About Us
Early Pilgrimage
I am an Australian evangelical Christian of pre-millennialist persuasion. I grew up and received my schooling back and forth from Australia, Canada, and the USA. My salvation came at the age of 14 at a Bible Camp organized by men from Highlands Community Church in Renton, Washington near Seattle. It was one of the Independent Fundamentalist Churches of America. Pastor Wallace Wilson and a wonderful circle of friends at the church were all a great influence in our lives. We still keep in touch with some of our friends there 40 years later.
I returned to Australia in 1965 and studied at Trinity Grammar School and Balwyn High School in Melbourne.
My studies then took me on to the University of Melbourne Medical School on a Commonwealth Scholarship. I graduated in Medicine in 1973. During those years our family was part of the East Kew Baptist Church in Melbourne. I was also a member of the Evangelical Union at Melbourne Uni.
It was during the early 70's when I was in medical school that my pilgrimage took me into the Holy Spirit renewal. This revival had come across to Melbourne from New Zealand. A dental student friend, Judy Brabham, invited me to a Tuesday night meeting held in an Anglican Church. It was called Melbourne Outreach Crusade. I had never seen anything like it. The movement gathered in many seeking hearts during those early days. God called out His people and filled them with His Presence in many wonderful ways. The Charismatic Renewal was a genuine move of God back in those days. Unfortunately the movement has subsequently been taken over by Mammon and seriously compromised. But back in the early 70's it was like spring rain falling on a dry and thirsty land. I saw many people wonderfully saved and blessed. These were exciting times. Many hard bitten evangelicals, grimly hanging onto their faith, as I myself was, found ourselves swept up into this Holy Spirit renewal. And it came just in time. In my case I had been on the verge of spiritual burnout. Suddenly we found ourselves in a serendipity, even an Emmaus experience. Somebody was walking alongside us. He brought us His encouragement and His cheer. He provided us with some fresh oil for our dim and flaring lamps. The Holy Spirit was present with us, recharging our flagging spirits. What a joy that was! Through it all I found myself infused with a new level of faith in Jesus Christ I had never experienced before. In spite of my many shortcomings and failures I found myself drawn into a deeper walk with God.
In 1975 after a year of internship at the Repatriation Hospital in Melbourne I took off on a round the world trip. The first leg of that trip took me back for a visit to the USA. That was quite a memorable segment of the journey. I visited old friends from the church in Renton, Washington I had not seen in over ten years. It was also memorable for another reason which I will explain shortly.
Walkabout in England and Europe, then serving as a Missionary Doctor in the Himalayan Foothills of India.
From the USA I went on to England where I worked at the Royal Northern Hospital in London for a while. After some travels in Europe I contacted the Bible and Medical Missionary Fellowship in London. Soon afterwards I was on my way to India. I spent a few months serving as a missionary doctor in Mussorie, U.P. up in the Himalayan foothills. During the mornings I did rounds and assisted in surgery. In the afternoons I worked in the TB clinic. Most of the TB patients were Tibetan refugees from a place called "Happy Valley". They had come across the mountains into India to escape the ravages of Mao Tse Tung's Communist Cultural Revolution.
I had some memorable experiences in India and then later up in Nepal. On one occasion a few of the missionary kids from the local Christian high school decided that they would collar me and that we would take a little backpacking trek together up into the Himalayan mountains. We loaded up with some medical instruments and medical supplies and set out.
I had trouble keeping up with them. We went into remote areas where there was no road access at all. As soon as we entered a village the word would get out and hundreds of people would gather around. They would bring us their sick. We stopped and gave whatever sort of treatment we could provide. We saw a lot of people and did what we could with what we had. One of them was a little boy who had fallen over a cliff two days before. His little head was covered with old dried blood and he had a high fever. The flies swarmed around him. We bathed and dressed his head wound as best we could, gave him an injection of penicillin and left his father some antibiotics to give him. Then we hiked on to the next village.
On that little excursion I came to understand Eastern Mysticism (or pantheism), and "Karma" in a way that I won't forget. At that time the Maharishi Yogi was wowing the Beatles and millions of westerners with the alleged virtues of Eastern Mysticism. It may well have sounded real good in California, and especially after a couple of puffs of marijuana and some oriental music. But I was here in the Himalayan mountains. I was seeing Eastern Mysticism, Buddhism, and Hinduism right at the very source. The picture I was seeing up here was anything but good.
Here is an example. We came to one village and heard some disturbing news. A young woman had just died. Apparently she had endured a complicated childbirth a couple of days before. The newborn baby was ok. But the childbirth had been complicated by a 'retained placenta'.
The relatives could have done something about this. After such an event the natives of Africa will put their family member on a litter and carry them a hundred miles if need be. They will take them straight to the nearest mission or government hospital. But here in this land beyond the Indus River a great spiritual darkness brooded over the people. The young woman was judged to have 'bad karma'. The spell of death had been cast. Nothing could be done. And she was going to die.
Eastern mysticism has within it a spiritual poison that cripples the will. (A trip to Calcutta will drive this lesson home in a hurry.) A spirit of inevitability hangs over the land. So in the case of this young woman with her retained placenta nothing was done.
Of course she went on to develop sepsis. She died a couple of days after her baby was born. This woman, hidden in the folds of the Himalayan Mountains, had in effect been judged by the spirits of the area. She was considered to have "bad Karma". Now she was paying for her sins in a previous incarnation. Nothing that anyone did was going to change that. So she was left to die.
I shall never forget that woman. Even today when I hear the familiar strains of eastern mysticism which says in effect "everything is relative" and "Que Sera, Sera, Whatever will be." I stop. And I remember that woman
In such times I realize what a rich and wonderful inheritance we have in our God. Even in our tribulations the gold of His glory is refined within us. He throws open a treasure chest before us. It is full of His jewels, of faith, hope and of love. No one is cut off. No one is deserted or abandoned. No one is left behind. This is the character of our God. The Good Shepherd goes out even on a dark and cloudy day. And he finds His lost sheep. Every last one of them will be found! In those times when I begin to realize His goodness towards us and I begin to thank Him the Presence of His Holy Spirit becomes more precious than ever.
When I returned to the mission hospital from that little excursion up into the Himalayan foothills I found that I was in a spot of bother. The higher powers had heard about our little jaunt. Officers of the Indian Army were there at the hospital, waiting to meet us. Apparently we had not been given proper authorization to do our medical service in those lost valleys up there in the mountains. Fortunately the matron of the hospital, an Anglo-Indian lady, was there. She stood before them with her hands on her hips. She was speaking to the army officers in fiery tones in Hindi, apparently on our behalf. The heated interchange went on between them for some time. Finally the soldiers withdrew. I never heard any more about it.
On the way back to Australia I stayed at Dilaram House in Kathmandu. This was a way station with a Christian outreach to lost and sick hippies. There were lots of them in India back in those days. I was glad to be there. During those last two or three days in India before I flew out I had to take to my sleeping bag with a fever and the usual G.I. symptoms of the tropical zone
A Southern Belle, and a Return to
the Land of the Pilgrims and Puritans
It was during that year of "walkabout" that I met somebody very special. During my trip around the USA I had stopped by to see some old family friends in Mobile, Alabama. Dr. Sid Phillips' daughter Mary happened to be home from college at the time. I had not seen Mary for 16 years. She is a southern belle from Mobile, Alabama. To make a long story short I ended up staying a bit longer than I had intended.
I had first met Mary when we were both 11. Our family had come down from Canada on a summer vacation. We had driven down into the deep south from Toronto, camping in state parks. We stayed with the Phillips family in Mobile, Alabama for a few days that summer. I had noticed Mary during our visit. Her dad was a family doctor in a town near Mobile, Alabama. He was interested in the Civil War and his hobby was digging up artifacts on old battlefields using a metal detector. This photo shows us all gathered around a cannon from that era. We were about to leave. Mary is the blond girl 4th from the right with the white blouse and blue shorts. The guy on the left looking in her direction is yours truly. At the time this photo was taken we were saying our good-byes. I would not see Mary again for another 16 years.
Our families had known each other from friendships dating back to the war years. Mary's dad, and his Marine Corps buddy had been in the 1st Marine Division at Guadalcanal during World War 2. They had come to Melbourne in Australia for 'rest and recreation leave'. The two marines had been more or less "adopted" by my mother's family. A lot of lasting trans-Pacific friendships had been made back in those days. That family tradition was destined to continue. Mary and I found it increasingly difficult to forget one another. The following year I called her on the telephone from Australia. We were married a few weeks later in Mobile.
We spent our first three years together in Australia. I was in family practice at the time. We went to some interesting places to do locum work. I would relieve country doctors who needed a break. On those assignments I had to do everything including family practice, casualty/ER, and obstetrics.
We returned to the USA in 1979. I did my anesthesia residency at Charity Hospital in New Orleans. What a wild place that was! It was the first hospital that I have ever worked in that required its own police force. After residency we moved to Slidell, Louisiana. We were there for seven years.
Since 1988 we have lived on the Florida Gulf Coast. Our two older children now grown, are out on their own pilgrimages. The youngest, Ruthie, is a Down Syndrome child and is at home with Mary and I. She is our special little girl. She loves Christian praise and worship music. She always brings a level of cheer to our home. She enriches the lives of all who come to know her.
