Alison’s Story

I grew up in Clydach in the 1970s. My father (John Davies) was the minister of Trinity Presbyterian Church and then Bethel Evangelical Church. Like many people, we later moved away and in 1989 I met a young man called Geraint. We had only been courting for three weeks when he proposed! We were married that year and moved to Folkestone, England so I could begin teaching in a primary school. What followed was not only great joy but great difficulty. Our son Deiniol was born in 1992, but that same year Geraint was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis. God’s timing was perfect. Having had three serious miscarriages previously, Deiniol’s birth put a traumatic diagnosis in perspective. Having learnt from early in our married lives that God only has what is best for us we were able to trust him with the MS. In the following years our daughters, Sioned and Meinir, were born but Geraint’s condition was getting worse.

By 1994 we had moved to Wrexham and Geraint had to give up work, first as an excellent primary school teacher, then as a not-so-good financial advisor! By 1996, I too had given up teaching so that I could care full-time for Geraint. Over the years the doctors tried various treatments, but Geraint had every possible MS symptom and from 2003 his health rapidly deteriorated. By 2007 it was clear that he was not going to live much longer, and in November 2009 Geraint died at home with the family around him.

Kevin’s Story

I went to Thames Valley Police aged 16 to start fulfilling my childhood dream of becoming a police officer in the traffic division. As a police cadet in Thames Valley, and a police officer in Yorkshire, I had to handle many complex and critical situations. However, it wasn’t just in my professional life that circumstances were critical.

I met Jennie in 1981 and we married July 1982. She was a devoted secondary school teacher. In the following years our sons were born. David in 1984, Ben in 1986 and Sam in 1988. In 2000 the unexpected happened – Jennie was diagnosed with breast cancer. The various operations and treatments did at first seem to help and Jennie was able to continue the job she loved.

But in 2005 everything seemed to go wrong. In the summer, Jennie’s cancer had returned. On 7 July 2005 I was on the Circle line on the London subway and was caught up in the Aldgate explosion. It was that year too that my mum died. By 2007 Jennie had given up work and on 1 December 2009 she died at home with the family around her.

Their Story

Just before Geraint and Jennie died, our sons Sam and Deiniol became very close friends. Knowing their Mum and Dad did not have long left to live, they forged a close bond. This was the start of a friendship that would change the course of our future.

Alison: Kevin’s son Sam spent summer 2010 with me at a Christian conference in Aberystwyth. After chatting with him I sent Kevin a book about grieving and bereavement called Tracing the Rainbow. I thought he might find it helpful, totally unaware that his Master’s degree included the whole aspect of grieving and bereavement counselling!

Kevin: I replied to Alison’s letter, and we started writing to each other until we met finally in Bridgend during October 2010, which was also organised by Sam and Deiniol! By March 2011 we were married! Life has not been easy for either of us, but looking back, we can see that God has always been good to us. Our Christian faith has helped us every single day – if we hadn’t known that God is with us even in the most difficult times, we would probably never have been able to cope. And we’re able to testify that although our faith has been tested by the deaths of Geraint and Jennie, God has seen us through, and we know that they are in a far better place because their trust and hope was also in Jesus Christ alone.

Life hasn’t always been easy and my Christian faith has been tested on many occasions. My first baby was born with poorly working kidneys. His illness wasn’t diagnosed until he was four months old, and as a first time mother I wondered why he cried all the time, didn’t gain weight and wouldn’t sleep. I remember lots of evenings crying to God for strength. When he was finally diagnosed and taken into hospital, he needed to gain weight. To do this he needed a naso-gastric tube. I remember Rhys screaming as the nurse struggled to insert the tube into his nose. I ran to the toilet and cried to my God and saviour.

When I returned, the tube was inserted, and all was calm. When looking back at these moments, I’m reminded that God is interested in all of my life and he hears my cries for help.

God has kept me and given me strength through some very difficult times, but I haven’t always been a Christian. My mother is a Christian and took my brother and me to church every week. I loved the stories, singing the songs, and taking part in the annual Christmas services. I thought I knew Jesus, that he was my friend; it was a huge shock when I heard the gospel message for the first time. I was told I was a sinner who deserved hell. Over the next few months the Lord gently worked on my heart and I knew that I needed to ask him for forgiveness for all the wrong things I had thought, said and done. I asked him to be my saviour and my friend. There was no bolt of lightning, but I felt peace in my heart; I knew I belonged to him.

I’ve been blessed with two more children, and Rhys had a kidney transplant this year. Even though at times I’ve been afraid and had little faith, God’s love for me has remained constant, promising to never leave me nor forsake me, no matter what may lie ahead. Psalm 121 says, ‘I will lift my eyes to the hills – where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth.’ I have found that to be true.

“Forgiveness” – a word so easy to say and so often used. C.S. Lewis said that “Everyone sees forgiveness as a lovely idea”. However he went on to add “Until they have something to forgive”. And that’s so true isn’t it?

Forgiveness is so difficult to put into practise when you’re cut up at the traffic lights, or when you find out you’ve been lied to by your best friend.

Thirteen years ago the question of forgiveness became a very real one for me. Every summer my whole family (me, Mum, Dad and younger brother and sister), packed into a caravanette full of aid: food, clothes, medicine and Bibles and journeyed off to Eastern Europe, for six weeks. My parents had been doing it since they were first married — they had even been in Prague when the Russians invaded — but as we kids got older, we tended to stay behind in the UK.

This particular year, when Mum and Dad approached the Romanian border, the lights failed on the vehicle. They stopped in a lay-by to wait for daylight, but were soon disturbed by a loud knocking on the door. There was a young man dressed in black, holding ID stood before them, claiming in Hungarian that he was a policeman and they were illegally parked. Mum and Dad doubted his authenticity, but paid the fine of £14. They would go to the police in the morning.

However, the lads had seen inside the vehicle – here was a western van, loaded with aid, in a remote place, ripe for robbery, and so they returned an hour or so later.

Trapped!

As my parents were awoken by loud bangs once again, Dad clambered into the cab and put the key into the ignition. Suddenly a masked man smashed through the driver’s window with an iron bar and began beating Dad to death. There was nothing Dad could do — he was trapped in his own seat, receiving blow after blow. And it was there he died, suffocating on his own blood. The men fled the scene, leaving Mum to try and resuscitate my father.

Having realised there was nothing she could do for him, Mum hid all the valuables —passports , money, her wedding ring etc, and then sat down to find comfort from the Bible. She said afterwards that she knew a tremendous peace, she knew that God was with her and watching over her, even if the lads did return.

Well, return, they did, and in a further two attacks the lads beat Mum up, left her for dead and stole items from the vehicle. Help finally came in the morning, when Mum was taken to hospital.

Reality Hits

I was working in Kent at the time, and when the police had tracked me down, it really was like I was watching on from elsewhere, floating above the room or seeing things unfold on TV. At that stage I merely felt numb, obliged to cry, but not really upset. And all the time I just kept on thinking “God works for the good of those who love him” …so come on God, do something!

But still the penny hadn’t dropped. Still I hadn’t realised my Dad was dead. And it remained that way, until I walked into my Mum’s hospital room and heard the blow-by-blow account of what had happened a couple of days before, as she did a TV interview. Until I saw with my very own eyes what they had done to Mum, how they had bruised and mangled her face. Until I listened to all my father had gone through. It was then, that I grasped what had happened. It was then that pure hatred flowed through my veins. It was then I wanted to lash out. It was then that my Mum uttered the most amazing words, “I don’t bear any malice towards them…in fact I actually pray they will become Christians”.

The Final Straw

It was the final straw. I stormed out of the room, onto the balcony. I was absolutely furious. How on earth could she say that? And then, other questions began to flood my mind. Questions like: “Do I really believe God exists and is in control?”, “Do I really believe God is good and his plans are perfect?”, “Do I really believe God sent his son, Jesus into the world?”, “Do I believe Jesus died in my place, to take the punishment I deserve?”. And as I answered yes to each and every one of them, I was then left with the question, “Well, how am I going to respond?”

I knew I had accepted that God was the loving creator and ruler of the world, and that Jesus was His Son. I knew he was the king of my life and so knew I had to accept phrases like “Forgive one another” and “Turn the other cheek.” But I didn’t know how I could do that. How can I turn hatred to love, anger to peace, revenge to forgiveness? It wasn’t humanly possible and so I just prayed and begged God to change me. Instantly He answered. My mind was stilled, my emotions transformed, I was able to forgive. And that transformation has stayed in place over the past thirteen years. Through university, teaching and church work, through long, dark days and even longer, darker nights; through pain and confusion; through good times and bad; God’s help has remained constant, his enabling the same.

Truly forgiven

Mum visited the lads in prison and kept in touch with two of them. She gave them each a copy of the Bible and told them how she had forgiven them. Then, many years later, we received a letter. Inside the envelope was a note from Istvan Dudas. Istvan Dudas – the man who had killed my father. He titled his letter “I caused death but had received life in exchange”. Istvan went on to explain that he had realised for the first time that Jesus had died on the cross in his place and even though he had killed someone, God could forgive him. Istvan wrote “That night I prayed to God as to my father. I asked him to forgive me. As soon as I declared myself sinful I started to cry and the Lord Jesus lifted the burden off my heart. I also asked Him to stay with me forever.” It was truly fantastic to read. God had forgiven another person. Istvan realised he had let God down and not treated Him as king. He asked God to change him and take over the running of his life. God heard and answered that prayer, just as he heard and answered my balcony prayer for forgiveness.

Abused, broken home, rebellious, fostered, sectioned and criminal are just some of the words Alison uses when talking about her past.

‘I reached eighteen and lost job after job. I soon got caught up in the drug world and became addicted to heroin. But by the time I was thirty, I just wanted to be clean. I was five and a half stone and I just wanted to be clean.

‘This lady from Teen Challenge, a Christian organisation that helps people like me, came to see me. She said that Jesus was the solution to my problem. I thought “What a joke!” but I wanted to be free and I’d already tried everything else so I gave Teen Challenge a go.

‘They were different to any other kind of rehab. They were kind and it was more like a home than a clinic but staying was optional. Within those first two days, I opened a Bible and the words “the truth will set you free” just stared at me. The next eighteen months were the best in my life. I left rehab a Christian and completely clean. Jesus was the solution to my problem. He had changed my life.’

This is a recording of Alison telling her story in Bethel. Why not listen and hear how God turned around her life?

For us Christmas 1988 has become the watershed which separates all the events and memories of our lives. The first emotion I remember as I turned on the TV at 9pm on 21 December was one of sympathy, for the passengers, crew, and the people of the small Scottish town of Lockerbie. My sixteen-year-old son, Marcus, sat on the sofa while Lisa, my wife, perched on the arm and I stood beside her. “The poor people!” I remember someone saying. Then they began to give details – “Pan-Am flight 103, flying from London to New York, has exploded above the Scottish border at about three minutes past seven.”

“That’s Helga’s flight!” burst from Lisa’s lips. Even though I had checked her luggage in at the Pan-Am desk only a few hours earlier, the possibility of such a thing happening to our daughter just hadn’t crossed my mind. These things happen to others; we are normally observers of other people’s tragedies. You can imagine the stunned silence which followed as the unthinkable slowly expanded, filling not only our minds but every nerve and cell of our bodies.

“No! No! No! No!” broke the silence as Marcus screamed at the screen. “Helga, Helga, Helga” quietly, almost silently, managed to escape from somewhere deep-down inside my wife. I stood as if dumb; my tongue unable to articulate at all.

By day two there were already rumours that a terrorist bomb might have been the cause of the disaster and some of the relatives were howling for blood. When one early interviewer asked how we felt about it we said that we readily forgave whoever was responsible. “How can you forgive animals like that?” was the interviewer’s response. While I was trying to formulate a reply Lisa cut in. “Well, sir, Jesus said that if we don’t forgive those who hurt us God will not forgive us. We are also sinners and are trusting God for forgiveness through the blood of Jesus Christ. Sir, we just dare not play such foolish games as not forgiving.”

I was still wondering at my wife’s answer when he shot another question at me. “Has this not destroyed your faith?” To this day I am amazed at how readily the words came and how inspired they were. “Well,” I said, “This is where we prove whether what we have preached and said we believed for most of our lives is real, or whether it is just a game.”

During the past twenty-two years we have found the grace and love of God and the strength that he gives to be more real than we had ever dared believe.

The 6 April 1983 was the day that changed Billy’s life. He’d been called to an armed bank robbery, and had been chasing the robbers in a high-speed pursuit through the streets of Bristol. Then the car the robbers were driving crashed. As Billy cautiously approached the vehicle, his world was suddenly turned upside down.

“The bullet hit me just under the lip, sheared off my teeth, went through my tongue into my throat. It physically lifted me clean off the ground and knocked me unconscious.”

As Billy lay fighting for his life, his attacker — teenager, Stephen Korsa-Acquah — hijacked two other vehicles before being caught on the M4. Eventually he was given three life sentences for attempted murder. But for Billy, rebuilding his life did not mean simply trying to forget his attackers. Instead, he sent them a Christmas card.

“In our Christian faith we believe in forgiveness and letting go, not holding grudges. I was very grateful to be still alive.”

The card certainly made an impact on Stephen. He took some time to come to terms with his crimes. Eventually he realised his punishment was a legacy of his own actions and something he had to deal with. He knew part of that meant saying sorry for his earlier crimes. So he contacted the prison chaplain, and asked if he could get a letter back to Billy, apologising, and asking to meet him. Billy readily agreed, but with mixed emotions. “I had no issues with forgiving him, that was the very essence of my Christian faith. Forgiveness is not about condoning or justifying someone’s actions, but it releases you from what can actually be a very cancerous bitterness.

“When I got to the prison, I was anxious about his character — whether I would like him or dislike him; which way this was going to go. But I liked him — it appeared that he was genuine… It’s seeing people for what they are.”

Over the following years Billy visited Stephen often in prison, and eventually supported his application for parole. Stephen now works with young people encouraging them away from lives of violence.

“It’s so satisfying to see him moving on. Bearing in mind I come from a police background, it’s good to feel I’ve done something to help that happen.”

Billy’s life has also taken off in directions he didn’t expect. He’s appeared on television and radio, with Esther Rantzen, John Snow, Michael Buerk and John McCarthy. “It’s not a one-way thing. Stephen has contributed to my quality of life, he’s a true friend.”

There are some decisions that can change our lives forever. For Henry Olonga — the first black cricketer to play for Zimbabwe, and still the youngest to have represented the country — one day will stay in his mind forever.

The day was 10 February 2003. Henry was in Harare — Zimbabwe’s capital city — preparing to face Namibia in Zimbabwe’s opening game of the Cricket World Cup. “There’s about fifteen minutes to go. Andy Flower and I look at each other and nod. We get out the rolls of black tape, cut off a length and wrap it round our left arms. Andy calls for quiet and announces to the team what we are doing and why.”

Both players also release a statement to the press. In part it reads, “We cannot in good conscience take to the field and ignore the fact that millions of our compatriots are starving, unemployed and oppressed… Hundreds of thousands of Zimbabweans may even die in the coming months through a combination of starvation, poverty and Aids… Many people have been unjustly imprisoned and tortured simply for expressing their opinions about what is happening… People have been murdered, raped, beaten and had their homes destroyed because of their beliefs… If we remain silent that will be taken as a sign that either we do not care or we condone what is happening in Zimbabwe… We will each wear a black armband for the duration of the World Cup. In doing so we are mourning the death of democracy in Zimbabwe. In doing so we are making a silent plea to those responsible to stop the abuse of human rights in Zimbabwe. In doing so we pray that our small action may help to restore sanity and dignity to our nation.”

An unlikely hero

“Up until the end of 2002 I would probably have never imagined myself doing what I did. Zimbabwe had lost hundreds of millions of dollars in a war with the Democratic Republic of Congo. Then Mugabe’s decision to take all farms away from the white farmers — which was clearly racist — made the economy nose-dive even more. It destroyed the country.

“Everytime I went on tour I was constantly being asked by international journalists to justify and back up my country.

“At the same time I began to realise that the corruption in the government was causing orphans, pensioners and widows to really suffer. It broke my heart — it made me mad.

Moved to action

“One day I read a verse from the Bible, and it said ‘Defend the cause of the fatherless, plead the case of the widow’. And in the very same verse, the Bible said, ‘Rebuke the oppressor’. The verse hit me between the eyes. I felt that God was calling me to say something, to speak out against this oppressor. I saw the country desecrated by its rich and powerful leaders, I just felt I’ve got to speak out.

“After Andy and I had made the protest, we got articles written in the paper calling us ‘British spies’ making accusations against us, and had threats against our lives.

“I knew that my life was in danger, and that I needed to get out of the country. But I didn’t want just to disappear — I wanted to see this through. But I knew the next round of the Cup was going to be played in South Africa. If we got through, I would be safely out of the country when our World Cup ended. But only three teams from our pool would qualify, and we had England, Australia, India and Pakistan competing for those places. It meant that if we lost to Pakistan in our last game, we wouldn’t get through, and I wouldn’t get out of Zimbabwe.

“I went to my hotel bedroom the night before the match and said a prayer: ‘Lord I’m in trouble, and I need your help!’. The next day I got to the ground, we played about fifteen overs, and it rained. And it kept on raining, until mid-afternoon when the game was called off and we were awarded a draw, which was enough to get us to South Africa. You make up your own mind about what happened, but I know the Bible tells me about a God who has the power to intervene in people’s lives.”

An even bigger decision

The decision to speak out against Mugabe’s regime was literally life-changing for Henry. It cost him his cricketing career, and even his homeland. But according to Henry, it was not the biggest, nor the most important decision of his life. That had come several years earlier when, still a teenager, he decided to begin investigating whether God really existed.

“At boarding school there was a compulsory church service on Sunday, and I had many Christian teachers, so there was constant Christian input into my life — hymns, the Lord’s Prayer, sometimes Evensong. But this memorising, and the priest reading things off bits of paper didn’t work for me. I’m an emotional creature, and if I was to ever relate to God, it’s not going to be through me reading off a sheet of paper.

“I thought the way you became acceptable to God was by being a good person. I was one of those kids who kind of avoided the big trouble the other kids got into, so I thought, ‘I’m not such a bad person’. I thought that the bad things I did weren’t that bad really, and the good things I did easily offset them.

“I remember debating with mates about the existence of God. I loved those debates, but it wasn’t until high school that this moved into the classroom. Some of the teachers were saying, ‘There is no God. Billions of years ago, there was nothing. Then ‘nothing’ went kaboom! — it exploded in a big bang. You can imagine as a child growing up, wanting to believe in God, and now being told that nothing created everything, caused me a bit of confusion.

“So off I go, on my quest to find out what the truth is. I thought that maybe I’d find it in enjoying sport — I love the high of sport, I love to win. Losing sucks! But even after a win, there’s always the feeling that there’s got to be more to life than this.

“So I immersed myself in music and performance, but I didn’t find what I was looking for there, either. I thought I then ought to try something more spiritual, so I bought a book called Teach Yourself Yoga. But I couldn’t do the exercises and the meditations were just baloney!

Giving God a chance

“I was sixteen-years-old by then, and I knew it was time I gave God a chance. So I finally agreed to go on a Christian youth camp. Each day there were activities and sports, then each night a guy got up to speak. Using the Bible, he totally undermined my confidence that I was good enough for God, which was what I had put my trust in. He read from the Bible where it says, ‘All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God’, and he said that nothing we do can make us good enough for God. He also said that sin is not just doing the wrong things, but sin is also not doing the good things God asks of you like ‘Love your neighbour’, or ‘Forgive those who sin against you’.

“So I know I’m damned. One, I’ve broken God’s law; two, I haven’t done the good things I’m supposed to. The rug is being pulled from under my feet. The speaker read from the Bible that ‘The wages of sin is death’, and that God needs to punish those who do wrong.

“But the speaker went on to read the whole verse from the Bible, ‘The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life’. He said that God the Father hung his Son on a cross to reconcile us to God, and all I had to do was call on the name of Jesus to be saved and forgiven. It doesn’t matter who you are, it doesn’t matter what you’ve done. Whatever you’ve done in your life, if you turn to God in repentance he will save you.

“It was a no-brainer! So I prayed, but no angel from heaven sounded their trumpet. I thought that there must be more than this!

“But over time I discovered an assurance that my sins had been forgiven. The barrier that I felt between me and God had gone. For the first time in my life I knew there was nothing I could do to make God love me more. I was accepted just as I was.”

With more than fifty caps, Garin Jenkins is Wales’ most capped hooker. A former captain of Swansea, he’s played in three World Cups, and won both league and cup honours with his club — not to mention scoring a try in Swansea’s famous 21‑6 rout of Australia in 1992. But in this special interview he explains that his biggest challenges have come not on, but off the field.

“Throughout my schooldays I had a passion for rugby. But there was a time in school when I was pretty much a non-attender, I was pretty wild. I think I succumbed to peer pressure; I was out to impress.

“I had always been brought up to go to Sunday School. But I turned away and really rebelled as a thirteen-year-old, and went off the rails. I got thrown out of school, and got sent away to a ‘home for naughty boys’, shall we say. It was a big wake-up call. I really didn’t want to be there.

Dark times

“It was a dark time and I didn’t think I would ever have come back from where I was going. I remember thinking I’m going down the river here at a rate of knots and I can’t reach the bank. But I remembered the little lessons I learned in Sunday School, so I was also praying to God for help. Looking back, if it wasn’t for the love that God had for me through my parents, I don’t think I would have made it through.

“After four or five months I was back in Ynysybwl, and later got a job in the colliery. I enjoyed playing for Ynysybwl youth and working. But I always needed discipline. I’d served a lot of rugby bans, for six or ten weeks. It looked at one point that I would not fulfil my rugby dream.

“Then there was a lot of pit closures, and in 1988 I was made redundant. Rugby was a bit ‘what-if?’ at the time, because it wasn’t professional, but there was an opportunity to go to New Zealand to play. So I went and things really started to take off. After I came back my rugby career started to spiral upwards.

“I always remember I was digging a trench in Pontypridd Park when I had the call to say I’d been selected for Wales. I can tell you I stepped out of that trench pretty quick!

Dreams fulfilled

“The first cap was great, but I didn’t just want the first cap. It’s strange, we set our standards, but when you actually get there, it doesn’t fulfil what you think it will. When I was a kid I thought, ‘When I get to play for Wales I’ll have a big car and holidays’, and yes they were nice — but they still don’t fill the void.

“Another dark moment came when I was captain of Swansea. We were playing at Cardiff — it was the day that Gwyn Jones broke his neck. It was live on S4C and at the end of the game I jumped over the barriers into the crowd. Everybody thought I was doing an Eric Cantona, but my father had had a heart attack on the terraces whilst I was playing.

“People who will have watched me playing will think, ‘Well you weren’t much of a Christian’. But I really believe that the early days, going to Sunday School and the little teachings on a Beach Mission in Newquay really stuck with me during all that time, even if it’s only come to prominence in the last couple of years.

“It was always ‘Next week, I’m really going to start going to church regularly’. I didn’t really want to come out and make a stand for God. I kept telling myself that I wasn’t ready yet. But even through those times the message that I heard on the Beach Mission in Newquay was always near me.

“They told a story in the Bible about Lazarus and the rich man. If I’m honest it always frightened me as a twelve-year-old. The rich man had everything in the world but when he died he wasn’t in the place where we as Christians trust we are going. But Lazarus had nothing in life, he was picking up the scraps from the dogs. But when his life was finished, he ended up in a place where there was no pain, for eternity. And it’s that story that really spurred me on my way.

Not in charge

“I always used to think that there was lots of time. There’s always next week, but we’ve got to realise that we’re not in charge. Not long ago I had a secondary tumour in my neck. It was very challenging, and again I turned to God big time in prayer. I made a commitment to God because of what he’s done for me. I feel very blessed to experience the warmth and love from God that’s been there all along but has come to be very special.

“I’m very thankful that things are working out good. But this time there’s no ‘Aah great, God’s helped, now I’m off again’. Now I’m committed to him.

“Some people have said, ‘You’ve had too many bumps on the head so you’ve become a Christian!’. But if when I was playing I’d been where I am now — as a Christian — I think I’d have been a far more successful rugby player. I would have been inwardly stronger, and I’d have had more discipline at times. And I think now I have more integrity that doesn’t take away from my competitiveness. Unfortunately I’m forty-two and about five stone overweight so I’ll never be able to put that to the test as a player! But I’m sure there’ll be many challenging opportunities to come off the field.

“When I look back I know that God has been with me all my life. People will say, ‘You’ve worked hard, you’ve got good determination’, but I know that God has really helped me and blessed me with all the positive things in my life. I feel so blessed that God has shown me so much grace over the years.”