Ireland - now the good news!

1 A cause worth living for

David ‘Pakie’ Hamilton, Belfast, and his work with Teen Challenge  (from Bread Vol. 2 No. 2)

David Hamilton was born in Cookstown, Co. Tyrone and moved to Belfast when he was about eight years old.  While at Mosney I took the opportunity to ask him about his background:–

I played football with Bobby Sands!

I grew up in Rathcoole housing estate in Belfast.  14,000 people live there and not five of them would be Roman Catholics!   At that time, though, it was a mixed estate – I played football with Bobby Sands!  I never thought then that either of us would end up in jail.

When the troubles started there was a lot of fighting – with the Catholic boys – on the way home from school.  There was safety in numbers – so I got involved in one of the gangs.

When the troubles were at their height in the early seventies I decided to join one of the para-military groups.  I was seventeen then and went into jail about a year later – for armed robbery, possession of weapons, petrol bombing, etc.  I got a five-year recorded sentence and spent about a year inside.

this time I was sentenced to twelve years

I was out only a few weeks when I got actively involved in para-military activity again, with another – illegal – group.  I ended up holding rank in the area I lived in and was responsible for different actions.  Sure enough, I was arrested again and this time I was sentenced to twelve years.

I was in the H-blocks and then, after two years, was moved back to the Crumlin Road Prison.  I was in a good mood because I had reached the final of the snooker competition and was sitting in my cell drinking a cup of tea, when suddenly, the thought came into my head to become a Christian.  I think I burned my lip on the tea!

I said to myself, “Aye, I wouldn’t miss it – running about there like an eejit!” and I laughed to myself.  But as I sat the thought seemed to haunt me over the next half an hour.  I thought about it half a dozen times.

I knew I needed to become a Christian and started to look over my life – the way I’d been living from my early teenage years was crazy.  When we moved to Rathcoole my parents registered with a church that Sunday, but church was just for ‘hatching, matching and despatching!’  My father never went – just us.

there’s more life in a Duracell battery

I went to Sunday School until I was thirteen but I didn’t see any real life in it.  Church was a bore – this guy was dressed up like Batman at the front – you listened to some aul’ doll beating the piano to death!  I thought, “I’d hate to be a Christian.  There’s more life in a Duracell battery than in these Christians!”

I just thought it was nuts – yet here I was in jail thinking about becoming a Christian.  As I started to look at my life – I should have been dead on a number of occasions.  I had been shot three times and blown up twice – and even since becoming a Christian I have seen the Lord protecting me when attempts have been made on my life.

I knew then that God had spared my life and I thought, “Maybe God is the answer – that you can have peace in your life without having to run about with a knife in your pocket, or sleep with a sawn-off shotgun under your bed!”  When I woke up next morning the first thought in my mind was to become a Christian.  It was still there!

That dinner hour I decided to surrender my life to Jesus and I got down on my knees. I have a tattoo on my arm which says, “No surrender!” but I knew that day that if I surrendered my life to Jesus I had to give him everything.  I asked the Lord to come into my heart and save me.