RESET BUTTON

Kia ora, this is a brief testimony of my life up until I gave my heart back to the Lord Jesus Christ.

My life has always been an enigma to me and still remains a mystery to this day as to where I came, but at least now; I know where it’s going….

My childhood had a mixture of excitement, adventure, sorrow, pain, hatred, and most of all violence. I lived for most of my life with my Mother as a lonely child, my older siblings lived with my Father, and thus I never really built a strong relationship with them. In that time I had a lot of negative influence on my way of life, due to what I was exposed to and the values being imputed in me. My Mother use to affiliate with the Mongrel Mob while we were living in Kawerau. There was always violence around me and I would get beaten on a daily basis. Things would get so out of control, that we would often move a lot, trying to escape the trouble my Mother was involved in. Usually, that trouble would find us and result in more feuds. One time, my Mum got into a fight and a Mongrel Mob member abducted me from Matata and dumped me in Wellington, at some construction site. I recall the incident vividly. My Mother would always get involved with a lot of gang members, considering she came from a respected family, whom she moved to New Zealand with from Europe. She would always cart me around to parties and pubs, exposing me to a lot of drinking and fighting. This eventually resulted in me being uplifted from Primary school at the age of 8 and put into a foster home. This didn’t make life better for me, but in fact brought a whole new level of madness into my life. The foster homes that I continually moved to were full of abuse and neglect. All this exposure was having a huge effect on my life for the next year. I went back into the care of my Mother, and things just got worse. We frequently moved to different towns, always on the run from people, and finally settled in Normandy, Taranaki with my Mums partner and new names. I began to witness the full potential of my Mother and her deceitful, manipulative ways and started to absorb everything that she would do. I was learning to be like her. My Mother was very intelligent, strong, and cunning. She was able to speak five different languages and would make me attend different religions, churches and clubs to learn from them and gain knowledge. I’ve tried most of them, but thanks to God I found the right one. Being in Normandy, my Mum started associating with the Black Power. She got so involved with them and the crime, that she began training me, not just physically, but mentally too. I was also involved with various Martial Arts clubs, Karate, Zen Do Kai, and my Mother even got a personal instructor to teach me armed combat in Ninjitsu. In my teen years, I joined the Cripps, the local gang there for young people. They became part of my family, and we would prey on the innocent. My Mother would always set me up to fight the children of the people who opposed her. She, even began manipulating the Black Power and having them turn against each other. I absorbed all this and quickly learned how to mess with peoples minds and attack them mentally. Things started getting worse though living with my Mum, as her mind games on me drove me to insanity. I found out, that I wasn’t who I believed I was and other things too personal to tell. I was so full of anger that I used what I was taught to hurt many people. My Mum had been pregnant, and in a messed up relationship. She gave birth to a baby boy and I was invited to see them at the hospital. My new Brother was given to me to hold, and in a short moment, died in my arms. I was blamed for his death, and the burden put me into depression, and I once again went into a foster home. I began studying computers, electronics and how they work. I became inspired from movies to learn how to crack software, alarms, get free Sky, etc….

A few years later, I had been living back with my Mum, but could no longer handle the world of lies and hate I was living in so planned to run away from her. I did, and went to live with my Dad back in Kawerau. I was 16 then, and got into a relationship with a girl. My education for that year went really well and I excelled at a few subjects gaining top marks. I wanted a career for myself and the respect of my Father. I didn’t get the latter, and when my Dad didn’t attend prize giving I chose to give up on a career. A year later, my girlfriend gave birth to our Daughter. Life was good, we had everything we wanted, but we eventually broke up after a few years. During this time, I was introduced to Jesus through my cousin, and was inspired by the big change in his life. I first gave my heart then and started attending Church learning more about who God is. I was blessed with a job as a photographer for a newspaper firm. It was one of the things I had a strong passion to work in. A couple of years went by and I was lonely, and fell into another relationship. My life twisted upside down. For the next several years, I was exposed to violence and lies. I couldn’t handle it. I started drinking more than usual and getting violent toward others. Always looking for fights. One thing I am glad to say though, is that I never smoked or did any kind of drugs. Thanks to the respect for my Dad, I grew to despise it. Mates respected me too, and I never got pressured, so don’t do it. I’ve seen what it does, and it messes you up. Anyway, I had been in the army as well so would use what I had learnt from there to hurt people. This landed me in court many times; I was threatened with warnings often, but would get the judge to see me as the victim. The relationship with my partner got worse, with all her unfaithfulness to me and I grew hatred toward Woman. My partner was causing me so much pain, that I wanted to kill her, but would go out with my boys instead and beat the crap out of people roaming the streets. I started to get involved in much serious crime to make me feel better. Because of my vast knowledge of computers and electronics, mates and I will pull off burglaries at shops and businesses, even cars. For some reason, I did not want to rob from a person’s private home though…I was able to disable alarms, hack into computers and more. I will not mention everything, as it is better that you do not know. I was making a good living from it though. Partying became a regular thing for me, and a lot of us would take our cars and race them, drag style. There was even a documentary filmed with us and aired on TV, ‘The quick and the dead’. We liked making trouble for the Police. I despised the cops for the corruptness I had seen in many of them. I won’t go into detail, as this could be trouble.

During my relationship with my partner we had three children, all of whom are in my care. I began to realize that I was becoming like my Mother. Manipulative, deceitful, violent. I tried to make a change, but couldn’t as the relationship I was in kept pulling me under. The crimes I was involved in grew bigger. We were ripping off companies with little effort, and I was becoming very confident and boastful of all this. Often I would instigate fights if I was frustrated just to get some satisfaction. This occurred many times at night clubs. One time a man kicked my car, so I cracked the back of his skull with a diving knife. Eventually this all caught up to me. I became too overconfident in crime and someone tipped the Police that lead an investigation to me. I was looking at ten years imprisonment. I was mad and worried so began praying for the first time in a long time asking Jesus to forgive me and change my heart. I had my eldest Daughter living with me and was afraid for her safety. I prayed that I would turn away from sin. I was cleared of all charges, but then continued to do what I was doing anyway. I forgot my promise to God, and carried on being a criminal. Again life was good financially. I had two busy jobs with a good income, and was still involved ripping businesses off as well with my crew. But mentally, life was hell to me then. I couldn’t handle the lies my partner was putting me through, and the heavy involvement with drugs around our kids when she was at a mates. This brought about some much heated domestic violence and more dramas followed. I was once again arrested for assault. This threatened the well being of my two Daughters that were in my care. Again, I prayed, and was cleared of charges. The day the charge was cleared, my Mother died. I was shocked that someone staunch like her died suddenly, yet it did not bother me. I just couldn’t feel sadness for her. The funeral was in Taranaki, and my Daughter and I went swimming at a beach there. We were caught in a rip and pulled out to sea. I remember the horror and panic on my Daughters face. I was not a good swimmer, but gave my Daughter a boogie board and some instructions to make it back safely. I was tired and ready to give up, when suddenly a wave pushed me out of the rip and back towards land. The incident was far worse than what was explained here, but I wish to leave it unmentioned. Anyway, I was still alive and thanked God. Things started to change in my life from then, but I got into trouble once again from the Law, although I was actually innocent this time. I was serious about a change and was really sorry about the life I had been living without Jesus. I asked for forgiveness and help of course. Something was revealed to me, and my eyes were opened to the real beauty of life and creation. I began attending a nearby church, and soon built a healthy relationship with the members and received great encouragement from the Pastor. I didn’t submit myself straight away, but as I learnt more and understood, I believed. At last, I became obedient, acknowledged who Jesus was and what he had did for us, that he died on the cross for our sins, and gave my heart back to him. I repented from living that life of crime again, and prayed for strength and guidance. It took some getting use to, but I broke through. I was cleared of the charges which took several months to be over and done with, and was glad not to be sentenced. Not long after, I was awarded care of all of my children and we still remain together. I began to be blessed with many great things. I am now back in employment and also studying at the moment for a Diploma in Teaching. I aim to input a positive influence into our younger generation so that they may be brought up with the right values and aspects in life. I have new friends that are very supportive, fun and encouraging for guidance. My whole way of thinking and actions has changed, that brings a positive influence into my family. My children have benefited much from this, and are increasingly bettering their character and behavior. We are much happier without the corruption in our lives anymore; it took seven years of pain to get right again. So many times throughout life I came close to death; 12 car accidents, stabbing, falling off an 80ft cliff. The next incident could have been my last. My life now is much more joyful and blessed since accepting Jesus back into it. Things have become much clearer, and our future brighter. I still occasionally do minor wrong things I’m unaware of, but have people that help me identify it and I can rid it from my life. This was just a brief confession of some of the negative experiences in my life. Many things were omitted that were too undesirable and graphic to mention. I want other people out there to realize we come from a variety of backgrounds and are all sinners, and we’ll never be perfect, but at least we can be saved from evil by acknowledging Jesus Christ as our Lord and savior (For “everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved”, Romans 10:13). There is so much evidence to prove his existence. He’s at our hearts knocking; we just got to let him in. Amen. 

Send mail to paul@fcc.org.nz with questions or comments about this web site.
Copyright © 2011
Last modified: March 31, 2011