We caught up with Lee to hear some of his journey of faith. From a fishing community in the UK, Lee talks honestly and openly about his life and the various paths he has walked, including a period in his life as a Satanist.
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We used to have certain times of the year where we would seriously pray to stop Christian Churches happening or to stop things happening, like at Easter time. We’d pray for families to have arguments. So like, I don’t know, a Pastor in a church, we prayed for the pastor and his wife to have a massive argument. Mate tell us a bit about where you were born and your family sort of upbringing when you were a youngster, what was that like. Okay I was born in Great Yarmouth, don’t hold that against me, I had no way in that, you know. I come from a fishing village called Lowestoft All my family were either connected with fishing or the frozen food industry side of it My mom was a bird’s eye operator, my nan was a squid filter. it’s just all like, it’s always been something to do with like fishing or that sort of stuff I had a fairly normal childhood growing up to about the age of 10, then my Mom found, well started going out of a guy who became a stepdad My real dad was off and on. He’ turn up, he’d never actually lived with my Mum as such but he turned up for a couple of weeks at a time, back in Lowestoft Take me out for maybe a day and then I wouldn’t see him again for however long, could be years in some case So didn’t really have a relationship with your Dad. No. Not at all. I only found out I had a Grandad, well his dad, lived in the same town. I didn’t know that until I was 12, cuz my dad’s from Aberdeen, so I just assumed all my family lived up there but his dad had moved down to Lowesoft because of the fishing and yeah I must have walked past his house hundreds of times and not knew. So didn’t really have a lot of time with my dad, more my mom’s side of the family. My family got evacuated in the war from Lowestoft to a place called Creswell, which is literally 4 miles away from where we’re sitting now. So I’ve got family now, who live there, so this does kind of feel like home. Yeah, it’s kind of weird, my mom was born in Creswell, just after the war, so it does feel like I’m back home in a way. So what was home life like, at home your mom, like in that environment. Do you have a brother or sister with you No, I’ve got brothers and sisters but they’re from my dad. Apparently, I’ve got two younger brothers and an older brother, older sister. Oh, you don’t know them. No. Never. Well, I’ve met one of them. I met my youngest brother for a day but I don’t know anything about the others Apparently he was very good at doing that, meeting someone, getting them pregnant and going on to the next one. What type of kid were you in that environment, were you a quiet kid, just look after yourself or I didn’t have many friends. I had a lot of mates, you know I was always one of the guys at school who had like a few mates but Friends were different. I had probably a couple of friends that we do things with. Cuz like childhood life kind of got a little bit weird. My stepdad brought a different element into stuff he was a chronic drinker Kind of made my mom go a little bit. She had well, she had mental health issues because of his drinking it kind of affected her quite badly. She went to the doctors, now we’re talking mid-80s at this point So it wasn’t like it is nowadays with mental health issues and the doctor told her I’m not going to put you on tablets there’s a thing called sanatogen wine which is 14% wine but it’s got vitamins and minerals in it if you feel a bit down, have a glass of that but because the doctor told her that, she was up to two bottles a day fairly soon and then became an alcoholic because it’s like I say it was it was proper wine This was all visible to you as a young lad living in that environment? Yeah. So it wasn’t hidden away or anything? No, because there was nothing to be ashamed of because the doctor told her she could do it. You know, it wasn’t like it she was sitting on the park bench. In her head, you know. I mean, that kind of drinking came later in life but yeah to start off with, she was just I know, doctors told me, you know doctor’s not got to lie to me. So obviously, I don’t think that’ be allowed now How did things start to change? You grew up a bit you know, 15 16 you get to do your own thing a little bit more. What did that look like for you? Well because my mom was mostly on the booze most of the time, with my stepdad, my nan took over not guardianship but I used to go and see her more you know She never drunk, she never, she was the total opposite to my mom and stepdad I could go home from school and I’d open the door and depending on what records we’re playing, I’d either go in or go to my Nans It’s like a defence mechanism I must have built myself. If I could hear Country and Western music I knew that was my mom and I knew they’d had an argument and so she was down so I would wouldn’t go in. If it was loud music, rock and roll heavy metal I knew they’d been all right, they had a good day, there was a good atmosphere So I’d go in. My stepdad, he’d probably been he’d probably been there about 6 months. One day we were mucking around, because I’d got into doing martial arts at this point. I was doing Judo and I remember being in the front room and he’s like come on show me some of this stuff. So as a 9, like 9 or 10 years old, I couldn’t really do anything to him and so he pinned me on the floor and started to touch me, inappropriately, and I knew something was wrong but I couldn’t do anything to get off, you know, but my mom walked in and he stopped and then that led to probably 4/5 years of abuse. and that wasn’t in 4 years, was over a period of possibly 10 years, even when I was in my teenage years cuz I couldn’t do nothing. I was frozen every time it happened. I would be like, just repulsed and frozen. We moved from Lowestoft to Norwich in September 86 because my nan passed away and he started to hit my Mum So my mom got put into a women’s refuge and the day that she got into there was my Nan’s funeral So she had a choice, she could either take the placement or go to the funeral and possibly miss the placement. So she took the place and that caused a bit of a problem in my family because obviously, she hadn’t gone to the funeral but I think my Nan would have understood, you know. My Nan was, she’d have been okay with that cuz she was making sure I was Okay So my Nan would have been fine but you know families are what they are. um Couple of years of being around Norwich, he then was in jail but he came out of jail. Mum got a flat with him back in Norwich, everything was fine for a few weeks, as it always was Then it started again, so I got moved up to here. I came to live with Auntie and Uncle in Creswell. Spent my last two years at high school up here. Didn’t really work out that well in school cuz I had undiagnosed dyslexia Which I only found out about 5 years ago, well six years ago now plus being ‘a foreigner’ as they called it, cuz I wasn’t from around here. You know, with a silly Norfolk accent and sort of got called country bumpkin and all this sort of stuff but I developed quite well in my martial arts at this point so I used to use it. You know if they attacked me, it wasn’t good for them and I wasn’t happy with that, I used to hate it but you know, just like, I guess sometimes, I just got, it got too much and I would end up hurting somebody not maliciously I’ll just you do it and that kind of then became a pattern I lost all feeling, I didn’t have any, I didn’t have remorse because I didn’t feel anything in the first place there was just like you’ve just started on me, I’ll deal with it and then I’ll go away Looking back at it, I was a complete animal. I then left school with no qualifications. When I started, I went back to Lowestoft, cuz I’d always wanted to be a trawlerman. That was my thing, because I’d seen it all my life, I’d been around the Sea and stuff and I did I managed to get onto an apprenticeship thing on the college and so I was a trawlerman I started drinking with the guys when I was 16 but again I’d been drinking before cuz it had been around but I really started seriously drinking when I was 16. We’d go out for two weeks at a time come back in and then we’d just get drunk for four days. Go back out to Sea. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. So yeah, I can I can probably say from the age of 16. That’s when drink really started to get a hold of me So, were you living in Lowestoft then? No, I rented a room at the YMCA in Norwich Oh, in Norwich Yeah. Because it was a 24-hour staff there and they didn’t mind me paying up a month ahead and not using the room because I was paying for it still cuz fishing’s a weird industry, you don’t work 9 to 5 so you can come in to Harbor 2 in the morning and then that’s you done So, I’d then get a taxi from Lowestoft to Norwich and I knew somebody would be of shift at the YM. It might be 3 in the morning. They’d let me in, I’d go and have a shower and I’d go to bed. So it, that was great. That was all, you know everything was all right, nobody ever got into my room. I knew it was safe. So I’ve done that, probably, for about four years I’ve done that and then we We signed as part of Europe, the British government signed the fishing treaty and overnight my company went bust, literally overnight. We couldn’t have any quotas or we couldn’t do this stuff that we were doing. So got made redundant. Got quite a big pay off and thought well you know, I’ll have a month of fun and stuff and that turned into probably a 26-year addiction. WOW. To alcohol? Yeah! What did that look like for you? What were you drinking? What was the pattern? Well my early 20s, when I stopped being a fisherman, I was drinking, well it took me a while to get to this level but I was drinking at one point 12L of white lightning a day and I got so bad on it that the doctor actually signed me off sick he said this, you can’t work. So I was on sick and I hated that cuz I’ve always been quite active. I always used to work and stuff but I couldn’t. I’d got down to about 9 Stone. So not eating just drinking all day? Yeah, just drinking all day. I’d probably eat I’d probably eat a pot needle every two or three days, because it was liquid. It was, as I could sort of down it but yeah I’d be more than happy drinking cider all day. and then the ironic thing is we got, because it was winter time, we got a cold weather payment from Job Center. and obviously, that was supposed to go on my heating or whatever and it didn’t I thought I know, I’ll buy a bottle of whiskey, as a treat and as I’m sitting there drinking the whiskey I’m thinking well, what I’ve just spent on this whiskey is what I spend on the cider a day So surely a litre of whiskey is better than drinking 12 litres of cider so I stopped drinking the cider. because then in an alcoholic’s haze, that’s quite a reasonable thing to do, you know it’s stupid but you think well I’m not drinking as much calories, there’s no sugar and other So yeah, then whisky became my sort of crutch. Jack Daniels and all the other stuff but I would drink whatever you put in front of me be honest So a process of serious you know alcoholism. How were you, were you trying to get some work or were you able to get any jobs during that period When I started drinking the whiskey more than the cider I could get, I could work. Cuz it kind of, it didn’t, I didn’t have to get drunk every day I just topped up cuz I was still drunk from the day before So I started working and I started working in pubs cuz you know, I spent all my time in them so I thought I might as well and started working for the big pub chain and got a job in Norwich drinking on my shift drinking when I wasn’t on shift but it didn’t, I could hide it cuz everybody was in a pub so you couldn’t really, you smell booze on me. I’d say, oh yeah I’ve just spilt some on my shirt or you know whatever and then I got offered a promotion to Birmingham. So I took it and within 3 months they’d sussed out that I was really bad on drink. So I got made redundant, got sacked. I say redundant but I got sacked and the flat that came with the job went. I, so I was technically homeless in Birmingham because I didn’t have any connection to Birmingham they wouldn’t help me So they told me about this place called Batel and it was like okay I’ll give it a try, you know the support worker that I’d been appointed to me, told me about Betel and they took me there and then they took me that day and I spent probably four months there Got dry because it’s a completely dry house. Got some weight back on me. I felt all right. I heard the gospel every day didn’t really care, it’s sort of like, it was part of me being there When you in that environment, you can learn to just almost parrot what you’re being Oh Yeah and give the illusion of change. Yeah. Yeah, I mean like, you know when to raise your hands, you know when to say Amen. But it hadn’t changed your heart. No not at all. Hadn’t reached my heart, hadn’t got through cuz I had a lot of, I like to use what Shrek says I had a lot of onion layers. I had a lot of anger, there was a lot of bitterness Everybody done, everything wrong, it was never my fault you know. I’d got abused it wasn’t my fault. But it wasn’t my fault but you know I done things because I’d got abused so it wasn’t my fault I’m only acting out because something had happened to me, if you want to blame somebody blame him you know but really it was me you know. And you know, I’ve done Betel, like I said I’ve done about four months and I only, you know totally honest I used it because it was Winter. I didn’t want to sleep under a bus shelter. So we got to springtime and I left I got friendly with a guy who was in Betel with me and he’d gone a week before and left me his phone number said if you do leave, I’ve got a spare bed. So I took him up on the offer. I left at half 8 in the morning and by 9:00 I’d been around his and had a can of beer, from four months completely sober. You know, so obviously that was it, gateway was back open. Two weeks later I realised I’m probably going to kill myself doing this So, I phoned up Betel again and they let me in again This time for about 5 months and I think God was starting to work on me but again I still had too many barriers I was, I wouldn’t let people hug me, pray for me, no, you ain’t going to pray for me cuz that means you’re going to have to to touch me and I don’t want that man touching me and all this sort of stuff that was going through my head that you know, if a man came too close I’d be like what what are you doing. So I left and started working for another Pub chain and unbeknown to me one night I’m in the pub and I have to deal with I think it was about three or four guys. I can’t remember now and because I’d done martial arts a lot of my life I dealt with them quite quickly, got them out of the pub and everything else and one of the guys comes up, this guy comes up to me and goes didn’t know you can do that sort of stuff cuz we chatted you know, when you get regular you kind of get to know him a little bit I went well I don’t, it’s not my opening line know "Hi, I’m Lee. I’m a martial artist" it doesn’t really come out like that and he says well he said I run a certain nightclub, how much you get, how much you earn in here and I think it was about £5.50 an hour this is back in the day. He said well I’ll give you £10 an hour to come work with me So I thought about it and resigned. Started working on Broad Street which is the big Street in Birmingham, where all the nightclubs are, and it was like a Eureka moment I found my perfect outlet for what I could do because I could drink, I could take copious amounts of amphetamine because I’d started using that quite a lot and nobody cared, I done my job really well in 12 years of being a bouncer, I used violence twice. So for me I was the one that would talk to people I’d say look, you know you’re being been a bit of an idiot, go home otherwise you’re going to be going home in a police car So people wanted to work with me because I wasn’t the stereotypical bouncer you know Hit first then talk. I was the other way. I’d rather talk somebody down first It was about this time I’d gone back to Norwich. I’d left Birmingham after two years and went back to Norwich Started working for couple of firms there and I’d got some money that I didn’t realise was coming, twice and I was chatting about it one night to a guy in the pub that I used to drink in, was a heavy metal Pub I’ve always been into Black Sabbath, Metallica that sort of stuff has always been part of my big life and got talking to a guy, he said well he said maybe it was the old man sorting you out I went sorry old man and he said yeah he said I’m a local Satanist and it sounds like the old man was trying to sort you out and I went oh look, I don’t, you know, I’ve just been to a Christian rehab like a while ago and now you’re trying to do that I said like, just nah and he went, no serious he said, try it he said. Ask him to do something for you and I won’t tell you what I asked but it happened. I thought hang on a minute, I never got that with God I never you know I asked for things and nothing never happened but I’ve asked once and this thing’s happened Okay, we’ll get into this and I got quite into it. The weird thing is though, none of my friends knew None of my best mates knew, my wife when I eventually got married, she never knew I kept it. That was the Satanism side of me was private and I didn’t want to ever get involved with my kids, or my kid. That was a deliberate decision to keep that separate. Yeah I didn’t want my kid to know, I didn’t want any family members to know I didn’t want nothing, because I must have known it was wrong you know I must have, I must have felt ashamed of it I guess but before all the bravado it was like, you know, I never would have admitted I was wrong about it so Did you have a, did you have a curiosity in that sort of stuff growing up, in terms of horror and the darker side of life. Yeah. I mean like I said you know my stepdad played a Black Sabbath album one day and it was like this massive light went off in my head. I understood what they were singing and I mean not just vocally it kind of felt like, yes I get what they’re saying. Like the message almost Yeah Yeah, I kind of, it’s like a Eureka moment I guess. So I got into I got into quite heavy stuff towards the end of it I got into Norwegian death metal and like I say Black Sabbath, Metallica, Iron Maiden all this stuff that, they say they’re not into Satanism but if you delve deeper and stuff, they, most of them are Sort of inroads. Yeah and I being an 80s kid we got Dungeons and Dragons. So I played that quite a lot. The one thing I’ve never done and I don’t know why I never done it was an Ouija board. I knew there was something a bit weird about them but I used to do everything else you know. I used to dress up So there lot of rituals within Satanism. Yeah. What’s it sort of, what’s it look like. It’s a bit, when you start off, you have to make a commitment. I know the only way I can describe it, it’s a little bit like doing a Christian baptism but you don’t do a baptism but you do a there’s a commitment ceremony. and like I say I just took it, I took to it like a duck to water. Everything that they was telling me I would get, happened. We used have certain times of year where we would seriously pray to stop Christian churches happening or to stop things happening like at Easter time, we’d pray for families to have arguments So like, I don’t a pastor in a church, we pray for the pastor and his wife to have a massive argument So actively praying for, sort of division, chaos, difficulty. Yeah Everything that is opposite to the Christian view of things you know. I was, I was what they call a I followed the path of LaVey, Anton LaVey and he was the one who wrote the original satanic bible and he followed a guy called Aleister Crowley, and Crowley’s main sentence, if you want to put one sentence to say what it was, would be the whole, Do as thou wilt shall be the whole of the law. So in other words, do what you want, there’s going to be no consequences, it’s all fine, it’s all good and that’s what we done you know We was convinced that when we passed away, all the stuff that the Christian Church told us, well told people was a lie We’d be the ones in power, you know. We wouldn’t be going to hell, well we would but it’ be It’ll be a good hell, it wouldn’t be a, you know what hell is but yeah You get kind of get brainwashed, I don’t know. You get drawn in. Yeah Is there a feeling of power, is there a feeling of, I don’t know Supremacy or what are some of the things that hook you. Yeah. I mean it depends on, depends on who you going against. If you go against, real Bible believing Christians, who are filled with the spirit, you know that sort of person you know you’re probably not going to get a lot doing them because they’ve got the Armour of God, they’ve got everything else. I didn’t know about the Armour of God in the days but I knew that we couldn’t really touch them a lot because they were more powerful than us in a way but you’d get the, the how do I put this, the less and more active churches, you could easily divide them you know, they, you could easily say things or do things or we’d have guys infiltrate we’d have couples who would get interested but they wouldn’t really they’d just go into a church and for example, I can remember one in Norfolk. We had a couple and the woman actively slept with two of the church members that caused a big problem So sort of a deliberate, turn up and try and cause that division and temptation and disruption. Yeah, definitely. 100% Breaking homes and families. Yeah Were you just a man at war in your heart at that point. I saw it was a mission. Right, saw it a mission. Yeah, I saw it as a mission. I’m laughing, it’s, I think now looking back at it, it’s not as funny as what happened but I’m walking through Norwich City Center and I’ve got probably an Iron Maiden t-shirt on, I don’t know probably my bike fest, cuz I part of a bike club as well in them days and I see these two ladies walking towards me and I knew they were Christians, you know I just knew it and they kind of Can we tell you about the Lord and I kind of went you’re talking to the wrong person and they were like oh no I went, I showed them a tattoo, I’ve got a, easier to show you, than trying to explain I’ve got a. Bit higher So I just showed him that and said I’m on the other side and their faces changed, it was just like oh um okay and I went don’t ever stop me again and kind of walked away thinking, yeah that was one, you know but It’s interesting and chatting with you, it’s striking how organised Satanism is, in terms of that kind of strategy of prayer You see people, now I know as, as a Christian now I know he’s a defeated foe and everything that we’ve done, really wasn’t going to do any good. But when you’re in it and you believe it and you believe that when you die you, will be sitting in a circle with him, all this sort of stuff, you kind of feel, it does empower you, you know it kind of made you feel like you were 9 ft tall sort of thing you know like cuz I won’t go into names and stuff but obviously there’s a lot of higher ranking members of the public who are actively satanists, you know the whole thing about selling your soul or do things that’s not as far off as, you know there are things that people have done or promised to get up back and they’ve done it and it’s happened. There’s all different types of satanism but people nowadays oh you know there’s white witches, there’s black witches there’s. No, there’s just witches There’s no real, I don’t believe that a white witch is a good witch I think if you say you’re a witch, you’re a witch. We used to have, our group you know, we’d have pagans and we’d have this that and the other and really they’re all just, it’s all one. So what did you start to feel you were being drawn away from that or what changed for you with that. I was quite happy doing what I was doing. I’d got married late on in life, 41 I got married. Like I said earlier my wife didn’t know anything about, every time I went out for a meeting I’d go, I’d be doing someone else or whatever. I never told my daughter, she wasn’t my wife’s child, it’s a separate thing but never told her anything but my drinking was getting quite bad. I mean I was drinking a lot more than I usually did and I’d started working at a hospital. I’d got an apprentice as a healthcare assistant and I remember phoning my daughter up one day, to wish her happy birthday and she was like that was yesterday. I argh don’t be silly, I know when your birthday is, I was there when you were born. No Dad, it was yesterday and I’d blacked out I’d had an alcoholic blackout and just lost one day and I kind of, kind of felt like I got a slap. Hurting myself was fine you know if I drunk, whatever I drunk and I got ill and eventually would get probably liver cancer or something That was on me because it’s what I wanted to do. Hurting my daughter that was no, that wasn’t on. So me and my wife at that point had split up and my whole world would just start to crumble around me and the only thing I could think of, this is where gets kind of weird, not that my story isn’t weird anyway but my ex-wife’s best friend from Norfolk had moved to Chesterfield 20 odd years before and one of the family members in Creswell of my part of the family had passed away so I was coming up for a funeral and my wife said well why don’t we have a week up there we can stay with my friend, you can go, we can go to the funeral and have a holiday because we hadn’t really had a holiday. So yeah, that sounds like an idea anyway so we came up and spent went to the funeral, spent the rest of the week with her family, with her friend sorry and we walked through Chesterfield town centre and to this day, I don’t know why I didn’t see this but there was a shop it’s now closed down but there was a shop that had furniture and my wife was into upscaling things so she said oh can we have a look in here, I like yeah, yeah, walked in and it was a Betel shop and I walked in and looked to the left, the guy sitting behind the counter was the pastor from Birmingham that I knew and it was just like my whole world just suddenly went, No, like what’s going on I made some excuse that the dust in there was affecting me and so I had to get out and so she went okay, we’ll go somewhere else. Anyway, two about 18 months later the incident with my daughter happened and like I said my world had sort of crumbled apart. I thought okay I need a rehab I can’t get a government-funded one because they’re going to take weeks and I once in my head I decided to stop, I had to do it then and suddenly Betel came in my head and I decided that I would travel from Norwich to Chesterfield but I would do it in 4 days because my drinking was so bad I thought if I stop cuz they make you kind of stop straight away, I thought if I stop, on day one I’m going to be ill, I might have a fit and there’s chance I can choke or whatever So I cut down every day a quarter of a liter, that sounds mad even thinking about it but I would, my first day I only drunk 3/4 of a liter of whiskey, the next day was a half, the next day was a quarter and then I went into the Batel shop and went I need help and they took me. Took me there and then, well later that day they me back. and yeah I’m not going to say it was easy the first couple of weeks. Obviously I was, I had the sweat, I had, it affects your stomach and everything else but I could see that the guys had a piece that I didn’t and obviously I, you know they knew about my background cuz I’d had to tell them and they were like don’t you be praying, if you’re going to pray, pray to God I’m like okay went to church the first time and there was a girl who was singing and she sung a song called Ain’t No Grave and I I’d heard Christian music the last two weeks before but this song just hit me and I started crying and a bloke put his arm around me and I didn’t move, I didn’t Flinch and I was what’s going on I don’t feel like I need to and this bloke went God’s moving in you and I went I think He is yeah and that night I said right okay if you are real which I knew he was because we’ve been praying against the church, I was like just sort me out, I don’t, I’ve had enough What I’ve done isn’t working, help me and yeah I was there, I was in Betel 18 months. Got baptized there became what they call a responsible which is looking after other guys but after 18 months I kind of felt that I couldn’t do any more with them, I didn’t want to be there long-term cuz I wanted to start earning money for my daughter, get my daughter back in my life. So I moved from there to another charity called Lighthouse in Rotherham, I was there a year Again started getting work, started getting some finance behind me all the time still not drinking. Then I heard about a training center called Mattersey which is just outside Retford and it was to get my, they would give you an NVQ level 3 Health and Social care and a year of theology or ongoing theology, Not Christian theology. Yeah like every day, yeah so you do like an hour every day So some teaching for your life you know. Yeah! Yeah, but you lived on-site so I applied and became one of the first 12 in there and again things were happening in my life that I never saw would happen I’ve done my time at Mattersey, got my NVQ, well sorry it’s now called a diploma they’ve changed it, Anyway got my diploma and I moved out to Brimington and a friend of mine who was on Facebook, We, cuz when you at Mattersey, you work for Green Pastures and we’d been to a conference and this guy was a wrestler, Gareth. Hi Gareth, I’d always been a big wrestling fan since I was a kid and for him to be a Christian wrestler, kind of got me interested in stuff, Anyway, I’d seen that he’d put a post on Facebook about doing something in Chesterfield and I’d only been in Brimington a week. So I put, oh if you need any help, I live in Brimington Chesterfield and within seconds he sent me a message going, When did you move. About a week ago, he said you need to go and see these guys and he told me about Edge. I was like why do I need to go and see them, he went seriously go and see them. I looked on, looked on the map I thought well it’s next to a Morrison, I could do with some shopping I’ll go down and see what time they open on a Sunday, not knowing that Edge doesn’t meet on a Sunday I walked in and it was a Thursday again a total God incident because I walked in and they’ve got the cafe on. There’s big Andrew was serving people, I’m walking in going what the heck is this. What has he sent me here Big Andrews come over and go Alright mate how you doing, yeah I’m fine, do you want a cup of tea, I was like yeah how much, no it ‘s free, bit of cake. So I sat down there, had a chat, told him a brief history Then I got, he introduced me to Mark and then Beechy came in and then that night there was a Thursday night meal So I got invited back to that and that was a year ago and it’s just been a mad year a good mad year. It’s not been, you know never think I’d actually be ended up working for Edge which I now do Yeah it’s been a mental year but it’s been good. WOW that big change in your life from a lot of desolation around your life to peace and direction now. That’s probably the best way I can explain it. I’ve now got my own flat because I’ve lived the last 5 years as a community person which I needed but then I also thought well I turned 50 last July and it was just like right it’s now time for my own place. So I’ve now got my own little place and I just, I’m happy and for me to say that and mean it, is a big thing. My family who live four miles away, they all know I’m a Christian. In fact Christmas day I went over for a Christmas meal and on the way back my cousin dropped me off back in cuz she lives in Boythrope which is part of Chesterfield she dropped me back home and her son who was 18 He said, he said oh he said I haven’t told you yet he said I’ve become a Christian and I went, sorry what? how? He said, well he said, it’s your fault he said cuz I saw God was working in your life and you haven’t drunk and he thought well if you if there, if you’re not drinking because of it. So he started going to a church I don’t know what he was doing but he became a Christian. I was like you could have told me that, he’s like well I have now I was like okay but that I was just blown, I’m still blown away by that now, four months later you know It’s powerful man because your story at lots of points sounded like there was no hope and yet there was, you know you’ve come through and there’s hope, What would you say to guys who are perhaps at that crisis point or points that you’ve been at, where you just think this is just terrible Well there is a way out, there is. I’m, it’s it’s going to sound cheesy and stuff and I don’t care, give your problem to God, just cry out to God and say look, do what I done you’re real then help me but be, expect to get help though and when it turns up don’t push it away, because God’s going, okay you’ve asked me a help, have this You’ve just got to accept that what he’s, if you’ve asked him for help, he’ll help you It says in the Bible, you know I can’t remember where it says but it says like if you cry out for God you know, he’ll help you back and I can’t, everything in my last five years it has to be God, there’s no way things have happened the way they are if God ins’t involved I mean I technically should be probably on the liver transplant list and I’m not I haven’t drunk in 5 years, I don’t want to drink, I’ve got a family now in Edge I’ve got a family that I can go and that you know, they’re not worried I’m going to turn up drunk My daughter’s coming up here for a week I’ve you know everything’s just like everything’s starting to click I’m seeing a girl in Edge we’ve been seeing each other for four months now yeah If you’re at my point, where I was, you don’t have to get on your knees I don’t think but if you want to get on your knees, do it ask for God, just say help. You don’t have to have a big theological prayer, you don’t have to sit there and go oh God I’m this, that and the other, he knows what you are, cuz he knows you already just say help me and then sit back and wait and see what happens