I was born in 1954 and I was the second son of Bill and Myra Forrester of Lake Heights near Wollongong New South Wales Australia. However this is not where I am going to start this journey because to understand the journey one needs to understand what has transpired in my life over the last 24 years.

The time is around 1989 and I have just finished working for a transport company owned by Jim and Helen Savage of Tamworth NSW Australia(to become Stock Master Transport). I had been working for them for approximately 3 1/2 years while running a workshop and maintenance department. During this time I was responsible for the upkeep and maintenance of their fleet of trucks and trailers. It was during my tenure with them that I contracted a staph infection which resulted in three years of coping with boils all over my body.

Doctors at the time had trouble finding a treatment that could satisfactorily put the illness at rest and finally came up with the diagnosis of Golden Staph. Golden staph is an infection that has no cure, it can remain dormant in your system for many years waiting to you to become rundown and exhausted. At this time it can reinvigorate in an ineffectual body causing the proliferation of boils all over the body and in some unmentionable places. As a result doctors tried all kinds of antibiotics, cream’s and other treatments to try to give me some measure of respite.

Unfortunately after three years with this infection dragging me down I was made to resign my position and go into business with my father so that I could reduce the number of hours that I worked each week. At the time I was putting in around 100 hours or more a week, living on the edge going from day to day. It was nothing for me to knock off at five o’clock in the afternoon and receive a call an hour later to a breakdown somewhere in New South Wales. Theirs was a livestock transport company and as such their operations was conducted on a 365 day/24 hour basis. Livestock is one of the most perishable commodities there is and they cannot just be parked somewhere on the side of the road for an indeterminate period while locked up inside a livestock transport trailer.

As a result I went many days at a time without sleep and proper nourishment relying instead on Coca-Cola and cigarettes to keep me going. It was not unheard off to work for three days straight with no breaks. At this time I only had a knowledge of our Lord and in no way would call myself a committed Christian even though I believed. It was during this period that I felt a calling to a greater faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. It was possible for me to have as many as 12 boils at a time festering up my skin and causing me all sorts of discomfort and pain.

I felt that life itself has started to lose its meaning and needed to search for and find an alternative life style. It was this equation of work, no sleep, ill-health, Coca-Cola and cigarettes that forced me to go into business with my father to try and find away to wholeness again. I was not aware at the time that this journey would continue well into the next century and beyond, taking 24 years of my life..