Julian Haddow
Setting the scene
I had the joy and privilege to live in Austria from the age of 7. I lived in Tyrol with all its affluence and tourism. Many of my school friends had hotels or B&Bs in the family which they would one day inherit. With that in mind many of them went to school, studied gastronomy and in a slightly morbid way just had to wait for their inheritance to kick in.
Austrians are a fun loving, hard working, party people, with much of the time spent entertaining the tourists. As a teenager I joined in this party lifestyle, the tourists want a good time whilst on holiday and we knew how to show them one. By the age of 15 I had dabbled with many drugs and started drinking almost daily up to the age of 17.
I was training to be an indoor design cabinet maker at the time, but along with some of my colleagues, the regular drug taking and drinking made the company go bankrupt. By this point I was making some money from the occasional drug deal with contacts in different countries, so the unemployment didn’t hit me too hard.
Crunch time
There was one problem with this lifestyle, it was empty and pointless and I knew different.
My dad, you see, was a missionary and had brought me up in a Christian environment. At the age of 9 I had made a simple, but never the less real commitment to following Jesus. But I was knowingly choosing to live life my way and not in a way that would please God.
I should have known better, but God caught my attention loud and clear when I was 18. He convicted me of the wrong of living a self centred life, whilst ignoring my loving creator.
The difference knowing Jesus has made
- the willingness to leave my old lifestyle of drug taking
- moving away from the temptations of my old lifestyle and living in a new area
- joining and becoming an active member of a church
- it made me want to find out how I could help others
- it made me eventually move back to England
- I had a desire to work full time of Jesus
- it made me become a missionary in 2002
- it taught me the importance of marriage
- it changed my life and gives me joy and meaning
- it gave me eternity to look forward to
