So I’m in Hawaii. Standard flight from Melbourne to Sydney, then to Honolulu and finally a quick hop over to “The Big Island”. A short drive and I’m in Kona and then the Base. I’m here to staff the photogenX (pronounced ‘photogenics’) Discipleship Training School (DTS). Its an amazing base and we’re currently at the end of the largest quarter the base has ever seen with about 1,200 people on the base at the moment. The DTS starts in April but I’m here a month early for staff training and helping organise a few things for DTS. I’m in a room with eight other guys who are staffing various courses around the base but most are going soon so it will be interesting to see who they are replaced with.

Meals are communal and as you can imagine there is always a “food line” on account of so many people being at the base. Breakfast is quite early 0615-0730 but I’ve been able to adjust quite easily thanks to my previous line of work. No jet-lag either for the same reason. All sounds pretty straight forward and easy doesn’t it? It was nothing like that. The journey God had to take me on to get me here is anything but straight forward.

I grew up in a Christian house, I was even a PK (pastors kid) and knew a ton of bible verses and played piano for church etc. In 2008 I went and did my DTS in Holmsted Manor, England and loved it. God showed me so many things and I met people who would be family for life. We went to Indonesia for 2 months and saw God do many amazing things. I got back to Australia and shared what I’d learned and no one really seemed to get it and for whatever reason I started to drift away from God.

For the past few years my life hasn’t exactly been a shining example of how a Christian should be. I was running away from God. Every now and then He’d give me the opportunity to come back to Him and every time I’d go do something worse than last time to run away. After a while I had to do some pretty bad things in order to not give in and stop running. A few months ago I just looked in the mirror and saw what my life was and I realised that I wasn’t actually happy, despite the smile I gave everyone.

Exactly seven weeks ago (January 19) a mate of mine who had just finished staffing a DTS in Kona called me up completely out of the blue and asked me if I’d like to come staff a DTS in Kona with him. I politely told him I wasn’t in a position to lead a DTS but thanks anyway. He asked if I would at least have coffee with him the following day to which I happily agreed having not seen him in ages.

The next day he asked me again if I wanted to come staff with him. He told me he was driving along and God just suddenly told him “Ask Pete Drummond to come on staff with you for the April DTS”. He told me that I wasn’t even on his list of people to ask but he felt God was telling him to so he did. I basically said that I wasn’t in a good place with God and so I couldn’t. He asked me to go home and pray about it all the same. I kept making excuses why I couldn’t because I was financially stable at this point, had a payment plan worked out to pay off my debt by the end of the year, I had a job I liked, I had a career and a life here with plans to move out etc etc.

But I did. I went home and prayed that God would show me if He wanted me to go do this. I told Him every reason I could think of why I shouldn’t do it. I talked about it with Mum and Dad too but the more I came up with excuses, the more my heart longed to do it. I said ok God fine, if you DONT want me to do this then give me a conviction that this is the wrong thing to do, you have 24 hours. None came, not that day or the day after and after a night of virtually no sleep due to my brain fighting it with everything it had, I gave in to God and told Him I was over running away. The next day I told my mate (Sam) that yes I’d staff his DTS with him. He was completely stoked for me and I just felt so happy that this is what I was supposed to do and that I had finally stopped running. Mum and Dad were overjoyed too and told me they were behind me 100% same with my sister Anna.

I’m aware I have been away from God for a while but it feels so right to be back on what He wants for me and I’m so excited to see what He’s got planned. Over the last few weeks I’ve seen so many changes in my life. I’m genuinely happier than I’ve been in a very long time and I feel a peace I don’t think I’ve ever known. God helped me to pay off all $11,000 of my debt in just over a month thanks to Him showing me a few things I could sell and using the money I’d saved to move out #ourplansvshisplans and now I’m over in Hawaii and God is speaking to me daily through the Bible and He is teaching me to pray again. Worship is real and it is where I really connect to God. I just pray that with everything He teaches me, it would be in a way that I would know it in my heart so that I can not be moved. I’m not starting from the beginning but I am in the sense that this is a new thing for me and I know that to do my best, I need God’s help.

PRAYER  – for if you’re the praying type

Answered Prayer

• That I’m here! Thank you so much to all those that prayed I’d come back to God. I had no idea until recently how many people were praying for that!
• God is showing me new things every day and I feel closer to Him than I ever have.

Prayer Points

• More leaders for the school and that God would provide funds for those He has called.
• That God would continue to work on me so that I am at a place with Him where I can lead in a Godly way and to be fully reliant on Him for everything and to be everything He has made me to be.
• That I wont feel the need to compare myself to other leaders that have been here for longer (which I’m struggling with) and just focus on doing what He has called me to.

God bless you!