Very briefly – Christian parents raised me and for my first 20 years I attended church regularly. In my early teenage years I attended classes held by the church and at the conclusion of those, having given the right answers to a number of questions, I was deemed worthy to receive communion. However my interest in sport [field hockey and cricket] began to dominate my life and my leisure time. So, after the age of 20 I stopped going to church and indulged myself in my sport and the social life that went with it. That was a very active social life including tours/trips to foreign parts and always included an abundance of alcohol resulting in much ungodly and sinful behaviour.

However in 1984 [@ age 38] things were to change. In the months leading up to my conversion I had been reading a number of books by a Christian author – mainly concerned with his views of what would happen just prior to the return of the Lord. I then began to read another book by the same author that outlined how the life and death of Jesus Christ was foreshadowed by many passages in the Old Testament. The verse that began to impact upon me was Leviticus 1:4 ‘And he [THE SINNER] shall put his hand upon the head of the burnt offering [THE SUBSTITUTE] and it [THE SUBSTITUTE] shall be accepted for him [THE SINNER] to make atonement [SALVATION] for him [THE SINNER]’.

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