Episode Transcript
Good day. It is all too often said that there are no miracles performed these days. Well, I'd like to challenge this idea with my story, From Drugs to God. So welcome to miracles in the 21st century. I'm Sau Finau. Now, back in 1988, when I first arrived here in Australia, I came with a purpose and dream is to make the best out of life in this country. However, just go back a few years before that. I grew up in a home where my parents both work and serve within the Seventh Day Adventist Church. My father was a school principal, a teacher, and my mother was a housewife, raising us, raising myself and my three other siblings. And unfortunately, my first year in high school, my father and my mother decided to separate and which led to their divorce. So in 1985, my father migrated to Australia. So they left my mother and the rest of us and my mother to raise us children. So growing up was a real struggle because, you know, my dad was the foundation and the provider for the family. Now he's gone and left me, who is the oldest, to try and study and help to provide for our family. But that led me to the stage where I start questioning my belief whether God was real or not. How can we as a family be struggling in this, you know, in this state where both parents have served him for many years and now this problem happened in our family. My dad has moved on. I didn't grow up having much of a teenage years. I had to grow up really fast. But when I had the opportunity to come to migrate to Australia, I thought to myself, this is it. I am going to Australia. I'm gonna go there and work and earn money. One of the favorite things that I really enjoyed was watching movies back in the islands, but especially when they. Especially gangster movies. And that's what actually triggered me and got me excited about coming to Australia because like, I can move to Australia, I can be a gangster, make so much money and help support my family back at home. But unfortunately, what you see is not always what you get. Because when I came here to Australia had a very cultural shock. The differences, especially coming from a small island like Tonga and here in Australia, there was so much potential. But when I came here, I came here on a one month visa, but I already made up my mind that after my visa runs out, I'm not going back, I'm staying here. So I stayed with my dad, but unfortunately my dad had himself a new wife at the time and I wasn't really getting along with my stepmother. So I decided to leave. And when I Left home. I only left home with the clothes on my back. So everything that I have to do, I have to work it out myself. Long story short, I get involved with drugs, get involved in the black market. And through this time, while myself, while I'm getting involved in all this foolishness that was happening, My mother never ceased praying for me back in town. Because I, I know my mother was a prayer warrior growing back up there. We had morning worships, afternoon worships, we had to go to church, Wednesday night prayer meetings, Friday nights socials, and of course on Sabbath, we had to attend every worship service. And the more she pushes us to go as children, the more I hated it. Because I came to. By the time I had the freedom to come to Australia, I made up my mind. Religion, God is just something that your parents have made up so poor people like myself can believe in and have some kind of hope. But when I came in here to Australia, I learned pretty fast that whatever you want in life, you can go get it. Nothing will ever be handed to you on a silver platter. So my journey on the streets began and I found myself in the streets of a town in Sydney called King's Cross. And that's where I, I, that's where I lived. I, that's where I make my money. All the guys were, you know, giving me all these drugs to, to sell in order for me to make some money and choose to live. But while I have access to all of this, I start using as well. And before you know it, I was spending at least, you know, $1,000, $2,000 a day, my addiction, on the drugs. But keep in mind, I only had a one month visa. I've been living in this country for over 10 years at the time. And for that it came with all its challenges. Then I get to meet up with all these different, associated with all these different people that I thought they had my best interest in mind. They provided me with everything that I needed. And I tried to support my mother back in Tonga. But you know, in Tonga, it's a very small country and the story goes pretty fast. And when my mother heard what I was doing here in Australia, she was very upset. She was very disappointed. And she said, son, if that's what you're doing in Australia, I don't want any support from you. You know, that I have raised you, that God is our only support. Whatever it is, God will provide for me. And so far, even though I might not have the finances here, but I never go to sleep hungry. Your siblings are still, are not going hungry here, but anyway, then I thought, okay, that's what you want and so be it. I continue on to live my life. Then I find myself in prison. Keep in mind, I was an illegal overstayer in this country. I went to prison, I did my time and I came out. And I was still wasn't even learning or rehabilitated in prison. I came out worse than before I went in. But then one day I thought to myself, man, if this life is. If this is what life is all about, you know, working, you know, going out, trying to get money, work. Because I had some of my friends who had jobs, but they all hooked the same on drugs like myself. We were all doing drugs together the night before they go to work the next day. And I said, if this is what life is all about, it's just about pursuing and chasing money, I don't want to be a part of it. So one evening, I still remember, it was in 1999, 10 years after 1999. I thought to myself, this is it. I've had enough. I've had a wife at the time, I've had a daughter. Unfortunately, that my kind of lifestyle has kind of attracted my wife to follow that kind of lifestyle. So we were both drug addicts. Most of the society look at us not as drug addicts, but they call us junkies. We lose everything. We get to the stage where we don't take drugs to get high no more or to get the euphoria anymore. We just take drugs just to be normal like everybody else. But then that's how much we were hooked on it. And one evening I said to myself, where is God? Where is God when, you know, I don't think that there is a God. However, after over 10 years, I thought, I'm going to pray to God for the first time. I'm going to pray to God for the first time. Just something that reminds me of how we were growing up back at home. You know, I thought that this time I will. Life has no purpose, you know, I thought, life has no purpose. It's time to end it. If this is all what life is, it's just about going to sleep, waking up, chase money, get high, go to sleep, wake up. It feels like you are just in this roundabout, this circle. You are busy, but you're going nowhere. And that's what my life felt like. Then I remembered growing back up at home, how we always pray. Then I prayed for the first time and I said, lord, I want you to prove yourself to me. Prove to me that you exist. Of course, there were some other things that I prayed, but that was the main purpose of my prayer. I want God to prove himself to me. If you are real, heal me from this. Set me free from this addiction. Show me that there's a purpose of life. And let me tell you, that night I had the best sleep ever. I had the best sleep that I haven't had for over 10 years. And I was surprised when I woke up the next morning. Because usually as a drug addict, when you woke up. Well, as a drug addict, you have a shot before you go to sleep, and you have a shot when you wake up in the morning. That's the first thing you do. But this time I woke up, my wife woke up. We didn't feel like we need to have a shot. We thought, oh, maybe the drugs that we took the day before was so good that we didn't need anything. So we got up, came to the kitchen, you know, like the usual thing. Have a nice hot drink, have a cup of coffee or something. Then we remembered, finally hit us. Oh, we usually have our coffee with a cigarette. We had no cigarettes. I said, I have to go outside. I'll have to go to the car park to look for some cigarettes. That's how broke we were. You have to go to look for cigarette butts. And what we used to do is to come and take the stuff off the cigarette butts, put them on the telehealth papers so we can light it up and have a smoke, right? But this day I went out to the car park. The cleaners in those machines have already come and cleaned up all the car parks. So it cleaned up all the cigarette butts. It cleaned it all out. So I didn't have no cigarettes. But I said, oh, well, the shop is going to be open soon. A friend of mine who is a Muslim, who owns a tobacco shop inside the Bankstown Shopping mall. So I have to wait for his shop to open. And when the shop was open, I went in and I asked him, oh, can I. Can you. Can I borrow a. Well, can you lend me a box of. A pair of cigarettes? He turned around to me and he said, you know how much you owe me for cigarettes? You owe me over a thousand dollars for cigarettes. Because I always go to him and. And borrow cigarettes of him. But, you know, the extension of the story is amazing. I'm sorry, I haven't got to. But one of the things that I will leave with you now is the fact that while all of this. That I was doing, my mother never ceased to pray for me. And I want to encourage you. It's never too late to enter, to pray. Intercede for anyone. Your children or your loved one or any person that you care for. Pray for them. And you will hear the rest of our story in the next episode. Thank you.
