| When God gets his hands dirty |
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Sheila and Patrick Sa  muels have a shared passion. Both from Asian Christian families they made a commitment to follow Jesus in very different circumstances and even different countries. Their aim now is to bring God’s love to those in need of comfort and support. Sheila’s story I was born and brought up in Lancashire. My earliest recollection of God is that He was always there; part of the furniture in the typical Asian Christian household and that you had to go to Church. The Church I attended was the social hub of the community having a strong church-school link and a well-attended Sunday school. It was here that I had an exciting church life and early Christian experiences. Things came to a halt when my sister died at the age of 15 after a heart operation. Nobody asked ‘Why did God allow it?’ but my whole family was shaken by this devastating news. My parents took a long time to recover and everyone suffered in different ways. I found it hard to get back to academic study and left school with poor results. My parents were disappointed, they wanted me to study medicine but I knew I had no medical interest. I eventually studied ‘A’ levels and led a very mixed up, deceitful life. As an Asian Christian your identity is ‘Christian’ but our parents carry a strong Eastern/Islamic culture. This often led to fights about dress code, staying out, meeting friends, having boyfriends. I lived rebelliously. I rarely went to classes; I had excuses for not attending or doing course work. I spent more time out of college than in, I lied, I smoked, I drank, I did everything I knew my parents didn’t want me to do. The summer I finished my ‘A’ levels I visited Pakistan, and met Patrick. I came back to England and my life continued and I made it to university, graduated and started work. My passion was working with deprived communities and broken people. It was here that I met God again in a new and different way. One day sitting with a man who had nothing and was finding it hard to find work, I suddenly found myself praying for him. I realised that I prayed for all my down and out individuals and that God was with me. He was interested in me and what I was doing, he cared for the people I was working with. In fact He cared for me. I realise that this God got his hands dirty. This experience made a huge a impact on my life and helped shape the future with hope and purpose. Patrick’s story I was born and raised in Pakistan. I studied in a school where apart from pressure of the education system, added pressure came from my strict mum who was a teacher at the school. On Sundays church was compulsory and I tried to come up with excuses to avoid going to Sunday school and escaping the horrid Sunday school teacher who had the gifting of asking you the very question, you didn’t know the answer to. Church was a bore, more so because church services lasted over 2 hours sometimes, or that’s how it felt. The only highlight came when I joined the youth activities at church, there was a great social atmosphere and I even got comfortable with praying aloud, leading a group and sharing my thoughts. Yet I knew I couldn’t become a real Christian because they were the people who were not allowed to have fun and were always preaching at someone. After completing my engineering training I got a job. Shortly after this I was invited to attend a Christian summer camp in north Pakistan. I decided to go to do some sightseeing and use it as an excuse to visit cousins on the way. When we reached the campsite I was amazed to see so many Christian young people. The atmosphere was amazing, this contradicted my image of a Christian and this new image I saw appealed to me. Half way through the week I decided being a Christian couldn’t be that bad if all these young people were bubbling with joy and talked about being loved by God. So I decided to give it a go. In that moment I let go of the steering wheel of my life and gave it to God. I got back home absolutely broke! I spent more time thinking and worrying about how I would manage to get through the month than this idea of becoming a Christian and letting God be in control. Then a former colleague asked me to do some technical drawings and paid in advance. It was at this point I realised that my concern was also God’s, this was not a coincidence but God working. It was from that point onwards that I decided to give Him charge of my life in its entirety! |
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