Dave - From Strength to Strength

Dave was born in England and grew up believing he would join the army, joining the officer core as he went through uni. But when Dave turned up at a work training session and found it was just him and Alana, he immediately knew she was special and his life took a very different turn! They were married and moved to Australia, but Dave still felt like an imposter whenever they would go to church. His wife Alana never stopped praying or believing, and after a lot of time spent researching and asking questions, Dave decided he was going to let Jesus into his life. From that point on Dave has experienced himself being transformed; as a husband, dad and friend. He can see now how he had become hardened and critical, and how on a daily basis Jesus is softening his heart and completely changing him as a person. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Oh, g'day there. Welcome to The Spirit, where we share stories of faith from the heart of the country. We've brought a packet of TimTams. So pull up a chair, settle in, and join us for a chat. I'm Darcy and I'm here on the lands of the Jar Jawarung, who I acknowledge and offer my respect. I'm in a little place called Epsom and I'm speaking to Dave. G'day Dave. Thanks so much for joining us. My pleasure.

SPEAKER_01 0:40

Yeah, I'm actually from the UK originally, although I don't have much of a UK accent anymore.

SPEAKER_00 0:46

No, just the tiniest bit. Yeah, every now and again.

SPEAKER_01 0:49

So yeah, no, brought up uh in the UK. I was born in a place called Durham, um, and then quite early on in my life moved down to Essex. Okay. Um, which is a bit closer to London, about an hour out of London. And yeah, just a normal schooling and just a normal English lad. Yeah, that's it. Yeah. Nothing out of the ordinary.

SPEAKER_00 1:09

So um, you know, England is uh obviously the church is a very important part of the culture there. Did you have much to do with church growing up?

SPEAKER_01 1:19

Yeah, no, not really. Um I went to a Church of England primary school, uh, which I yeah remember um really well. I remember being young and and and praying and and not having a probably a great understanding um of God. I think we we would only go to church maybe twice a year as a school anyway. So it really wasn't something that we regularly did. We didn't go to s to church as a family. Yeah. Um and I didn't really know anyone who did, unless I was just oblivious to it. Definitely in my kind of friend group. Yeah, after high school, um I went to university um up in Preston, and I went and did a degree uh called Outdoor Leadership, um, which was amazing. It was a degree basically uh teaching or learning how to teach people how to rock climb and climb mountains and kayak white water rapids and do all of that stuff. We were really close to the border of North Wales, um, which is a little kind of outdoor ed hotspot, uh, which was really cool, but I had a broader career goal um of joining the army. Yeah. So I was in the army cadets when I was um younger in high school. That was a big part of my life. Um, and then through university I was in the um the officer training corps um as part of uni as well. And I yeah, always thought that that's where my career was really heading. I was obsessed with with with that, and um I really thought that's where I was gonna end up until the end of uni, and I started traveling and then got that travel bug and that never quite stopped.

SPEAKER_00 2:54

So looking back then when you're spending all this time in nature and you're kind of out in creation, did you have a sense then even of perhaps there being a little bit mortal life or that there was something behind this beautiful creation you were in, or what would did it not necessarily kind of yeah, come to mind?

SPEAKER_01 3:15

Yeah, unfortunately not.

SPEAKER_00 3:17

I wish it did. No, that's totally it's as interesting.

SPEAKER_01 3:20

It's um I don't know if my uh yeah, if my time spent doing some military training uh kind of really changed how I saw the world, um, I think, and and viewed uh yeah, viewed that relationship of life and death as well. And the value of my own life as well. It all got a bit kind of skewed in there, I think. And I mean I yeah, definitely would go out and appreciate the world and nature, but never had those thoughts of who created it. I was just taking full advantage of it and and and loving it.

SPEAKER_00 3:55

It's interesting you mentioned like the way that getting military training, you know, a big part of that is they kind of reprogram how you think about the world and who you are in it. Um what was the kind of mentality that you were being taught, do you think?

SPEAKER_01 4:11

Yeah, I I just think maybe um just a bit hardened to um the value of life, I'd say. Um everyone's a soldier first and foremost uh when you go to join, but I think I always had the plan of of joining the infantry and being frontline, which uh is a probably a very again different relationship to to really yeah, truly fighting and being potentially in those situations to to potentially lose your life, but also having to take life. I think you can just yeah get a little bit um warped of of the meaning of life and the value that every human um has. Yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_00 4:50

Yeah. So at some point you decide gonna put that to one side and do some travel, and you end up coming down to Australia for two years. Yeah, what were those couple of years like? I mean, English backpackers in Australia, they got a bit of a reputation.

SPEAKER_01 5:13

Uh as soon as I got here, it I just loved it. I just fell in love with it. Uh, especially I spent a lot of time over in WA. I love being by the beach. I'm a very kind of laid-back, chilled out um kind of guy, and just that kind of coastal life and the opportunity of just yeah, driving from north to south and just finding, you know, there's always a beach somewhere with a sunset going down over it. And uh I just fell in love with the lifestyle and just thought it was it was amazing, and yeah, did a lot of farm work and got that second year, uh, which was a hard slog at times, but um, yeah, I was really gutted when I when I had to leave and go back. But yeah, I just just loved it over here when I came over here in 2015.

SPEAKER_00 5:52

And so then you end up back in England and then you meet your future wife. How does that happen?

SPEAKER_01 5:59

Yeah, that's a crazy story, and it's one of those that now as a Christian I can look back on and say, wow, this is so God-given. Um almost like he'd he'd held out uh on putting Alana into my life until I was ready, you know. Uh, because if I'd met her earlier on in my life, I just would have messed that up, and that would have just been a gift that yeah, I didn't take um yeah, full advantage of. But yeah, I I didn't know where I was gonna land land when I came home. My mum had moved, and I didn't I didn't have like a let's say a family home to go home to like a lot of people might. And ultimately I I landed at my sister's in Cambridge in the UK, and uh and yeah, my now wife Alana was there in Cambridge at the time, and I got a job working at the Hilton Hotel there, uh, and a few weeks before she just got a job at the Hilton Hotel there, and yeah, these staff training uh days that are normally quite big for these, you know. Hilton's a big hotel, there's hundreds of staff, and normally they're doing quite big recruitment drives at one time, and there's lots of people in these staff training days. Uh, but on this one it was just me and her. Oh, really? Yeah, we were the only people. Uh, and and I had been a part of quite a few other ones in my time when I was at that hotel, and never again was there just two people in one of these staff training days, but it was just me and her. Um, and yeah, that just started something that ultimately led us to where we are today.

SPEAKER_00 7:28

Yeah, cool.

SPEAKER_01 7:29

As soon as I met her, and as soon as she came into my life, I just knew that she was someone different, um, and just like somebody that who I I just never met somebody like her before. Um, yeah, just the way that that she lived her life and um just who she was, I think was probably the the biggest things that really um did it for me, and and I just felt very early on um that she was different. I just felt like this is this is the person I'm gonna spend the rest of my life with uh from very, very early on. Um and funnily enough, uh you know, she's not on this podcast, but maybe we'll do one with her on a later date. She um, you know, we've we've spoken about it since, and and she would, yeah, she would say probably the the same thing uh as well, where she felt like yeah, it probably held out on both of us and being like you're not both quite ready. And then as soon as we were and and really wanted it and needed it and had started to change towards it, it was just like okay, now I'm gonna collide your worlds together. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:38

So do you remember um in terms of the actual faith part of all those kind of things that were happening in your life, was there a particular idea or belief that was really significant, you know, in you grasping or you starting to understand for yourself?

SPEAKER_01 8:57

So, what I will say is that from meeting Alana to getting where I am today, um, still took a while. And Alana committed to me knowing that as well. Yeah. Which was a big thing for her because she'd she'd always thought, yeah, I'm gonna end up or want to be with with somebody who is of faith, and we can share that together. So we even moved all the way back here and and were married before I I came to know Jesus. Yeah, she prayed for me for a for a long time and had had had everyone else praying for me as well, which at the time used to make me feel very uncomfortable. Not pressured, but um, but I guess just not yeah, not not knowing as much as I do now. Just yeah, I felt felt a bit uncomfortable by it. You know, she said to me uh since that she just never doubted it, which I just think is amazing. Like it she just she was just like I never doubted that you would become a Christian, which is an an amazing journey, you know, to see where I am. And I and I and I I'm not here now because of that. It's not like I had said, Oh, Alana really wants me to get there and I'm gonna get there. Like I didn't, as I said, like I I very much took my time quite headstrong, um, and I'm gonna do things on my own terms and get to where I want to go. So even these chats where she's like, I'm never never doubt it, like you'll get there, all that type of stuff. I wasn't feeling that pressure of flicking through the calendar dates, being like, Oh, I've got to get there. So we were going to churches, and I was coming, you know, we and we went to three or four different churches in Bendigo before we we landed where we are now, and we've been there ever since at HT and um in Flora Hill.

SPEAKER_00 10:27

So, what do you remember about um turning up at um Holy Trinity there at Flora Hill and you know, maybe starting to be pretty regular uh attending there?

SPEAKER_01 10:37

Uh yeah, I used to turn up at church for for quite a while, and I won't lie again and say that I was going every week, but but I was more frequent than I had been for the previous 20 years. Um I personally was sitting there feeling deep within myself like quite an imposter. I used to come home and say it, being like, I feel like you're such a fraud, like sitting in church. These people don't know that I that I'm not on the same in the same place as them. Yeah, would people kind of assume when you were there that I think you would, I you know, I so I felt I felt very uncomfortable, but but but never received that from them. I would say over that time, um, I'm just starting to hammer Alana with questions. Yeah, yeah, just all of these questions are coming to me. And then an amazing person came into our life. Um, her name is Heather Kelly, and and she came into our life and she was just such a an absolute gift. And she's one of those people that you meet where Jesus just pours out of her. You can just see it. From the moment you just come into her presence, that's just who she is and what she gives to the world. And between the two of them, they were uh quite yeah, persuasive to get me into an alpha course. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. So uh and Alpha was Alpha was really good. It was around at HT, um, just a small group of men in R1. Um, and it was great, and it just allowed me to really dive in and ask all of those questions. We had a a great mix of people in the room. I probably think up until this point, I felt like I knew nothing about Christianity, but felt like I knew everything. That was a real like looking back, that's what I felt. I felt like I'd I felt like I knew everything about every religion without but I'd