Kia Ora, Trudy here. TeAtiawa, Parihaka and Waikawa, Mount Taranaki.
Welcome to my spot on this site. I wear a few hats but what keeps me out of mischief is probably my busy life on campus. I graduated last year from AUT university with a Graduate Diploma in Digital Media so you will probably see a bit of me coming and going here over the next little while fiddling around with this site. This year I have returned to university to do a Masters Comunications/Digital Media and have also been tutoring Year 1 BCS undergraduates .. great fun! The students keep me on my toes!
Besides enjoying my mid-life career change from Nursing to Digital Media I care deeply and meditate constantly on the issues of life, about people and about the environment and the world in which we live.
Despite being raised in a loving church going family, my faith, even in that intense environment, never transferred to anything personal and in 1976 I embarked on a rigorous search for the God I just could not find in the church. This search took me to India and Asia, through Europe and to the UK looking for answers. I found that on closer inspection of some of the world religions, I became more disillusioned than ever. However, in early 1977 in Amsterdam, I encountered God in a loving and dynamic Christian community and great news , He was alive and well!
Returning to NZ a couple of years later, I married Graeme, finished my nursing studies and had 3 gorgeous kids (not all at once!). Luke is 23 now, Lilli 22 and Oliver 19.
In 1983 Graeme and I pioneered our first church and for many years got to practise our somewhat outside the mainstream values and much of what we learned became the content for Graemes 4 published books, and a truckload of other wonderful material that is still to be published.
Along with my involvement in ESCF and numerous community activities, I also worked as a Registered Nurse in various areas of Health, including nine years part-time in an all-male prison. This latter experience helped shaped my deep convictions regarding justice and mercy, human frailty and God's redemptive power.
Find me on Facebook HERE as well ... you'll have to sign up for this but do it .. it's an awesome way to catch up with old friends and to network with current ones.