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Illegal Alien in Australia - Liberated
Most any Saturday back in the 1970s, Catherine, a young girl, sat on the floor in her parents' antique shop, polishing silver. As she got them done she spread them on the other side of her. Her mother would pay her ten cents for every piece she had polished. Once paid, Catherine went shopping up and down 33rd Street to spend her money. She would buy something at the bakery and pop into the hardware, and into various stores, looking for places to spend her weekly income.
She had often passed it, but one day she stopped to look at the front door of Western Tract Mission. What did they sell? Catherine decided to go in side and find out. It turned out it was a Christian bookstore with books, and pencils, erasers, and tracts. She bought some small items, including a couple of tracts, which she thought were comics.
When she got home, Catherine sat beside her bed to examine her treasures and read one of the little tracts. It had a story about a little girl that died in a back alley. A sketch showed her spirit going up to heaven. At this God touched her heart, and Catherine wept, desiring to know more about God and heaven. However, no one told her, so this desire slipped to the back of her mind for a time. She put the tracts away in her treasure box.
Catherine had high energy, and pursued sports through her school years. Her mother supported her and she excelled as a competitive gymnast. At 18 she joined the navy youth program. She was a typical teen, with a strong creative side.
After high school Catherine felt that she had until she was 25 to settle down and find her place in life. She tried various jobs, waitressing, gymnast coaching, and through one boyfriend she found a job as a florist. She enjoyed that and after a while she and another co-worker decided to start their own florist shop on 33rd Street. They called it Wedding Scents.
One day a young lady came into the shop, who said, "God sent me to talk to you." This threw her, but Catherine saw something in her eyes that drew her to this woman. As they discussed this customer's wedding flowers, the woman said, "I want my wedding to glorify God." Catherine felt hungry to know more, and the women invited her to come to a party with their youth group at church. Catherine intended to accept --
But just about that time her current boyfriend, Ralph, and another buddy, Trent, were making plans to go overseas to Australia. They agreed to go to Banff first to earn some money, and that as they travelled they would stop to work whenever they ran low on funds. Catherine sold her share of the florist shop and went off to see the world in 1985.
They stopped briefly in the Fiji islands, too briefly to suit Catherine, and then spent three months in New Zealand. Eventually they got to Australia. In Sydney they stayed with Boris and Teena Orazem, people they had met in Los Angelos the previous summer.
Shortly afterward, Trent left them. Ralph and Catherine bought a VW van and travelled up the gold coast to surfer's paradise in Brisbane. Ralph wanted to go on to the Great Barrier Reef, but Catherine had run low on money and decided to go back to Sydney. She would work for a while there.
The threesome had taken a number of jobs picking fruit, so here she was glad to find an indoor job in a fruit market. She was sort of adopted by the Italian couple who owned it, and she shared an apartment with a nurse. Catherine fell in love with Sydney and her job. She began to put down roots.
Their six month visa was running out, so she asked Ralph to come down to discuss their options. She had given him three years of her life, and she figured it was time he committed to more - like marriage. However, he was not ready to commit. He flew home to Canada, and she cried her heart out.
To get this job she had told a story about her parents being Australian, and she had given a false name. She even paid taxes under this name, but she was an illegal immigrant. It became a deep dark secret.
When her second Christmas rolled around Catherine began to miss the Canadian Christmas stuff. She felt like she ought to go to church. A co-worker suggested a Catholic church, but nothing came of it. Her family back home was writing and telling her to go do all the things they had never been able to do. She almost felt like they didn't miss her.
More and more Catherine began to think over her life, and to think about God. Questions were scratching inside of her. How did she get so far off track? She had hoped to fall in love and stay in this beautiful country. One day on a beach she felt like the weight of the whole world was on her, then she sensed a hand held out to her. A hand that had made her. Catherine cried out to God.
She became very afraid of being caught. She dreamed that three people came to arrest her, and she was running to hide in the many aisles of the fruit market. By hard work she had earned the coveted position as cashier closest to the door where there were some breezes. However, now she willingly traded that place for a cash register further into the building - in an effort to hide.
Then Christians started to come into her life. First, the owners of the fruit market sold it, and the staff had to help the new owners get a grasp on how to run it. The new owners, David and Kathleen, were from Papua New Guinea, and were Christians.
One day she broke down into an emotional explosion of tears and more tears. Kathleen tried to find out what was going on and brought her to her husband, David. Catherine respected David, but wasn't ready to tell her secret. To comfort her, David said, "Don't forget you have God."
"What do you mean, God? Where is He?" she cried in reply, hoping for more clues about Him.
A few days later Kathleen invited Catherine to come to a church in the skyscraper district. Catherine was willing to go but looked down at her dirty work clothes. "Have I got time to change?" She was assured she did.
This was downtown, and Kathleen parked blocks away and as they walked towards the church she began to hear singing. When they got in the big room was full already. There were flags on poles all around the sanctuary. A big screen was up front for the movie they would show. But first there were drums and singers. Both old and young people in the audience were clapping and singing. Catherine really liked the singing. She loved the life she saw there.
Then they showed the first of a two part film. The church where her mother had taken her a few times as a child had said Jesus was a good man, but what was this about Him coming again? This was spooky about people disappearing and their rings and clothes staying behind. But she decided that she really did want to come again when they showed the second part of "A Thief in the Night."
The same day as that second showing, Catherine and Kathleen went to the Sydney Opera House first. Catherine didn't normally wear dresses, but she had bought a new one for that classy outing to see Le Miserables. They went from the opera house to the church without changing. This second movie disturbed Catherine plenty, but then the pastor asked afterwards, "If you got hit by a bus, would you go to Heaven?" She didn't know.
He explained that you need a passport to Heaven. When he asked those who wanted to receive Christ to lift their hand, she did. Catherine's tears flowed uncontrollably. In one glance downward she noticed that her new dress was showing all her tears as a huge and very obvious stain on the bodice of her dress. But she couldn't stop.
Kathleen went with her to the backroom, where she was shown from Romans in the Bible, the 23rd verses in chapters 3 and 6, that we "...all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God..." - "For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord." Catherine had no problem agreeing that this was true.
Then the counsellor showed her in 2 Corinthians, chapter 5, verse 17, where it says, "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!" By trusting in Christ's death on the cross for her sins, she would become that new creation too. Because, as the Scripture said just a few verses further, in 21; "God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God."
Gladly Catherine accepted these truths as applying to her personally, and prayed to receive Christ into her life forevermore. She knew she was born again!
She quickly bought a Bible. It was 1985 and she had just turned 25.
At the fruit market she bombarded Kathleen and David with questions daily. She could hardly believe that God could forgive all the dumb things she had done. She kept going to church, and was soon attending three services a week. She was so very hungry!
She was still smoking as she sat reading her Bible, but then she read about our bodies being the temple of the Holy Spirit, and immediately she looked at her cigarette. This was some situation; if she quit she would gain weight, she needed help. Catherine asked God to help her quit, and He did.
Catherine began making new friends at church, and thought that was simply wonderful. Exciting.
Yet she also had a dream about a chasm with a hot fire, and though she knew she was not going there, her family was. "I've got to leave all these good friends to go home!" came clearly to her. She also knew she could still get caught for over-staying her visa. She had no money to go home. She contacted Bonnie Furneaux, a family for whom she had babysat long ago in Saskatoon; they had now returned to live in Sydney. Catherine could trust Bonnie.
Bonnie made a call to Immigration to ask hypothetical questions, and found out they would deport Catherine and never allow her back. These were hard facts, but so far no one in the church knew any of this.
She had just moved into Fellowship House, a large building with guys living on one side and girls on the other, and they ate meals together and had strict rules and guidelines, but they were able to grow spiritually from sharing together. A couple acted as supervisory parents and counselors.
Meantime, a man from that church worked in Immigration. Supernaturally, God told him Catherine's name and that he should help her. He went to David, Catherine's employer, who called Catherine into his office at the market. David asked her point blank, "If you could go home, would you go home?"
She burst into tears again. This time David asked for details. The man from Immigration was willing to be God's channel to make a way for her to leave Australia. She asked for a month to say all her good byes.
Next she told Ma and Pa at Fellowship House. She also was baptized in water and with the Spirit of God before she left. That's when she really gave her full testimony. Pastor John Mozkow took her to Immigration and got all her paperwork done.
Because she had enjoyed the scenery in the movie, Blue Lagoon, when she was 15, Catherine decided that she wanted to see Fiji more thoroughly on her way home. She persuaded Rita, a co-worker, to come with her as far as Fiji for a vacation. Rita was a backslidden Christian, and Catherine was able to lead her back to Christ. Rita returned to Sydney and Catherine had some more interesting days there before she took the last leg of her journey home. Just before her flight she phoned Rita, and learned that three people in black had come to the fruit market looking for her.
Catherine was stunned. Her dream had come true, but God had removed her just in time!
Her former boyfriend, Ralph, met her in Calgary and she told him her testimony while they drove back to Saskatoon. He listened, but did not respond as she hoped.
Her parents threw a big backyard party for her homecoming, and Catherine got busy trying to get everyone saved. However, they did not understand. Still, her mother tried to help when Catherine wanted to find a church. Catherine had a dream about a white church in Lawson Heights. Catherine went to a Christian bookstore and asked if there was such a church in Lawson Heights. She was given a name and directions. Catherine's brother dropped her off for services.
While she waited for her brother to come pick her up later, she chatted with Jeff, who carried a motorcycle helmet, and who introduced her to his wife Carla. Catherine's mind was drifting and she found herself praying silently in an undercurrent conversation, "Lord, hit me hard; should I be here?"
Suddenly another woman came up right to her, stared into Catherine's face and said, "God has done a mighty work in you." Suddenly Catherine remembered her, Barbara. It was the young woman who had come to her for wedding flowers. As they talked and caught up on many things, Catherine discovered that Barbara had been praying for her salvation all the years she was away in Australia.
Catherine ended up attending Faith College and becoming a teacher in the Christian School in that church. She taught there for six years.
She was able to lead her parents to a saving faith in Christ. Her Mom a couple of years after she got back, and her Dad a few years later. Her one and only sister has come to faith in Jesus too, but none of her 5 brothers yet.
Catherine had began to pray for a good, Christian husband. After seven years, she sensed that God was going to answer this prayer soon. About that time the church was in shock as they heard that one of their own, Kevin Summach's wife, had been killed in an accident on a trip back from B.C. Catherine was as concerned as anyone and prayed hard for Kevin and his children. She felt especially involved as his youngest son was in her class in school.
Kevin began to drop by the class for various reasons related to his son. Gradually she realized that some of those visits were fabricated to see her. For some reason it embarrassed her, so she sent helpers to the door. After a while they began to date though, and ..... months later were married.
Catherine is still constantly amazed that God would bless her with such a great family, whom she loves so very much! The God of Heaven, about whom she read as a child, followed and liberated her from her deep dark secret in Australia, brought her home to Canada, and is flying banners of His love over her as she feasts at His banqueting table of mercy and goodness.
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