly. I see their beautiful ebony faces and remember their stories. Considering their poverty, their lack of opportunity moves me often beyond words. To their credit today, our first graduates have just begun their higher education studies. They are breaking through and exceeding everyone’s goals and expectations.
It’s coming up to 13 years since my wife and I began our journey in India. Our enthusiasm for this God ordained work has never wavered. It is a constant source of deep joy. The story, however, started many years ago when we were living in the small mining town in North Queensland.
It was about 10.30pm, Friday night, early February, 1990. I was driving home in my old faithful 1983 Toyota Corona, after yet another lengthy session at the pub. For some reason I pulled into the manse at the church where my wife had recently started attending. The pastor was not home at the time.
Much to our surprise, the pastor turned up at our house two days later. It was Sunday morning and my wife was preoccupied downstairs doing the weekly washing. She was understandably shocked when the pastor arrived and said to her, “Your husband came to see me on Friday night.” “Did he?” she replied. "Well he is upstairs. You had better go up and speak with him."
When I opened the front door the pastor said, “You came to see me on Friday night?” My response was similar to my wife’s, “Did I?” As I had quite a few under my belt that night, I only recalled going to the church manse when he mentioned it to me. My addictions to gambling and alcohol had trapped me in a terrible headlock. I suffered lapses of memory and it had caused my family untold heartache. I believe it was gambling that contributed to my becoming an alcoholic. I had, at the age of 35, developed a habit of drinking daily… drinking at work, drinking in pubs, drinking for Dutch courage, so on….and so on!
On confiding with the pastor that I was in some financial trouble (the understatement of the year), he simply said that if I asked the Lord Jesus to help me he surely would. After some further conversation we got down on our knees and he prayed for me.
After many years of failed attempts at trying to stop gambling it felt odd, and strangely comforting, to think that maybe God could help me. After another lengthy session at the pub that day I decided, at the pastor’s invitation, to attend his church that very night. It was quite different to the services I had attended during my childhood and youth. I did think the worship was a little overboard, with the clapping and raising of hands, but I certainly felt a sense of peace there. I just sat quietly towards the back of the church. I don’t remember what the message was about, but I do remember not feeling compelled to go out the front when there was a call for prayer. That came some weeks later. Prayer really does change things.
On awakening the next morning and subsequent mornings after that, I realized that I had absolutely no desire, at all, to gamble or drink. This was no small thing as these two addictions had crushed and immobilized me for the past 20 years. Not understanding what was really happening, or trying to work it out, I just found myself beginning to think about life differently. I wondered about ways that I might be able to help others. In small ways I began to do this. Then God gave me courage and wisdom. He showed me how I could repay my loans and clear my gambling debts. This took four and a half years but at no stage was it ever a burden. I found the process a joyful, strengthening and inspiring journey. One day after reading Ezekiel 36:26, I realized this was exactly what God had done for me. "Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.”
Soon after joining the church my wife took the position of cleaner and myself the gardener. As well as becoming increasingly involved in other church activities we continued in these roles until we began journeying to India in 1999. Sometime after I joined the church, the pastor also took a step of faith and appointed me as the church treasurer.
The passion to come to India was birthed in my heart in 1991, when I read a book about the lives of poor people being changed when a Canadian pastor and his wife took up residence in Calcutta in 1954. That happened to be the year I was born. On finishing the book, I suggested to my wife that one day we work with the poor in India. At the time my wife was not at all impressed with this idea, but in time God worked on her heart and her desire eventually matched mine. A pleasant surprise awaited me. This came some years later. I found out that my grandfather, on my paternal side, was actually Indian. Now, 26 years later, and having experienced many, many miracles along the way, my wife and I are still joyfully serving the Lord and empowering the poor in the nation of India.
To God be the glory.
Bob's story