** CONTENT WARNING: triggering content includes references to suicide, drugs and violence.**
BOSUN
PART 1 of 3
Within 12 hours, I attempted not once, not twice to kill myself. On my third attempt I thought I would make certain I didn't fail. Hanging seemed the next best thing to a shotgun. I tested the strength of the rafter and the silk tie from my nightclub clothes collection, to make certain it would hold my weight. And hung myself".
Bosun (not his real name) born into a loving family, describes himself as favoured and a bit spolit, being the only son with two older sisters. His parents hardwork provided well for their family in picturesque, North Shore, Auckland overlooking the ocean."We grew up with the smell of the salt air in our noses". Back in the day everyone went to church on Sunday even though "Dad was not a believer. But it didnt matter if you were born again or saved or not, that is what you did back then". We went to Sunday school every Sunday, and after a move to another house further away, we were allowed to ride our bikes to church. My sisters were on big bikes, and I had a half sized bike so struggled to keep up. One Sunday "going down the steep Deep Creek Road, I got the speed wobbles in the gravel and ended up breaking my collar bone. That worked out great for me as a 9 year old, cause Dad agreed I didn't have to go to Sunday school anymore".
In my teenage years after yet another house move, "I started rebelling and meeting all the wrong people. I began smoking weed and (looking back now) recognised I had a rebellious spirit. Dad and I were always in conflict. I started smoking cigarettes aged 9, so by 13 I was full time smoking and getting pretty wild. Before my 15th birthday I was heavily involved in smoking marijuana and taking LSD. I was in my first flat by 16 and into acid, heroin, cocaine, weed and alcohol. By 19 I was shooting up heroin. I was never addicted and know now I was very blessed as God did not put that addictive spirit in me. I remember when I was 18 in full rebellion against my Dad, told him 'I wish you were dead.' Dad died 2 weeks later of a heart attack. I was tripping on cactus juice in Gisborne when the Police came to my door and told me to ring home. I had plenty of chances to get addicted to drugs and never did. I was more of a party animal. That lifestyle was with me for 30 years".
"After my Father died our family split up. Mum was invited to a Pentecostal church and gave her heart to the Lord. She was slayed in the spirit [Holy Spirit] for 2 hours and became a full on believer. My sisters and I thought she had gone bonkers and didn't respond well to her bible bashing us. I decided to go to Australia with my mates. Bosun spent the next 14 years in Australia stepping up that lifestyle of drugs, and alcohol abuse every night of the week, working on the high rises and living a selfish lifestyle always looking for the next party and womanising. I'm not proud of it, but when I woke in the morning I knew I would be one of 3 places. Either in jail, in hospital or a different women's bed. I did that for 30 years. I could drink to black out stage on alcohol and wake up not knowing what I had done the night before. Some mornings I could feel a spirit of darkness come over me as I dreaded what I had got up the night before. I think I had a spirit of death over me too, as one morning I woke up in the cells and the Police told me they found me drunk asleep on the center line in the middle of the main road".
"I was reaching my peak one morning in Kings Cross, Sydney and ran into an old girlfriend with a heroin habit. We bought a packet off a prostitute, not knowing its strength or what it was cut with, got some fits[needles] from an all night chemist, went into the park and shot up between the two of us a whole packet of heroin. It was super strength. Much later that day I was told I had been found by a friend of hers, blue and not breathing [a heroin overdose]. He gave me CPR, stole my dive watch, my weed, my wallet but brought me back to life. She was ok. It didn't put me off the lifestyle. A week later I was back doing the same thing. MDMA the party drug was the big thing and over one weekend I hit it hard. No sleep at all. On the Monday I felt so bad I thought I needed to go to hospital. It felt like my brain had split. One side of my brain thinking one thing and the other side thinking something else and the two starting to fight. I didn't go to hospital and ended up staying awake that whole week with my brain fighting itself. It was freaky. I thought I had lost my brain and I'd gone mad. Friday afternoon I came right, I was fine again and went off to the pub and into another party weekend".
The indulgent, selfish life style continued with severe consequences both personally and with the Police and Courts. "After moving from Sydney back to Gold Coast I met a woman and thought I had fallen in love. I now know it was not love but lust". After years of womanising she stole something in my heart. I made a self indulgent trip to London and returned to find I was no longer top dog in her life. "I got into this deep dark depression. A hole nothing could get me out of. It was the first time I had felt rejection. Friends deserted the once fun loving carefree surfer dude. I was alone and thought I would be better off dead and the world would be a better place without me. I couldn't sleep at night tormented by the jealousy, and went to the Doctor for sleeping pills. I took the whole bottle, but when I came to the next morning I was furious I was still alive. Then I tried drowning myself in the bath, but my mate came in, found me and pulled me out. Once he thought I was ok he took off down to the beach, and I thought right, now I'm going to do this properly. I'm going to hang myself. I didn't use a rope, I used a very expensive silk tie as I liked dressing up on the Gold Coast in good gear and spent a lot of money on nightclub clothes. I tried hanging off the rafter first to see if the tie was strong enough and yes, it held my weight. I was 26 and hung myself. Looking back now I must have been between life and death for at least 15 minutes until I got found. My mate had returned from the beach and called an ambulance. I'd say if I was not dead, I was in between life and death lying on the ground after the silk tie had snapped. My neck was ripped apart, the scar still visible 40 years later. Now when I see that scar in the mirror, it reminds me of God's love for me. Its like a scar of love because He saved me at that time. Before I came back back to life, the last thing that came out of my mouth was this scream of mortal agony and terror of these 2 demons reaching out to grab me. They looked like the horror movie demons, red with teeth, scales and claws with chains wrapped around them. One was just about to grab me when snap, I was awake and alive and the ambulance guys were there".
"I spent a week in the psych hospital and that was a seriously scary place to be. I managed to talk my way out after a week of being assessed. I knew how to play their game, then 2 weeks later flew back to Auckland". I went straight back into the selfish party lifestyle. My broken heart forgotten, and the 3 suicide attempts, forgotten.
** CONTENT WARNING: triggering content includes references to gambling and drugs.**
BOSUN - Part 2 of 3
"I was so full of the Holy Spirit, I felt like I was on the best drug I had ever been on".
Lured as a builder by a job offer in Queenstown (party central), Bosun resumed his unrestrained lifestyle in the snow capital of New Zealand. " There was just one dump of snow that year, so learning to snow board on pack ice wasn't fun. Being attached to the snow board and being thrown onto hard pack ice, was nothing like falling from a surf board into water". So back to Auckland again around Christmas for a drunken fun time away sailing with mates. Then back to Australia to resume the same hedonistic lifestyle. "This time it felt different, just wasn't right as I felt things had changed. Perhaps it was because I was older"? In the early 90's, I decided to surprise my Mother in New Zealand for her 70th birthday and ended up staying and flatting with some mates. "We were now in our 30s doing exactly what we had been doing when we were 18. Some mates were getting married and having children, but the hard core, were still carrying on like teenagers. Embarrassing really".
God already knew who my life partner was going to be and as believers we know there are no coincidences through God. One night, through my flatmate plus another unrelated friend, the one chosen by God was introduced to me. This was pre-ordained by Him. "It was around this time I was drawn deeper into gambling. I became a big gambler placing $1K - $2K bets. Full on gambling but I think it originated from learning how to play poker with my Father at a very young age. The gambling seed was planted by winning big money at the casino and on the horses when I first started out. I had mates growing weed on an island in the gulf, this was by no means a small operation. Huge sums of cash and product (drugs) were a normal, regular part of my lifestyle".
"Early 2000's we used to call p speed before it became meth. That's when it became super addictive. My mates were starting to cook it, and one of the guys who had been growing weed on the island (thankfully I wasn't growing that season) got caught. The full SWAT team came down ropes on helicopters. He ended up doing a 1.5 years in Mount Eden, but once inside the gangs got hold of him and told him 'we'll look after you, but you have to cook for the gangs.' He also got caught for that and ended up doing 8 years in Paremoremo. His life ruined. He lost his wife, children, everything. That stage of my life could have taken a different path. Some mates were killed at this time through accidents and suicide with drugs being at the center of some of those. Having a steady relationship certainly quietened me down a bit, or quite a lot. Me and my mates were always looking in our rear view mirror for Police and thinking detectives were following us, as we often had illicit drugs in our car. We were getting pretty paranoid at that stage. It was such a dangerous time in my life, I was not even fully aware of. I had stopped smoking weed although I didn't mind the money coming in from growing it. I was still gambling big time but now realised there was more money in sports betting than horses. That's where I could make the big money. Only one team wins 50/50 odds not like 15 horses where any one in the number can win. I got pretty good at it, $1K bets. I was doing this every week with about 75% success rate. This became all consuming".
"The whole transformation of my life was through my Mum praying diligently for me every day. Ever since she got born again in her late 50's she was always praying for her children. My steady partner had a young daughter from a previous relationship. My Mum read bible stories to her and sowed into her life. And through this our daughter asked us if she could go to Sunday school? Neither of us knew anything about modern churches so we drove around several churches looking. At one church we asked if our daughter could come and also be baptised (which we heard from Mum would be a good thing to do). The Minister replied 'oh you can't just come along and do that. You have to join the church, its not that easy you know'. What? We immediately saw the hypocrisy in it and it turned us off for a year. One day we were driving past a local Pentecostal church and saw big billboards advertising their annual Christmas show. Someone showed us around and our eyes must have been bugging out of our heads. We had never seen a church like this before. Going into the auditorium and seeing the stage set up with drums and guitars was like wow, this is real music. We went to that Christmas show and it was like a Vegas production, a big church with resources. We thought afterwards, that was cool and free! We said 'shall we go back on Sunday and see what they get up to?'
Bosun continues "I remember walking in and seeing people clapping and singing and waving their hands which I thought was kinda weird. We went straight up to the back seats and just watched everyone. It was like street show with people praying in tongues and worshipping with hands raised and clapping. We thought this was really wacked out! Not like we hadn't seen wacky things before. What a freak show. What are we doing here? We were kind of grooving along to the music which was really good, no half dead person on the organ, but a proper band and music. Peter Mortlock [contemporary senior pastor at City Impact church] preached his message without a starched collar and it all just made sense. At the end he did an altar call and my hand went up immediately. I remember there was like a strong force pulling my hand up, but I remember too there was a force trying to pull it down. Satan was strong. I remember with my eyes shut saying, God (realising at that moment I had acknowledged there was a God) , please let my partners hand be up too. When I looked over, her hand was up too! We were the only 2 [respondees] that day out of an auditorium of a 1000 people. Normally they would have 30,40,50 salvations [people who make their decision to follow Jesus] in one service. 'I see your hands' said the Pastor 'please come down to the front'. What? I thought, you're kidding, but I was so full of the Holy Spirit I felt like I was on the best drug I had ever been on. Like I was floating 10 foot off the floor, my smile was wide as a cheshire cat. My girlfriend had tears streaming down her face, weeping with joy. We went up the front and received the salvation prayer, everyone praying for us, then taken out the back and given bibles. Later I phoned Mum and told her we had said a prayer and invited Jesus into our lives. She burst out crying and said 'I've been praying for this every day for years and years and years. Thank you Jesus, thank you Jesus'. She was so proud and so happy. She had been praying her son would find a woman he would marry and both would come to the Lord. She was calling a prodigal home and this was an answer to her prayer".
"Over the next few days things started feeling weird. Mates would come around and offer me a line (of speed). Nah I wasn't too keen on that. My beer didn't taste as good. I don't think I even gambled that first week after the salvation prayer. Over the next few weeks as we continued going to church, things just started falling off [our lives]. I didn't feel like drinking, didn't feel like going out. But the sky seemed bluer and the grass greener. We just wanted more and more of this Jesus. I remember about the 3rd week, the offering was taken up at church and I put $10 in as I remembered Dad doing in the Anglican church. Then the Pastor said it was the 'free will offering day'. What was that? Are they asking for more money? When the bag came to us again I asked my partner, how much should we put in? Another $10? I then said, I feel like God is telling me to put in everything in my wallet, which was about $70. I felt really convicted. I opened up my wallet and although I didn't have much in there, I pulled it all out. That was money supposed to get us through the following week. My partner was saying no no! 'That's food and nappy money for our toddler'. We pulled into the driveway at home and a mate arrived. We just got back from church we told him. He was shocked and said 'you know that guy we did that work for a couple of years back? That guy we helped clean up his yard when he was selling his house? He's given us $200 each'. This was within 2 minutes of us getting home from church. We put in $70 and got $200 back! From there we have realised how God can provide and multiply. We now know a large amount of the money churches receive, goes back into our communities plus into building schools, hospitals, and clean water supplies in 3rd world countries. We were probably only a couple of weeks old in the Lord and were driving along one day and I said to my partner, I think the Lord is telling me we need to get married. We had lived together 6 years and by this time had a child together. We were married twelve weeks after we got saved choosing Easter Resurrection Sunday on purpose. Apart from my Mother and the person marrying us, there were only our old mates and druggie friends. It was like saying goodbye to our old life and starting anew.
That was March and we were Baptised six weeks later and everything fell off, everything changed. I think I mostly stopped swearing. No drugs, no alcohol, no gambling, no cigarettes, minimal swearing as God was still working in this area of my life. No withdrawals after smoking cigarettes for 30 years. Miraculously everything just went out the door. I know that doesn't always happen, but God knew for me it needed to happen rapidly or I was heading for jail or the morgue".
** CONTENT WARNING: triggering content includes references to suicide and violence.**
BOSUN Part 3 of 3
"There I was aged 26. I'd hung myself. 30 years later, God used what I did to myself, to go and save someone else's life". 'The enemy intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done. The saving of many lives'. Genesis 50 v 20
Following Bosun and his wife's radical call to salvation, they sold their Auckland [property] and bought a house up in the far north on a cliff looking straight out over Doubtless Bay. "We bought a property the agent didn't even want to show us through as it was dripping inside with nicotine. The Catholic priest would visit this old couple [previous owners] every morning and play cards, drink whiskey and smoke cigarettes. Down a side road unbeknown to us, was all housing New Zealand homes some occupied by gangs and associates, involved in everything I had once been into". This became our mission field as new Christians under the guidance of a mature in the Lord Christian couple we were introduced to. Bosun and his wife over the next 18 months had young hungry kids dropping in for breakfast on their way to school. "I would speak to the neighbourhood men and tell them they shouldn't treat their wives the way they were. Some women with teeth knocked out and kids deaf from being smacked around the head. It was terrible, but I felt God had put us there for a reason". We came home from church one Sunday and whilst preparing lunch heard a child screaming and saw a man dragging a young child out of their house, smashing this kid around and locking him in their car.
I yelled out "oi cut it out". He turned and yelled a tirade of abuse at me and looked very aggressive. My wife heard it all and we both had a bad feeling about it. We prayed over the situation and I felt led to confront him. "So I'm walking across the road, praying in tongues and asking God to give me the words to speak into this tense and potentially dangerous situation. I fronted up and knocked on his door. I heard him coming down the hallway. He threw the door open and started abusing me verbally". I raised my hands to him in submission and said "bro, I've just come across the road to apologise, I shouldn't have yelled out at you like that". He calmed down a little and tried to justify his actions. A couple of weeks later one of the Maori girls came up to me after church and said "I heard you had a run in with the cuzzies the other week bro. Bad fulla that fulla, he only just got out of jail that day eh"! From that day on those neighbours were always friendly, waved out and greeted us.
"We decided to move closer to my elderly Mum in Opotiki, and Tauranga seemed like a good option. The house market was overpriced and crazy but one place stood out. We prayed over it and felt God telling us to buy it. Whilst looking for a local church we were encouraged to join street help ministries [Drug Arm] and learnt how to evangelise effectively through the leading and guiding of the Holy Spirit". Bosun continues "we were often out in the middle of Friday and Saturday nights just loving on people, hearing their stories, giving them food and hot drinks, and when appropriate, talking to them about Jesus.
One Friday night we were sound asleep when I was woken abruptly at 1215am. I heard a voice say 'get up'. I wondered if I was just hearing the neighbours voices. I sat up and listened intently but didn't hear another sound, so settled back down again to sleep. This time I heard a distinctly louder voice 'get up'. I sat up in bed and woke my wife. She'd heard nothing and went back to sleep . I thought, was I dreaming, did I imagine that? The third time my head hadn't even hit the pillow and the commanding voice came again 'GET UP'. This time I go 'ok God its you'. I pulled on some clothes and shuffled into the lounge. Sitting down in my lazyboy [reclining chair]I wondered, am I dreaming? Am I sleep walking? Have I lost my mind or am I awake and you're speaking to me as I've now heard your audible voice 3 times. I kept asking God 'why did you wake me up?' I heard nothing, so I sat and decided to try and read my bible but the pages were just a blur. I said again 'ok God you have spoken to me 3 times, tell me what to do?'. This time he said 'GO OUT'. I grabbed my car keys and was driving up the road instead of asking the Lord where He wanted me to go. I drove to Sulphur Point knowing the boy racers would be doing burnouts as we often ministered to them at that time of night at that location. As I watched for a few minutes I realised in my spirit this was not where God wanted me to be. I hadn't heard another word from God, so I started up the car and drove away.
It felt like a giant magnet pulling my car. I reckon I could have crossed my arms and the car would have driven itself". Bosun says "this magnet like force pulled my car all the way back to the Mount main beach and I arrived just to the left of the toilet block at 1.30am. I got out of my car and the first thing I saw was this young girl standing under a pohutukawa tree. I approached her and asked "are you ok?". She broke down in tears, and the 17 year old then shared her tragic and confronting life story with me. That night she was going to commit suicide and hang herself. She felt this was the only option left to her, as it was in my case 30 years previously. I got to share my testimony with her, prayed and ministered to her, and told her about Jesus and how he turned my life around.
I don't know what became of her after this, as I offered her a lift which she declined. I do know, that night God woke me in the middle of the night to save this young girl's life".
Bosun recalls "three days later I was sitting reading the property press circling bargains and all of a sudden I was fully blinded. I had a pen in my hand and started writing. Then my eyes were opened, I looked down to see what I had written. 'All I want from you is obedience [shama]'. So every time I hear that still small voice, or a word to do something, I just do it and don't question it.
"There I was aged 26. I'd hung myself. 30 years later God used what I did to myself to go and save someone else's life". 'The enemy intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done. The saving of many lives'. Genesis 50 v 20.
People say to me now, I hear you're all religious. My reply is "no, I just believe in Jesus and have a personal relationship with the Creator of the universe. I have changed my lifestyle to live according to His plan and purpose, and have left my selfish past behind. I was once lost, but now I'm found."