12. How a Bible in a Rucksack was so Empowering.

My Late Father's Hopelessness in Family Holidays.

Before I was born in 1952, my future mother had left her Italian hometown of Turin and found accommodation in London. Not that there was any dispute with her parents or siblings. During this post-War period, all agreed that she might find better opportunities here in the UK. As such, there were rivers of tears when she boarded the Paris-bound train at the city's Porta Nuova Station.

It was here that she met her future husband at an Italian community in the Barbican area of London. I was born a year after their wedding in 1951. However, throughout my childhood years, and including the birth of my brother six years later, Mum always kept close to her parents in Italy. At first, she corresponded solely by letter-writing. It was several years later that international phone calls became available. These were made via an operator, and the lines were connected after a delay, perhaps up to an hour. Hence, these international calls were a special occasion, despite Dad's anxiety about paying the phone bills.

By the 1960s, Dad had passed his driving test and had bought his first second-hand car, a Ford Popular. After using it locally and taking day trips to the seaside, which was at Brighton, the nearest Channel resort to London, Mum's longing for her reunion with her parents was strong. Hence, during my boyhood, Dad drove us all the way to Italy twice during the sixties, with the final third trip made in 1971, when I was 18, and dating my first girlfriend, Sandra.

The only exciting moment of these holidays was the Channel crossings. It took three days to cover the 770-mile distance, with two nights spent sleeping in the car. We had to face the truth. Dad was hopeless with hotel bookings, and as for "off the street" walk-ins, it wasn't that he lacked confidence. Rather, these holidays were governed by a tight budget. Sleeping in a parked car was his solution to a holiday abroad that my parents couldn't really afford.

My maternal grandparents (Italian: Nonni) lived on the top floor of an apartment block, the standard of Italian housing. Every apartment had two balconies, and the upper floor offered interesting views, especially from the rear balcony, which overlooked a children's swing park. Thank goodness for the swing park!

If it wasn't for the swing park, I would have gone mad with sheer boredom! My grandparents couldn't speak English; in turn, I couldn't understand Italian. Therefore, at age 13, I was locked out of all conversations. My apparent apathy towards the extended family earned a hard smack across the cheek from Dad, and a loud telling off from my grandfather, whose endless torrent of unintelligible words landed on deaf ears. Turin is an inland city, no seaside, no amusements, no stroll in any beautiful environment. An industrial town with its urbanisation, and with little historic significance, to my mind.

1966, aged 13. Dad drove us to Italy to see Nonni.

However, it was during the 1971 trip to Italy that I enjoyed some independence, although still staying at our maternal grandparents'. Avoiding their unintelligible chatter, I, alone, took the tram to the city centre, and I discovered that Turin did have something to offer the tourist, although there were no Roman archaeological sites. The River Po passes through the east of the city, and with the hills in the background, making a pleasing environment.

Dad's first car was a second-hand Ford Popular.

Independent Travel? It's in my Genes.

The Costa Brava on the Mediterranean coast of Spain, just south of the Pyrenees, was my first holiday abroad with a college friend and without my parents. It was 1972, and I was approaching the end of my teenage years. However, I still wasn't a Christian believer, and by natural instincts, this was a time for unrestricted hedonism, to "let it all out" after my boyhood constraints at my grandparents' apartment. This led to alcohol intoxication during the night, even spent the small hours of one night sleeping in the hotel bathtub amidst vomit.

Spain 1972 was a package holiday with the travel firm Cosmos. A package is a trip for which both the airline flight and hotel accommodation were made under a single booking. The hotel also serves as a base for excursions, a day spent on an escorted tour. In this one, we boarded a coach for a day trip to Barcelona, taking a boat cruise around the harbour, followed by an afternoon spent watching a traditional Spanish bullfight.

I became a Christian believer in December 1972. This conversion had changed my mode of travel entirely. A change from family get-togethers and then package hedonism to solo backpacking. And this was to be my mode of travel until our honeymoon in 1999, where we had a package to the Greek island of Rhodes.

27 years of solo backpacking. On two different occasions, I was referred to as brave. It was a lovely compliment. Yet, I was surprised. I never equated backpacking with fighting in a war, or rescuing someone from a housefire, or a drowning person from deep water. However, from a Christian point of view, I was rather unique. Why was this? 

My experience with church people of my age bracket seldom ventured abroad on their own. They had their own travel firm, Oak Hall, a company specialising in Christian packages. There was even a posh version, Intersun, now Richmond Travel, for Christians who wish to holiday with the elite. But solo backpacking? Within the 27 years of independent travel, I have never encountered another backpacker of the faith. Indeed, I knew of one believer who flew across the Atlantic Ocean to attend a conference in Washington DC. Another flew out to attend a church revival in Florida. But backpacking - to travel from one destination to another, each with its own accommodation- I'm still waiting for someone to testify.

But believing that God will care for me at all times has encouraged me to venture out. One example of this was Israel in 1976. This was after three years of Bible study. Since almost the entire Bible is centred on Jerusalem, and the city of the Crucifixion, Burial, and the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, God incarnate, this was one place I wanted to visit for myself. So, with a Bible packed in my luggage, I set off alone, unlike any other Christian I knew, and having arrived, I walked into a hotel to ask if there was a room available. That is independent travel.

The 1977 and 1978 trips to Canada and the USA followed the same pattern. With a Bible in my luggage, I travelled from town to town, from one tourist venue to another, always walking into a hotel or hostel from the street, and being offered a room or a dormitory bed. 

Long-haul travel ceased temporarily after the 1978 trip to the States. This was due to a change of occupation, from a machinist at the British Aircraft Corporation, to a year of unemployment, to becoming self-employed in 1980.

As mentioned last week, it was October 1992 when I received something like a vision while I was up on a ladder and cleaning a bedroom window. The vision was about my second trip to the Holy Land, specifically to pray for Jerusalem. The fulfilment of the vision took place ten months later in 1993, thus proving its genuine authenticity.  This was to open a new era of long-haul travel as an independent backpacker. This time, I carried a rucksack on my shoulders, freeing my arms, making me a "proper" backpacker. Before then, I hauled a suitcase. This second era of backpacking lasted eight years between 1993 and 2000 inclusive, the year we went for our final visit to the Holy Land before the birth of our first daughter. Except for our honeymoon in 1999, which was a package, in 2000, we walked into two different hostels, and we were offered a room in each. The independent way.

Although I boast about my mode of travel over the years, I fully realise that all of it was linked to my faith in Jesus Christ as Saviour and Guide. Take-off was, as I remember, preceded by prayer and entrusting myself to God's care. By recognising the need for his Guidance, I ventured out without fear or trepidation. Travel experience peaked in 1997. After hiking the Grand Canyon in 1995, the climax was backpacking in Australia. In 1997, I was able to gaze at the Southern Cross constellation in the night sky, streaked with the Milky Way, and look through goggles at the corals making up the Great Barrier Reef while snorkelling.

Cream of backpacking: hiking the Grand Canyon, 1995.

Cream of backpacking: the Great Barrier Reef, 1997.

On this Blogger page, I have written a detailed Biography of my travels. This was the result of the wishes of my readers, who also suggested writing a book. Feeling shy of approaching publishers, I have posted it here. It's quite long, all 129 weeks. Therefore, I have created an Index to the Biography, splitting it into sections. To access the section that interests you, first, click here for the Index. Then click the appropriate section you are interested in. Many sections have several blogs. After finishing the first, click "Newer Blog" which is found at the foot of the page.

Also proved to be even more popular are the travel photos. These consist of 58 weeks. However, there is no separate index for the photo section. To reach it, again, click on the Index, and click on "Newer Post". This brings you to the start of the photo album.

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Next Week, one man stood up. The theatre audience fell into a panic. And how that affected me.

11. Did I have a Vision on the Ladder?

 Sitting Still and all Alone during a Hysterical Moment.

It was a normal Sunday evening in the 1980s. Bracknell Baptist Church was meeting at what should have been an average service at the assembly hall of Garth Hill School. By then, the congregation had grown too large in numbers to fit in our own 70s-style church building. Therefore, we moved into temporary accommodation at the school until the construction of our much larger new building, to be called the Kerith Centre, was completed.

During the latter half of the service, two women, Tina and Judy, were invited to testify on the front stage. They shared their experience from their visit to the Toronto Airport Christian Fellowship, one of John Wimber's Vineyard group of charismatic churches. With its senior Pentecostal pastor, Randy Clark, leading the congregation, an already familiar hysteria fell on the whole Canadian church. The Toronto Blessing. Here, people were shaking, laughing, crying, screaming, falling on their backs, growling, and even experiencing paralysis, and displayed hysteria. For anyone completely unchurched, walking in and witnessing such phenomena would have fled terrified, and associated it with demonic influence and power. Instead, the whole phenomenon was labelled as Slain by the Spirit. That is, the Holy Spirit.

When the two married women had finished their testimony, all of a sudden, the whole congregation here at Garth Hill School went into very similar hysterics. Like across the Atlantic Ocean, everyone displayed very similar characteristics to those in Toronto. 

Except me, who sat still and quiet amidst the commotion. Why wasn't I "slain by the Holy Spirit"? Here, in that large room, middle-class businessmen who were dressed in a suit and tie during the week in the office, and renowned for their British emotional restraint, fell into a state of supreme ecstasy. And there was I, sitting as still and quiet as a statue, observing everything around me without partaking. At the time, I really believed that the Holy Spirit had overlooked me.

Fortunately, this occurred en masse only once in the life of our Bracknell church, but while I was visiting a friend, I showed him my photo album of the Grand Canyon, which I visited in 1995. One photo featured a panel fixed to a wall. On it, a quote from Psalm 104:24, which reads:

O LORD, how manifold are your works! In wisdom hast thou made them all: the earth is full of thy riches.

I took this at the Grand Canyon Village, 1995.

This graduate friend was married and a father of two healthy, growing children. Yet, when he saw the photo, he jumped up, yelped, and shook for a moment, startling me, who sat opposite. Later, this same person came to visit me at my apartment. On the bookshelf, the spine of one of the books read, The Cup of Trembling. He went straight for it, and after pulling it out and reading the subtitle, Jerusalem and Bible Prophecy, he immediately placed it back on the shelf. For that brief moment, he thought I was reading about the Toronto Blessing. Instead, the book was about the Middle East and its Islamic influence. There were other cases of adult men trembling while in a prayer meeting or simply leaving after the end of the meeting.

Healed. Really?

Staying within this spirit charisma, in 1989, I left Bracknell Baptist Church, and for several months, I was without a church to go to, until I was introduced by another friend to Ascot Baptist Church, in the next town from Bracknell. At that time, Barry Buckingham was the pastor. However, in 1996, he was asked to stand down over a serious misdemeanour, and for a year, we were without a pastor, with the church led by the Baptist Union branch office in Windsor. Then, in 1997, shortly before I took off for Singapore, a new pastor, the late Phil Rogers, arrived, along with his family of three teenage sons.

It was during his ministry that one of our members, Barry Kill, developed cancer. When our elders learned about the Yoido Full Gospel Church in the far east, Phil took Barry and his wife, Sian, to South Korea to pray for Barry's healing from the disease. The Assemblies of God church, with up to 830,000 members in 2007, was the world's largest megachurch, which was led by David Yonggi Cho. It boasted a "prayer mountain" where many would ascend each day to pray specifically for healing. Reports were that many were healed of their illnesses and infirmities. These reports encouraged Phil, his wife, Sandy, and Barry, along with his wife, Sian, to fly out with the intention of returning with Barry healed of his cancer.

There seemed to be a strong similarity between the Yoido Full Gospel Church in Seoul, South Korea, and the more famous Our Lady of Lourdes in Southern France. The latter is famed for the number of supernatural healings taking place there. Yet, never once had I heard the NHS recommend a visit either to Lourdes or Yoido. It is also interesting, to my mind at least, that all three churches that boasted divine intervention, including the Toronto Airport Fellowship, didn't believe in the Eternal Security of the Believer, or Once Saved Always Saved. Rather, each takes the Arminian worldview that one's eternal life must be maintained by lifelong faithfulness, or risk losing one's salvation altogether while still alive. With the doctrine of free grace compromised, the door remains open for other false teachings or manifestations to creep in.

Our four Ascot members returned from South Korea. Barry was still unwell, and a mere week later, he died while he was still in his prime, to be with the Lord.

And so the beat goes on. Reports of divine healing, but throughout my half-century as a Christian believer, I have never witnessed any supernatural healing, especially of the instantaneous kind.

Indeed, about two or three years ago, Paul, our church treasurer, went down with paralysis of his lower body, from his waist down, and he had to spend a year in hospital as an inpatient, followed by a spell in a rehabilitation home. Each day, prayers went up for him to recover. Much to the amazement of the doctors, he gradually regained his mobility. We all praised God and thanked him for his recovery.

Considering my own wife's illness. Suffering from Functional Neurological Disorder, which makes her wheelchair-bound when outdoors, prayers were offered on her behalf, but after 13 years, she shows little recovery. Rather, to this day, she still experiences waves of pain, and she's in and out of the hospital. Therefore, I ask, did God show favouritism when he healed Paul after just a year, but not Alex over 13 years?

Paul spent a year cared for by the NHS, with doctors and well-trained nurses meeting all his needs. This was quite a contrast to two specific healings, both recorded in the Bible. In the New Testament, Acts, chapter 3, records a beggar, crippled from birth. When Peter and John approached him, they gained his attention. The beggar was expecting a donation, but Peter said,

Silver and gold, I have none, but what I have, I give you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk!

And immediately, the beggar rose to his feet for the first time in his life. He danced with joy over the miracle. No prayers. No hospitals. No doctors. No nurses or care homes. Instead, a straightforward healing.

Paul and Barnabas in Lystra had a similar experience. While Paul was preaching about the resurrection of Christ in the marketplace, he saw a man who was also crippled from birth. When he saw that the beggar had faith, and without any prayers, Paul commanded him to rise up and walk. He did. When the crowds saw the miracle, they all attributed Paul and Barnabas as their gods Hermes and Jupiter, appearing in the likeness of men (Acts 16).

These were true divine miracles. And their main purpose? To convince the crowds that Jesus of Nazareth is the true Messiah, who died for their sins, was buried, and on the third day, rose from the dead, and gives eternal life to all who believe and trust in him. A far cry from spending a year as an inpatient at a hospital! It's by careful Bible study, especially in the Book of Acts, that the working of miracles was restricted to the apostles only. There seems to be no record of any other disciple or believer other than the thirteen (the 12 disciples of Christ and Paul the apostle) working miracles, especially of instant healing and even raising the dead.

Considering all that I have experienced here, and never witnessed a proper divine healing, I can't help but feel very sceptical when I hear about modern healing. For a start, those I have seen prayed for were already Christian believers. Neither of the two beggars was a believer until their miraculous healing, which also converted them to Christ.

I was (and still am) holding this worldview that one October morning in 1992, I set off to do a day's window cleaning. On my way to the street, I called at a friend's home not only for a coffee and chat, but to clean his windows. It was a regular call I have been making for some time. However, a disagreement arose between us, and he dismissed me from cleaning his windows. Feeling very downcast and mourning over the loss of a friend, I made my way to the street for the rest of the day.

I was up on the ladder cleaning one of the upper-floor bedroom windows when a sudden thought, almost a vision, entered my head. It was quite sudden and intense. I saw myself standing on the summit of the Mount of Olives, praying over Jerusalem, its panorama making a spectacular view from the summit.

What went through my mind, October 1992.

I gasped. Somehow, I knew that this was a divine intervention. But this needed proving. The test lay in funding for the trip. Up to that point, I made enough to live on adequately without getting into debt. But from that week onwards, I found that I had £20 to put away into the savings each week. There was no interruption. Week after week, I saved up until the start of August 1993. After 15 years since 1978, of staying firmly on the ground, once again, I took to the air from London to Israel, Tel Aviv.

As I sat in the well-used Monarch Airlines, little did I know that the "vision" I had while I was feeling low and worthless would open up not just this 1993 trip to Israel, but the next seven years of my life, which I believe had some divine inspiration.

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Footnote:

This morning, after our church service was over, I had a friendly chat with Sandy, the widowed wife of Phil Rogers. When I wrote this blog yesterday, I said that it was Mark Froud who flew to South Korea with Phil. I was mistaken. The text is now corrected. The patient who flew out was Barry Kill, after reading a book about Yonggi Cho's megachurch. Hopes were high for returning home healed. However, all who were involved have testified that they felt a strong presence of God while they were on the prayer mountain.

I apologise for any confusion caused.

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Next Week, with a rucksack on my back, I was alone - but not really alone.

10. A Rise to Peak Fitness.

Why I had to Switch Churches in 1990.

Between 1975 and 1989, I spent nearly 15 years attending Bracknell Baptist Church. As I said last week, I never sat well with its practical sermons that leaned more on capitalism than on Jesus Christ, even though our senior pastor, Ben Davies, taught salvation by faith in Christ only and the truthfulness of the believer's eternal security.

As more and more graduates filed in during the late eighties, our church building couldn't accommodate the growing congregation. Each Sunday, it spilt into the adjoining meeting room. That means there was a large number of people who partook in the service without facing the front platform. Eventually, we moved to the assembly hall of Garth Hill School. This hall had a larger capacity than the original church building, and we met there for several years while funds were raised to buy the adjoining land next to the church and to build a new meeting venue with a vision of 1,000 seats.

Hence, Sunday by Sunday, sermons were more about money than about Jesus Christ. The verses of Scripture used were mainly from Malachi 3:8-12. Here, if a person or family does not tithe, then they are under a curse for robbing God. And here was the only Scripture where testing God was permitted. Tithe, and God will bless us financially. It was hardly short of the Prosperity Gospel, a heresy often pushed by American televangelists such as Kenneth Copeland and Oral Roberts.

The necessity to tithe, although still voluntary rather than compulsive, made me feel placed under the Law rather than acting under grace. Little wonder, as Malachi 1:1 specifically stated that this Old Testament book was addressed to Israel only, and not to the Church, nor to any of the Gentiles. Hence, over time, I began to feel spiritually hungry, even to the point of practising something akin to the occult. No, not the Ouiga board, but by making a paper pyramid on the exact scale of the Great Pyramid of Egypt, and testing whether it has power to sharpen a razor blade when placed inside, or to turn milk into edible cheese. Oh, if only I knew how to rightly divide the Word of Truth! I wouldn't have gotten myself into this mess.

Before the end of 1989, I decided to leave Bracknell Baptist Church with its obsession with unbridled capitalism. Several months elapsed without any church attendance. Then, in the summer of 1990, one of my friends, Tim Kingcott, invited me to Ascot Baptist Church. I attended an evening service, and I liked it straight away. Its pastor, Barry Buckingham, was enthusiastic about Jesus Christ, his death, burial and resurrection, and that was the tonic I so desperately needed. Immediately, my dabbling with pyramid power ceased.

Hospital Radio Presenter (see below).

The Change of Churches in relation to Work.

Having lost my job at the British Aircraft Corporation, renamed British Aerospace, in 1979, I was unemployed for over a year. In those days, I attended Bracknell Baptist Church. I spent much of that time visiting our local Jobcentre, and indeed, I have found one or two dead-end jobs where I certainly wouldn't want to spend the rest of my life. One of those jobs was at Nurdin & Peacock's, a wholesale warehouse on the edge of Reading. I was there for two months in early 1980.

However, in those days, I was driven by envy of the graduates who attended our church, and with secure, high-tech jobs and a stable income, they were okay with tithing. One graduate, married and with a high income, even judged me for making a stand against tithing. At Nurdin & Peacock's, I was very unhappy. Little wonder that a furious row with the foreman led to my dismissal. Perhaps this graduate was right after all. My inability to hold down a job might be part of the curse of Malachi.

However, during my time at Nurdin & Peacock's, a middle-aged female was passing through, possibly one of their customers. A complete stranger whom I had never spoken to before, turned to me and asked, You're a Christian, aren't you? Despite how I was feeling, I confirmed to her that I was. This was just the encouragement I needed. It's known as the word of knowledge, one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit.

However, after my dismissal from the warehouse, my housegroup leader, frustrated at my failed work life as an employee, encouraged me to go self-employed. Immediately, I liked the idea. I already had some experience in painting and decorating, having painted interior walls with emulsion during the period of unemployment. However, the painting side of the business struggled through its first winter, that of 1981. This was due to a combination of a lack of customers, poor weather for exterior painting of door and window frames, slow work and a lack of proper income. I need to branch out to a far more stable source of income. Domestic window cleaning was the answer.

I went canvassing around the housing estates. I aimed for four streets, one for each week of the month. I managed to collect a small number of clients from all four streets. Thus, I combined domestic window cleaning and decorating, providing a more stable income.

Over the months covering the next two years, I picked up more and more clients in all four rounds. Gradually, each street per week became two, then three. There was no more room for painting and decorating. Instead, window cleaning became my full-time job, stabilising my income and covering the whole working week. I kept this job for the next 35 years, and retired in 2015, at age 63, mainly due to failing health.

Leisure Activities.

In 1981, Tim Kingcott was the crew leader at Radio Heatherwood, an in-hospital broadcasting station tucked away in a large closet under the maternity wards. Run by the League of Friends, each evening, a different crew runs the station. Ours was the Friday crew. 

I joined the Friday crew under Tim's invitation, and each of us went out to the wards to collect requests for each patient's favourite music to be played. Also, each of us had a turn to present. Although officially known as presenters, we called ourselves jocks, short for disc-jockeys.

I concentrated on the maternity wards, both pre- and postnatal. At first, I was assigned just thirty minutes at the console, later extended to a full hour. When Tim had to leave due to his full-time work as an accountant, I took on the mantle of team leadership and, with God's help, led the team to be one of the most popular among the inpatients.

I presented on the Friday crew for five years between 1981 and 1986. On one occasion, I even wore a tie, and this was captured on camera. However, during my time there, the League of Friends announced that there was a shortage of funds, and no one had in mind to close the station. As the 1986 Bracknell Half Marathon was approaching, I set off to persuade my customers to sponsor me to raise funds for the hospital station, as it was run entirely by charitable donations.

In April 1986, I completed the half-marathon, a distance of 13 miles (21 km) in less than two hours, rather slow for men's athletic standards, but successful. I raised enough funds from my sponsors to help sustain the radio station. The completion of half marathons, and I did several of them, led to the sport of triathlon, swim-cycle-run, three disciplines in one race. In the autumn of 1986, after finishing with Radio Heatherwood, I joined Thames Valley Triathletes, based in Reading, and trained to full peak fitness.

1986 Half Marathon.

I also competed in triathlons around Southern England. Venues such as Reading, Eastbourne, Winchester, Essex, Swanage, and other venues drew my competitive attention. Most of these venues involved train travel and overnight hotel stays.

It was while I was in my seven-year of TVT membership that I changed church. This included the period when I had no church to attend. When I eventually started attending Ascot Baptist Church, the set-up was quite different to what it is today. Barry Buckingham, along with his two deacons, Bill Hopkins and Les Draper, wore suits and ties, and each sat at either side of Barry as he stood at the bulky, wooden pulpit to preach. Furthermore, several men wore ties in the mixed congregation. Rather than graduates, Ascot attracted a group of undergrads from Holloway University, a few miles down the road, in the Egham area.

Today, Ascot Life Church has its Sunday morning service at the Paddock Restaurant at the Ascot Racecourse. We moved to this venue in 2013, when our own building, now called The Life Centre, became too small to accommodate the growth of the congregation. Although there is no senior pastor, the church is led by three elders. Two of them are young enough to be my grandsons, and the third is the son of Les Draper, and closer to my age.

Footnote: Last week, I asked whether I had a supernatural vision while I was at work. But I had so much to narrate about this week that I have deferred that to next week.

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Next Week: With faith in God, a life of cleaning windows was much more than mere ladders, a bucket, and a chamois.