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Thank you for your kind words, they are appreciated.
Most kids go to school and learn the 3 "R's", that being Reading, Riting and Rithmatic. I seem to have had a life of trying to figure out or cope with Rascism, Religon and a Relative. Perhaps an explanation.
Rascism: It wasn't a problem pre NTM and it hasn't been a problem since the teenage years in NTM, but it sure defined what happened in Numonohi. There were hints of it in the Australian part of training school, but getting to PNG and finding that the principal openly taught it and many blatantly practiced it was disturbing and it effected how I viewed the second on the list, "Religion". Being relegated to the bottom of the pecking order and putting up with isolation and abuse, as well as seeing my parents suffer the same fate, left impressions that will always be part of me. Why my parents didn't walk out, I will never understand and even when NTM stripped them of almost every possession they had (including their house) they still remained loyal as excommunicated members.
Religon: My parents found religon in a big way when I was about 5. I can remember small bits of life before this and it seemed what one would expect given the time and place. However my parents jumped in with both boots on and suddenly we had new friends and old ones faded away. And then we were suddenly off to be missionaries and I remember crying when I was told. I knew my father was getting stranger, after all who else would make his kids go to a fancy dress party as undertakers carrying a "coffin" with the words "the wages of sin were death" on the side? And so we went to PNG and little made sense because the duplicity of it all, here was a community that proclaimed the power of an all loving God, but treated their fellow man with disdain, hatred and discrination. It just didn't make sense. Then when I got home I discovered the so called miracles that my father had based the reason we must accept the proof that their was a God on, were faked and that was pretty much the last straw, after all what else was a lie? So I exited from the church scene, but it wasn't till I stumbled on Fanda Eagles and found just how much abuse had occured to others and how NTM had covered it up, that I gained peace with my own spirituality.
A Relation: This is the part that I have hesitated about portraying publicaly, but given that I was cut out of my parents will many years ago, which was a message of being disowned, I really don't see that there is any need for family loyalty anymore. It is only very recently that I think I have arrived at the reason my father hated me so much, he didn't like anyone questioning what he was up to and I dared to do so. I was a loyal, quiet, well behaved child, but I've always had an inquistive mind and I really didn't buy what my father was up to when it came to joining NTM and the religous fervour. And so he spent his life trying to figure out what was important to me and then attempting to destroy it. So he returned many of the gifts I gave him over the years (including a Bible) saying "I have no use for this" and he tried to get others to do the same. He didn't do this to anyone else. As previously mentioned, he cut me out of his will, just announced it randomly one day and one of my siblings confronted him about it, at which point he had to admit he had lied when he claimed he'd consulted my other siblings about his decision. In one of the strangest acts, I returned to PNG for a couple of weeks visit and he sent a message saying he couldn't afford to pick me up from the airport, so I hitched a ride with some folk from another mission. If I hadn't I would have had to get public transport and then hike with my backpack across PNG's second largest city and it would have been nearly dark and very unsafe to be out, especially with a backpack. A year latter, my mother flew back to New Zealand for a siblings graduation (she didn't have to walk to the airport) and when they came back from PNG the last time, they had no where to stay, so they stayed in my house for nine months while I slept in a shed out the back. When they left, they didn't say thank you, just helped themselves to the food in the freezer and were gone.
One of the last acts he did was to write to my relatives in England when he found out my wife and I were going to visit them just over two years ago. He demanded that they "show no hospitality" and gave such reasons as I had been married to someone else and done shift work. Fortunately this is the best thing he could have done, because suddenly he'd confirmed what most people had come to suspect, he was totally mad and there was something wrong in our immediate familly. So we arrived in England to be treated with love and a warm welcome. Of course I was asked a few questions about what had been going on and so the whole saga came out. But I also found out just how mad my father was and why he'd singled me out for his displeasure. He had declared to whoever would listen, when my youngest sibling was born that they were "a gift from God" and despite being told that all children should be loved equally, he did the very opposite. And suddenly it all made sense.
Then he died, we never reconciled (my wife and I had the opportunity to leave the city we all lived in after an earthquake destroyed our home, so we did and didn't leave a forwarding addess). My name was not on the death notice. I rang my mother up several months latter, to see if an olive branch would be accepted, but it was like talking to a female version of my father and when she claimed I was mentally ill and would die, it was prudent to just leave things as they were.
And that was my father, a narcist who I could never please. He served his cult well and it served his deluded purposes admirably. He hurt more people than he helped and confused more than he enlightened. He was for me a role model that I could say, "if I live my life not as he did, I shall be able to hold my head up with honour".
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