Faith Stories with Naomi Reed

“I was born in Ukraine, and I grew up in Russia from when I was four years old. My family went to church in Russia, and at 21, I came to know Jesus. I remember standing on my balcony in Russia and crying out to God, please help me. At that time, God heard me. […]

“I was born in South Korea, and we immigrated to Australia when I was one. My father was a farmer so we rented land in western Sydney. I was actually an illegal immigrant. I didn’t receive my Australian citizenship until Year 11, so it caused a lot of issues and anxiety for me. Even if […]

“I had felt a strange pull to the city of Naples in Italy. I don’t know why. Perhaps it’s the poorer, rougher version of Italy, and I thought I could help in some way. I actually grew up in Brisbane, in a very mission-minded family, and my faith has always been important to me. But […]

“I grew up in a small country town in NSW called Adelong. My parents were from Lebanon and my father owned the general store. I always felt I had a calling to serve God, and when I was 16, I started running the Sunday school. Later I met my husband Alfred and we got married. […]

“I was raised in the US, in a family that was mostly secular, with a veneer of Catholicism. My father ran his own business and was focussed on success. We were financially affluent but spiritually devoid. When I was 18, I was doing a gap year before I started university. Every weekend, I’d meet up […]

“To be honest, I’m really tired. I’m the coordinator for Nepean Anglicare Disaster Recovery. We cover a big area (Blue Mountains, Lithgow, Penrith, Hawkesbury) and we’ve had three major disasters in three years. I know it’s nothing compared to the Northern Rivers, NSW. They’ve had it so much worse than us. But I think it’s […]

“I am from Chile. I went to seminary there and I met my husband, Andrew, through mutual friends. We served for six years with CMS, in Bolivia and Chile. Towards the end of that time, I began to wonder more. I knew that Jesus was my Lord, but I didn’t feel that God was my […]

“I grew up in a beautiful Christian home, which was loving, generous and safe. The real bump in the road came in year 8. I’d been best friends with a girl since year 1, and we went to high school together. A larger group of friends formed around us, and it was all going really […]

“I started running away from home at the age of four. My father was a very abusive man. At the time I was born, he was set on having a boy (and they already had an older girl), so from that moment, he rejected me. There was a lot of physical abuse, emotional abuse, and […]

“It was a Thursday, in June 2014. My husband, Tim, had gone into the bedroom for an afternoon nap. He was tired. But it was too early for him to go to sleep, so I went in to wake him up. When I did that, there was no response. I shook him hard. I saw […]

“In 2014, I started Bible college. I really enjoyed it – Old Testament, New Testament, both biblical languages. In June of that year, I was about to sit my first end-of-semester exams. Then one afternoon, according to my wife, she walked into our bedroom where I’d been taking a nap, and she couldn’t wake me […]

“I came to faith in Jesus at the kitchen sink. My parents were OMF missionaries in Taiwan and I lived in Asia till I was 17. When I was five, I went to boarding school in Malaysia and I did all of primary school there. Then I went to high school in the Philippines. After […]

“I was playing cricket for South Australia, semi-professionally. In July of 1984, I said to my wife I wanted to give it one more crack, to see if I could finish off my career well. I was training really hard. The same month, the doctors discovered I needed open-heart surgery. It was picked up by […]

“I’ve always been skittish, ruled by my emotions. I tend to burn the candle at both ends, jumping into things, saying yes to everything, without thinking. There’s no doubt I believed in Jesus as a young person. But early on, I wasn’t fully committed. I did things in my own strength. I had one foot […]

“My mother and father were Irish Catholic immigrants to New York City. They married there and had five children and opened an Irish bar. I learnt to play pool in that bar. It was fascinating for a child. Catholicism was also ingrained in us from a very young age. I remember being on my knees, […]