My Story – Living Life By Faith Pt2

Empowering Her Business » Podcasts

My Story – Living Life By Faith Pt2

Hello, and welcome to Part 2 of Living Life by Faith, which is my story. If you didn’t hear last week’s podcast, I encourage you to go to the podcast before this one and have a listen. It’s part 1 of my story of how God’s provision has been throughout my life. Part 1 is the beginning of my life, and we’re moving on to part 2 today.

If you haven’t already had a listen to it, again, have a listen, and then we’ll take off. I left you a cliff-hanger of when I got to a plane and came to Australia. Life was still a bit messy when I came to Australia. Obviously, I hadn’t met Big G yet, but He wasn’t too far away. When I landed in Australia, I first went and lived with a friend in Narrabeen in Sydney. She was my only friend in Australia that I knew of. I went to live with her for a month, and the only work that I could actually find was down in Shellharbour. I spent weeks trying to find work.

Growing up, I did the army cadets and I was very adventurous. A good part of my life was that side of my life. I love mountain biking, and kayaking, and canoeing, and all that kind of stuff. I found a job as an outdoor guide through, somehow, on the internet and it was with a mob called Southbound Adventures down in the South Coast. I applied for a job. I just needed to go and do a first aid course, I think, and pretty much got it. I went from moving to Australia, moving with my friend in Sydney for a few weeks, to then essentially getting a job down the South Coast.

Within that period of three weeks I came off my tablets (the antidepressants that I was on); I actually decided that it was time to come off them. They were quite a powerful drug, so I didn’t realise the effect of what happens when you take quite a big hefty drug to then go cold turkey.

That was a big change to my body. I can remember coming off the antidepressants, and I was getting hot sweats. I was shaky; I was feeling so sick and felt like I wanted to vomit. I don’t take tablets much for anything. I try and get everything through food. I try not to take painkillers or anything like that. When I do take something, it has a massive effect on my body, and these really did have an effect once I came off them. I came off the antidepressants.

I was still drinking a little bit when I got to Australia. I guess it was weird moving to another country where you didn’t really know anyone. I’m a quite outgoing person, so it doesn’t take me long to make friends, but yeah, it was just a weird three weeks of adjusting, getting used to a new culture. Even though Australia is English, it’s still a different culture to English and England, and English people. Adjusting to Australians (no offense Aussies) you can be quite upfront and blunt. Us English are a little bit more softer, but anyway, that’s a different story.

I went and worked, and essentially I was living out of a car. The car is a different story, but I had a lot of trouble with a lot of cars being a female and having no idea. I needed a car to get around, so I was living out of a car at this point. I moved down… well, I didn’t really even move down. I went to Shellharbour. I got the job, and I think I started the week after, or something.

Being an outdoor guide was an absolutely perfect job for me coming to Australia; visiting and travelling. I got to see some of the most beautiful, tranquil, amazing places in the bush that Australia has to offer that not everyone knows about. We would go off for a week at a time into the bush. I would be kayaking and canoeing at the most beautiful rivers and gorges. We camped, so that was … I mean, there wasn’t really much internet around at that stage anyway, but you have no phone signal. It was just a really simple life.

You lived in a tent; you ate basic foods, and you just hung out with the kids and took them on an adventure. I did that for a few months, but when you come on a holiday working visa to Australia, you can only work for one business for six months at a time, and then you can’t work for them again. I worked for them for about three months, and then through that time, it was an absolutely special, amazing, God-had-His-hands-on-me time, working for that company.

As part of being an outdoor guide, you also do camps at places. There’s a centre at Stanwell Tops, and a few other places around Australia where there are camps. When you are an outdoor guide and you go and work at camp, often you’ll have a briefing day the day before you have the kids, where you set up your activities. You go through the week and what’s going to happen. You often stay in a really big group building.

I found myself a room in this building and I was getting settled in. A person called Deb came to me and said, “Oh, would you like to share a room?” I was like, “Sure, that’s fine.” She set up her tent (not her tent, her bed) and we made friends. We got on like a house on fire straight away. What I didn’t realise was that Deb had come into the room, had seen this fresh English person off the train looking a bit lost in a room by herself, who connected initially and straightaway with the Holy Spirit, and God told her that she needed to look after this one, which is really special.

We made friends, and what a way to make friends via a smelly awkward room incident. When Deb set up her bed and got all her stuff sorted out, it was quite funny, because she had been on a camp a week before. She had taken a trip to Melbourne for a wedding and then comes straight back to work. We were in the room, and there was this awful smell – a smell you have never smelt before in your whole entire life. We could not work out what it was, it was just awful. We were looking around bins; we were emptying all our kit out. We could not work out what was going on with the smell and where it was coming from. In the end, I actually … sorry, I just realised I haven’t put my laptop on charge. I just need to do that. Okay.

When Deb & I first met.

There was this smell, and we just emptied the room out. It’s disgusting, until we eventually realised that it was her sleeping bag. Because she got wet on the camp before and then just put it away, gone to the wedding and come back and hadn’t aired it out, her sleeping bag stinks so badly. We had a good laugh about it. I grabbed the sleeping bag and put it straight out on the washing line in the sun, and we aired the room out, but that was just a really funny introduction to a really amazing friend in my life, who has been … she has just been so special, and God – oh my goodness! This one is just a keeper for life. She changed my life so much.

Sorry, I’ll just pull myself back together. Yeah, our friendship from there, we just bonded so well. I could see that there was just something so special about this girl, and I could not put my finger on what it was. She just had something that I felt from my background of self-worthlessness, and I would try and find love in all the wrong places growing up as a young woman. She just had this contentment in her heart and this worth that was just glowing. I just thought I need to find what she has. Our friendship developed through that, and because you only work … well, you work through the weekend, and you come home if you like for one night a week. You wash your kit, you have a shower, and then you’re back out in the field. She actually invited me to come and stay with her and her housemate, which was really awesome.

Deb and I out riding…

On my day off, that was down in Nowra. That’s how I ended up in Nowra really. I would go back to their house. I’d sleep on the floor. I also made some awesome friends who would let me sleep on their floor as well. Yeah, I slept on their floor. I got to know Deb and her housemate Beck. They were the most incredible people. So as I was staying with them, obviously, I ended up finding out that they were Christians. They invited me to a Bible study one night, and I had never been to a Bible study. I was completely anti-God in that stage of my life. I said, “I’m travelling, what the hell. I’ll go, and I’ll just join in and see how it goes”. It was an awesome night. I really enjoyed learning and experiencing a Bible study. I never knew that these things even existed. That was when I said my first prayer to God. I didn’t give my life at that stage, but I just said an introductory, which was probably more of an introductory to me to Him, rather than Him to me.

My first prayer was like, “Hi God, my name is SJ. We don’t know each other yet, but just saying hello.” It was like an awkward, cute, fresh prayer. But that’s all good. I got to know Beck and Deb really well. I could see the same thing that Deb had, Beck had as well. They were just so confident and so … oh, their worth, their self-worth was just amazing. I just knew that I needed to get whatever it is that they had.

Bush Cooking :-)

That led me up to Christmas, and then over Christmas, which was in 2008, was when I went over to Australia. In that Christmas of 2008 going to 2009, I decided to take a trip down to Melbourne, and then I’d go from Melbourne to Tasmania. I was going to travel for a month, and then I was going to come back and rework for Southbound Adventures as a guide again. I left Nowra on my adventure. Deb actually took me down to Melbourne, because that was where she was from, and we spent some time with her family over Christmas, which was really special, and then I took the trip to Tasmania.

As I was doing the month trip, I started journaling. I knew I needed to start journaling, and I knew I needed to start talking and praying. I didn’t know who I was really praying to. I didn’t know who I was talking to, but I knew I just needed to start journaling and writing things down. I became very spiritual as well. I think I’ve been quite spiritual from the get-go, but yeah… so I travelled around Tassie. It was awesome.

While I was travelling around Tassie, I was actually coming to the end of my budget. I managed to save heaps of money during the outdoor guiding, which is another thing that was cool about it was I didn’t have to pay for accommodation or food. They provided everything. I could save a lot of money while I was doing it because, unfortunately, I lost a lot of the money that I got from the compensation that I had, with the dud cars, which didn’t help. I lost a lot of money in dud cars, and I had to start saving from scratch again, which I did through the outdoor guiding.

White Water Rafting

Halfway or nearly all the way through that trip to Tassie, I finally reached the last kind of money in my bank account. I was thinking “What the hell am I going to do? I’ve got no money and I’m in Tasmania”. I just thought “Okay, well, if I can do outdoor guiding in Australia in the mainland, I can do it in Tasmania”. I was staying in a YHA. I went down to the leaflets and I grabbed all the brochures that looked like outdoorsy, adventurous stuff, and I actually called them. I asked if they needed someone to work for them. My trip to Tasmania was the most unreal, amazing adventure and a complete act in faith when I didn’t even know what faith was.

I called the people on the flyers, and I got hold of one person. He did white river rafting down the river in Tasmania. He needed someone to do a bit of work, and then I also got in contact with a bike hire company that was based in Hobart, and when I went to see the guy I actually found out was he was a parachute company. He took people on parachutes; he took them skydiving. It was a skydiving company. It was like this tiny little bike shack with all these bikes that we put in and out each day for people to go and hire, and travel around Hobart with. Then there was a field next to it where they landed when they did their skydiving. I helped them do a little bit of administration. I helped hire the bikes out, and just looked after their shop, which meant I could get a bike and transportation around Hobart. I actually biked up Mount Wellington, which was not fun.

I got a few hours work. Well, actually I got a lot of work from him, the bike guy and the skydiving guy. Even awesomeness that happened was the guy that I contacted about the white river rafting. He said, “I’ll come along. I’ll take you down for a trip down the river with a group, and then I’ll talk about shop”. Like, awesome, I’m getting to bike around Hobart and see beautiful places for free again. It was just unreal. I went and met him. He took me and a group down a trip, and did some white water rafting for the day, which was totally awesome, and then after we were sorting all the kit out to put away, he said, “Well, I’ve been contacted, I think it was Boag’s Beer. They’re recording some advertising throughout Tasmania, and they need help with people in the catering.” I was like, “Awesome.”

Then I went and joined him and his team, and I met these two beautiful ladies. They were from Melbourne, and they had a mobile catering service that catered for movies and trailers. They travel all around Australia in their little van, setting up and making the most delicious food for the movie companies and the trailers. I ended up hooking up with these two unreal ladies, and we travelled around Tasmania together doing the catering for the … I’m sure it’s called Boag’s Beer, and it was an advert that went through in 2009, 2010. It had a guy who was sitting next to a river, drinking his beer. It was so cool. I got to see some of Tasmania with them as well. That was free accommodation, free food. I just got looked after in almost all of my Tasmania trip once I had run out of money, in the most bizarre connections in the most unreal ways. They were so amazing. They were so fun to travel with.

I did that, and then my time came to an end in Tasmania. I was like, “Okay, I need to go and find someone else to live with in Nowra. I spoke to my friend Beck and Deb, and they had spoken with some friends from church who said that they had a spare room if I wanted to go and stay with them. I was like, “Awesome.” I went and moved in with them. They were the most beautiful couple I have ever, ever met. They are so generous and so amazing, and their hearts were just so, so generous and so caring and so loving. I moved in with them, and then one day they said, “Oh, we’re going to church,” and I was like, “Can I come?” They were like, “Yeah man, no worries.” I’m like, “Cool.”

I got in the car with them one day, and we went to church. It was the most bizarre, unreal experience of my life. I didn’t know what to expect, and I went straight into a Pentecostal church. As you can imagine, it was loud; it was busy. There was people everywhere that were just so happy and so joyful. The culture was really fun. I really enjoyed myself, and they were just moving into a new building. This was now a city church who was pastored by Pastor Phil at the time. They were just opening up their new building which was the lifeboat-shaped building. I don’t know if you’ve ever been down to Nowra down the South Coast, but I highly recommend you go and check out the church. It’s probably the biggest country church you’ve ever seen in your life in such a small town. But yeah, it was unreal. I spent that night in the old, and then the following week, we went into the new building. It was amazing. Unfortunately, at that time, something not so good happened to the Pastor of the church, but it actually meant (and led to) something incredibly amazing.

I’m going to leave it for now. That’s kind of part 2 of my story. We’ll continue with the rest of the story next week. Just to recap on where we are: I’ve gone from growing up, having emotional abuse, mental abuse, and sexual abuse, turned into a rebellious teenager who loved the army cadets, and outdoors, and adventure. That was one good thing about my life. Hated school; didn’t get along very well at school. Couldn’t wait to leave school. Never had a problem getting jobs since I left school, by the way. I know lots of people who have gone to university and still struggle to get jobs. Anyway, that’s a different tangent. Got depressed, struggled to find self-worth. Gave myself to ways that I should try and find love, and then decided and made a decision that it was time to set myself straight with my mum. My mum took me to a doctor and helped me out with the depression, and helped get me through.

After working with a psychotherapist and finding my feet again, I decided it was time to move Australia. Moved to Australia, and the first nine months you’ve just experienced in this Podcast. We’ve gone from lust, broken, hurt, worthlessness feeling young lady, to a curious, huge adventure in the first year of me visiting Australia, with God’s provision and hand in my life before I had even fully met Him yet. It’s incredibly unreal and incredibly inspiring. I ask that if you know anyone that would gain benefit, or be helped through my story, please, please, please share my story with them. That’s why I’m sharing it with you. My story can be used for something good. It can be used to help people. If you know someone who would benefit – please, please share it.

If you want to stay connected and you want to hear about the next podcast, make sure that you subscribe to my mailing list which is on the website. All you need to do is just add your email in there, and we’ll let you know when the next episode is available, and the next part of my story.

Other than that, I do have a mentoring program if you want to go and see it. Otherwise, I will speak to you next week. I can’t wait to share more of my amazing story. Catch you later.

The post My Story – Living Life By Faith Pt2 appeared first on Empowering Her Business.