Faith Stories with Naomi Reed

“I grew up in a housing commission place in western Sydney. It was pretty rough. My dad worked night shift, so we didn’t see him very much, but we were all close to my mother.” “After school, I started a degree in literature, which I enjoyed very much. But at the beginning of my second […]

“My husband, Max, and I moved out of our family home in February, 2018. We’d lived there for 45 years and raised our four children there. It was time to downsize. We were in our late sixties and we wanted somewhere smaller, to spend our retirement. We found a place in Springwood [Blue Mountains, New […]

“I was born into a Christian family, in Kupang, Indonesia. Every Tuesday afternoon, my parents would hold a prayer meeting in our house, and a great crowd would come, all of them praying and worshipping God together. It would go on for hours. It was an amazing influence.” “From when I was very young, I […]

“When I was younger, I went to church once, for a wedding, and that was about it. I never went again. In 1977, I met and married Judy, and in 1979 we bought a house together. In 1981 our son, Stephen, was born. But the marriage didn’t last. We weren’t connecting. I was working shift […]

“I met my husband, Mark, in a pub, in 1977. We got on straight away. I liked his sense of humour and we married six months later. We lived in an orange, single-decker bus for the first two years. We had great plans for traveling in it, but most of the time we actually parked […]

“My husband, Peter, and I and our four children lived in Mussoorie, North India, in the 1950s and 60s. He was the principal at the boarding school there. In July, 1963, I was about to give birth to our fourth child, when everything changed. Peter had gone up to the school to take the staff […]

“I met Memo when I was 18. He was 27. He had a Mexican background and we met through a Mexican dance performance group. We hit it off straight away. We got married and we had four children. But it was when our first child was small, and I was struggling with my marriage, that […]

“I grew up in [the Sydney suburb] Willoughby. My dad was a sparkie. My extended family was a network of disasters. It was a time when every kid went to Sunday school and my mother made sure I did. Our local Anglican church was a hub of evangelical ministry at the time, so, by the […]

“Throughout my high school years, my aim in life was to make people like me. I wanted to do well at school, have good friends, and go to the right parties. By year 12, I was doing pretty well at all that. My teachers liked me, I had good friends and my parents were pleased […]

“I came to Central Asia in the winter of 2003. It was very cold. My plan was to study Russian and teach obstetrics to the post-graduate nurses. Within the first week of my arrival, though, I looked out of my apartment window and I saw three homeless people picking food out of the dustbins, with […]

“I gave my life to Jesus in Sunday School. Since then, I’ve always liked to sing and I’ve often been in a choir. I tend to remember Scripture that I sing. Many years ago, we sang Micah 6:8 – ‘He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of […]

“My wife and I grew up in Jaffna, Sri Lanka. We married in 1966 and we moved to Colombo, for work. We slowly got involved in the Methodist Church. I became a local preacher for the Tamil congregation and we attended weekly prayer meetings.” “Then, on July 25, 1983, the children went to school and […]

“When I was about six or seven, I told my family I wanted to be a hairdresser. They said to me, ‘No … you can do better than that.’ Ever since then, I’ve had this feeling that I needed to do bigger things, or better things. I needed to achieve more. So in high school, […]

“In 1980, my wife Betty and I, along with our three-year-old twin daughters, moved to Indonesia. After studying Indonesian, we moved to the jungles of North Maluku. We did this in the hope of reaching an unreached, semi-nomadic, 100% illiterate, mono-lingual group of hunters and gatherers know as the Tugutil.  They had a fearsome reputation […]

The following article may be disturbing or triggering for some readers. It details traumatic acts of violence. “I grew up in Kalimpong, North India. My dad was a Hindu. My mum was a Buddhist. They were both very much against Christianity and I never heard about God. They quarreled a lot and there was violence […]

“By the time I was 21, I’d finished my degree and got a really good job. My career was all mapped out. I had a nice boyfriend and a loving family. It all looked perfect. What more could I want?” “Then slowly, things started to unravel. Looking back, I’m sure it was God working in […]