My Story

I should say at the outset that I’m not anybody special or out of the ordinary in many ways. I have a wonderful wife and three great children. I live in Stafford, having worked for 10 years in local government, and before that for 7 years in youth work. Nothing out of the ordinary, really. But I have had a life-changing encounter that has made a huge difference in my life. But let’s start at the beginning.

The beginning

I was the oldest of 4 children born in Luton to Ron and Doreen Egner. My dad was an accountant by profession, and my brother was the youngest in the family, with two sisters between us.

We moved house several times in those early years following dad’s career moves. One such move took us to Llanwyrtyd Wells in mid-Wales. Wales has mixed memories for me - rain, snow (4 ft in the toilets at school - meant no classes that day), wasps in the summer, school dinners, reciting a poem in Welsh at a Junior Eisteddfod without having a clue what I was saying.

A new start

My story starts when I was 7 years old. It starts with a carol service which was to change my life. I picked up a leaflet at the end of the service. It had a picture of four hearts, each a different colour - black, red, white, gold. The leaflet told me how my life was like the black heart - full of things that I did that were wrong and that hurt others and more importantly hurt God. It told me how God had sent his only son, Jesus Christ, to die in my place so that my life could be put right with God. He paid the price for all the wrong things I had ever done with his blood - the red heart. By doing that if I put my trust in Jesus he would make my heart pure - like the whitest snow, and I could begin again. And if I lived for God, he would change my heart to gold.

I read the leaflet, and I thought, "This all makes sense". I knew that I did things that God didn’t want me to do. I knew that I wanted to have a relationship with God, and to have things put right between me and Him. So when I got home, I knelt down and prayed a simple prayer asking God to forgive me; thanking Jesus for dying for me, and asking him to take control of my life.

More...