For those of you just finding this page, welcome, you are amongst friends. For those who have listened to the Podcast and the Book, welcome, this is my story - and the reason that gives me the authority to speak in the way I do about being wounded, when you've read this you will see just how far God has brought me…and I pray that gives you hope and encouragement that He can bring you this far as well.

Even if you’ve read it before in the book, or heard it on the Podcast I believe you will get something from it by reading it here. Just remember to read it in the correct accent.

The following is an excerpt from the book.

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At the age of 5 God told me He wanted me to work for an aviation based mission organization out of the UK. For many years I assumed I was supposed to be a pilot, because that's the glamorous job. But at the age of 16 I was told I couldn't become a pilot because I had asthma and bad eyesight. I was devastated and questioned whether God really wanted me to work for this mission.

I was talking to a military recruiter at a career event and he asked me why I wanted to be a pilot. When I told him he pointed out that the mission needed more than just pilots, and had I thought about becoming a mechanic? It's something I hadn't considered, until then. God opened the doors for me to train as a mechanic. I left school and went to college. After college I left the UK and, at the age of 21, moved to a small town in rural Ohio. I left my family, my friends and my country to move to a place where I knew no one, with only two suitcases of worldly possessions.

I moved to Coshocton Ohio to train at a facility that specializes in training aircraft mechanics to go out into the mission field. While in Coshocton I met a girl who would become my wife. After 3 and a half years of training I graduated the program and officially joined the mission organization I had been planning on working for since I was 5. Nineteen years of praying, planning and training had paid off! I had finally made it to where God wanted me to be.

After a few months back in the UK to raise funds I was sent to Kenya. My fiance, Vicky, stayed in the USA for the first year. The "honeymoon" period of joining the mission was over very quickly. I was in Nairobi in 2007 in the runup to some very contentious elections. In December of 2007 as I was in the USA visiting Vicky, I watched on the news as houses on my street in Nairobi were torched. Returning to Nairobi after Christmas there was constant unrest and mob killings on a daily basis. Life in the hangar was hard. I was the only non-Kenyan there and the hatred outside was reflected inside, even amongst the Christians.

The mission organization had recruited me and another mechanic, along with a maintenance manager, to help bring the maintenance standard up to American and European standards. We weren't told this vital piece of information until we got there. Being told something like this is hard. What was harder was that the other mechanic, who was recently married, decided that he didn't want to expose his wife to the violence and left. This was something he was criticized for severely within the mission, but I've always believed he made the right decision. The manager they hired had recently been widowed, and he didn't last long there either. So I was left by myself very much as an outsider in the hangar.

I was the only non-Kenyan working in a hangar with extreme tribal tension. I had no experience in this kind of conflict and had no support. The mission provided a week of "cultural" training before deployment but they didn't address how to deal with a superior (who was also a Bishop over three Churches) who was actively feeding the tribal hatred within the hangar. In August of 2008 I left Kenya and returned to the USA to get married, returning to Kenya in October of 2008.

During my time away I had emailed the only support I had, the HR at the UK office of the organization. I expressed my concerns over bringing my wife to Kenya. I expressed my concerns for her safety and my issues with not having any moral, physical, emotional, or spiritual support in the hangar. Shortly after we arrived back in Kenya we were told that the decision had been made to move us to Uganda.

They say that getting married is stressful. Well, we did it twice. Once in the USA, then the next weekend in the UK, and then flew back to the USA to pack. Getting married, moving to a new country (new to my wife) and then being asked to move to another new country is also stressful; but we agreed. So in January of 2009 we left Kenya and went to Uganda. I'd been sick while in Kenya before I got married. I'd had a bad intestinal infection that took a lot of medication to get rid of. Shortly after getting back to Nairobi with Vicky I got shingles. Something very unusual for someone in their late twenties.

Life in Kampala was very different. The Ugandans weren't killing each other in the streets, which was an immediate improvement. Kampala is very different from Nairobi and my wife felt safe walking by herself through the streets. We made friends with the Ugandans we came across, and my wife started working at an orphanage run by a lady from the USA. For a short time things seemed great. I felt like I had arrived at the place God wanted me to be, and that I'd been working towards since I was 5. I was on the Mountain Top I believed all missionaries lived on! I thought this euphoria would last until I either retired, or died doing what I loved.

But that feeling didn't last long. I became terribly sick when I was working in Uganda and the doctor diagnosed me with Chronic Fatigue. My bosses thought they knew better than the doctor and wanted me to go to a Doctor in the UK, and to a shrink to get my head checked. OK, that's a little harsh, they wanted me to go to a Christian psychologist to see if I was emotionally and psychologically still fit for work. I found out later, from other people at the mission, that they didn't believe my illness was real and thought it was a mental issue, or worse, that I was being lazy and didn't want to work.

I didn't like the psychologist and we didn't get on. She started the first session with the question “So tell me about your childhood”...and the relationship went downhill from there. So I went to a different counselor. God spoke through her and one phrase cured me of the turmoil that was inside my head. She asked me if what God had for me with the mission organization had come to an end. It may not sound like much, but it was huge. It was like scales falling off my eyes.

My bosses had said something very similar. They had said "maybe you need to reevaluate your calling". The question this lady asked me and what my bosses asked me was, in reality, the same question. One asked in a quiet way if God was telling me it was time to move on to the next thing, the other was challenging the authenticity of my initial calling. One was a gentle question, the other was a condemning accusation. After my wife and I left the mission field in Africa we came back to her hometown in America. That was ten years ago.

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So that is my story, in an abbreviated and unemotional version. But does that explain the wounding? No, not really. So lets continue to look at just why this hurt so much, why it took so long to heal from, and why it gives me the right to talk to you with such authority on the subject of Healing and Restoration.

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Since I was five years old I had a clear calling that God wanted me to work for the mission organization I went to Africa with. Over ten years ago that calling ended in a very abrupt way. For over ten years now I have been sick. Having been diagnosed with Chronic Fatigue, for which there is no real treatment, I resigned myself to a life of having very little energy. About four years ago I started seeing a doctor who did not like the diagnosis I had been given. He ran the same tests that every other doctor, on three continents, had run. He made the same comment every other doctor had made "Your white blood count is really low". But he then asked a question no one else had asked: "I wonder why your blood count is so low".

The doctor sent me to a series of specialists and one of those specialists diagnosed me as having a fairly rare disease. I won't bore you with the medical name but there was something in my blood that was killing the white blood cells. And it had been for over a decade. The disease itself was not what was making me sick, but it meant that my body couldn't fight off much that came its way. After a lot of tests, copious amounts of steroids, and far too many hospital visits I was given a treatment usually used for cancer patients. That was over a year ago.

After more than a decade of being constantly ill a strange thing happened to me eighteen months ago. I was driving home from a long day at work and I had this weird sensation. For a few minutes I couldn't tell what was wrong with me. It was a sensation that I couldn't really explain. After pondering for a few minutes I called my wife.

If you've never been really sick for a long period of time you probably won't understand, but I hadn't felt that way in well over ten years. I felt well. I had energy. When I got home I didn't fall asleep the second I sat down. It was like a heavy weight had been lifted off my shoulders. And I have been feeling that way ever since. Yes, I still get tired. But when we sit watching TV in the evening it is my wife who falls asleep, not me. Yes, I have relapsed again since then, but again I am feeling “well” after the last round of treatment.

So why am I wounded? Not only have I had more than ten years of barely living. It was more than ten years of getting home from a long day at work and collapsing in exhaustion. It was ten years of not being able to "do" anything because I was ill. It was ten years of having to watch as my wife had to cut the grass because I, the man of the house, did not have the energy to do so.

But it's so much more than just a decade. Since I was 5 God had wanted me to work for a specific mission organization and I failed. Or at least that's what I thought. That's what some of the people I worked with at the mission told me. That's what some of my supporters told me. That is what some of my friends told me.

Ever since we returned to Coshocton people at the facility where I first trained as a mechanic have invited me to visit. I've made lame excuses so many times that they have stopped inviting me. The reason I haven't visited is out of shame. I was ashamed of my failure. I was ashamed that I let them down, that I let my supporters down, and that I let God himself down.

That shame was voiced by some of the people I worked with. To my face and behind my back they doubted my illness. But more than that, they made me doubt my calling. They said things like "If God really called you then you wouldn't be struggling". So that is why I was wounded. I was wounded to the point of being completely broken. And that is why I have the authority to speak about being broken, the road to healing, and the hope of restoration.

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I said that there are two types of people who I know are reading this. My book was originally written for other people who had been wounded in Ministry. But as my ministry has evolved I’ve realized that the hurt I experienced, and the healing, are as applicable to those of you who have been hurt in Church as much as those who have been hurt in ministry.

I have been deeply hurt doing what God called me to do, and by those in the Church. I am on the journey to complete Healing and Restoration, and I invite you to join me on that journey. This ministry does not focus on the hurt, but rather on the Healing and Restoration process. Yes, you have been hurt, but what God has for you “next” is far more rewarding than you can imaging, and one day you will be able to look back and say: “The pain was worth it”.