Faith Stories with Naomi Reed

“At 19, I met the loveliest girl I’d ever laid eyes on. With National Service looming, we decided to marry the following year. Then after our honeymoon, I was off to serve my country. But months of training as a machine gunner came to naught, as a combat training incident saw me reclassified with serious […]

“My father died of the bubonic plague when I was three years old, and my mother raised all four of us through the Great Depression. Those were difficult times. We were given food coupons and we used them in lieu of money. In those days, flour would come in big cotton sacks, and when the […]

“Six years ago, my husband and I started trying for a baby. Neither of us thought there’d be an issue. We tried for a year before going to see the GP who sent us to a specialist. He suggested IVF. At the time it didn’t feel right, so we put it off. God shifted our […]

“I’ve always loved the passage in Acts 8. There was Philip, on an ordinary day after the resurrection. An angel appeared to him and told him to go south, on the desert road to Gaza. Philip went, and along the way he met an Ethiopian, who just happened to be sitting in his chariot, reading […]

“I’m a dietitian. I started off as a researcher but I was always interested in food and nutrition, so I completed a Masters in dietetics. As I studied, I often wondered how I could use my skills, passion and experience in low resource countries and improve the health of a nation. After finishing my Masters, […]

“I’ve been in prison in central Queensland for the last 19 years. I became a born-again Christian at the very beginning of my time here. Perhaps you associate prisons with things that increase your heart rate. There’s a lot of unpleasantness in prison, but I want to tell you about a light and a person […]

“I grew up in Uganda, in a wealthy and strictly Islamic family. My father worked in politics and my extended family were all financial beneficiaries of Idi Amin. We went to the mosque every Friday, and we prayed five times a day. We observed Ramadan each year, and we read the Quran. At school, our […]

“As a young person, I was heavily into sport and fishing, especially trout. I always loved the natural world – the intricacy of insects, flowers, underwater life. I’d been fascinated since I was very young and loved my back creek. As a child, I went with my parents to church, but stopped in my teens. […]

“I have awesome parents. They were radically saved by Jesus when they were in their mid-20s, and they were on fire for God! A few years later, they both left their big jobs, to serve God at a Christian campsite in Sydney. I was seven at the time, and they ended up staying there for […]

“When I was about 12, a friend gave me a poem about riding a tandem bicycle. It was an allegory of life. What does it mean to have faith in God? Who is actually on the front seat, in control of the bike, steering? When I first read the poem, I didn’t know that eight […]

“My father was born in China. When he was small, he was carried by his father to the South of China and sold. It was because of the famine. My mother was also sold as a child in Malaysia, and she became a street child. Later, they met and married and had ten children. I […]

“I was diagnosed with blood cancer (myeloma) in October last year. It was picked up in a routine blood test. I didn’t have symptoms then, and I don’t have symptoms now. But with myeloma, you don’t start treating the cancer (with chemo) until the symptoms begin, because treatment is only effective for a short while […]

“I grew up in a Catholic family. I prayed as a child, but there was no relationship with Jesus. And I had questions. For example, why did God make Adam and Eve, knowing that they were going to sin? One day, we had a new priest at our school. He gave a talk and then […]

“In 2006, I was with a guy who was a drug dealer. We were on his farm, just outside of Coffs Harbour. The relationship was over but he kept supplying me with drugs. I felt like he was trying to kill me. I’d been using drugs since I was a young person. At 18, I’d […]