#'did he have to choose THE DAY BEFORE THE SEMESTER STARTS to preach that one'

[gradling]

20.08.2022 | 7/50 days of rest

Forgot to take any photos AND forgot to actually post this on the correct day (yesterday), which is probably a good sign that I was doing the day of rest correctly haha. I finished two books that I was in the middle of reading (for leisure!), went for a walk, and did not touch work at all, which I think is a feat. It does mean that I did not respond to student emails yesterday, so I might have to explicitly tell students that I will respond more slowly on weekends.

[bohomuslimmah]

Often when people find out I converted to Islam (Yes I use converted instead of reverted but that's for a different post) ... they ask about my story. "Why did you convert" so I wanted to write, in detail, why I converted so that it's out there. Instead of typing it out every time and almost always forgetting details I want to have it here in the open to direct people to when asked. So, here you go. My convert story:

I want to start off by referencing my past. I was raised in a southern Baptist household. I remember begging to be baptized at 5. I was very religious and conservative Christian until 15. I went to church 2-3 times a week. Sunday, Wednesday nights and Fridays. When I was 15, I left the church after they told my brother he wasn't welcome. I didn't believe in Christianity because of how much hatred I saw in the community. Not over my brother but among other things too- and so much judgement against one another in the church. All that I was taught was judging others, converting others to save them, and hell. You would not believe the number of sermons preached to me on hell. It was so much fear mongering and I couldn't take it. I couldn't live like that and I don't understand why anyone would. Besides that my parents and the church's opinions on Muslims were extreme. My parents would tell me that Muslims are nothing but terrorists, they want to erase Christianity and rape women and "kill all infidels". They raised me to be islamaphobic but oh how it backfired lol...

When I left the church I still believed in God. I always have. But it got complicated because I then started thinking and discovering things on my own. I got into witchcraft and worshipped god through rituals and with an altar. I gave offerings of nature and prayed with different "spells". I researched a lot about Catholicism... I was really lost and kept going back and forth between paganism and Christianity/Catholicism.

When I was 18/19, I became close with a man from Pakistan but living in the UK. He mentioned being Muslim and fasting and stuff but didn't really talk a lot about it. He was the first Muslim person I had ever interacted with and I was curious about his religion, so I started reading the Qur'an. That was the first time I read the Qur'an and listened to recitations. I was curious but I didn't really understand.

When I came to university within a week, I met a Hijabi girl for the first time. She was Somali. This is what changed my mind about Muslims 100%. My friend from Pakistan helped a lot but I was still very ignorant because I never really asked him questions or talked about his religion. I was always just curious and confused and afraid to ask lol. The Hijabi girl I met was an amazing person in general. She always spread positivity, was always laughing, always had a smile on her face. She was an inspiration for me in general. Kind to everyone and full of sympathy.

I talked to her one day about Islam after I started dating a man from Saudi (haram I know...) and it made me even more curious. Our conversation was right after the Christchurch shooting in NZ and that’s really what brought it about. I did a lot of research and reading after that. Eventually, during my third semester of university, I was taking a course on religion and culture. I had an assignment to go to a place of worship that was not my own. I had called a Saudi friend that was in town visiting and he took me to a mosque. It was the trip to the mosque that made me convert really. Everyone up until that point had influenced me and I probably wouldn’t be here today typing this post without them but experiencing a mosque for the first time is what made me take my Shahada and choose to become Muslim.

When we went inside, we were met by a married Egyptian couple who could tell I was nervous and to be honest, I probably looked scared to death. I didn’t know what was acceptable and what wasn’t. I didn’t know if I would be offensive by asking certain things inside. I had never been before and like a dummy- did no research before hand because it was all short notice.

The woman that greeted us showed me up to the woman’s section and taught me wudhu, and prayer and showed me the Quran in Arabic and explained a lot of things to me that I didn’t previously know. I texted my friend/classmate and told her I wanted to convert while I was there but didn’t know how to bring it up. She called me and I took my Shahada with the Egyptian woman while on the phone with my friend. It was an amazing moment. I couldn’t have asked for anything better.

Since then I’ve learned a lot and grown a ton as a Muslim. I’m so grateful Allah led me to him and I’m so thankful to be a part of the Muslim community.  I’ve had major character development. Sis is almost a whole new person as opposed to who she was last year. But I’m still not perfect and still have a lot to learn which was really the purpose of writing on this blog. So, if you’re a follower or just happened to stumble upon this post- thank you for reading this far. Please consider reading more in the future.

[revjonbanks-blog]

A little about me

When I was in my early twenty’s I had a friend who was the daughter of a Church of God pastor in my hometown. The Church of God (Anderson, IN) had a statewide Camp Meeting outside my hometown every year. They would have something going on every day for a week. Every evening a preacher chosen for that specific year would preach. That year my friend persuaded me to go.

It was the last sermon on the last night of the week. I was sitting about three rows from the very back. When the invocation was given I wanted to go forward to the altar, but I just stood frozen. In my mind I said, ‘Jesus, I can’t walk up there. If you want me, you’ll have to come and get me.’ Immediately, a hand was on my left arm and leading me to the altar. As I started to kneel, I looked to my left to see who had led me down that long isle. It was Jesus, the Son of the living God. As soon as He let go of my arm He walked around the end of the altar and knelt right in front of me. The pastor, my friend’s father, knelt to my right and the gentleman who had preached the sermon knelt in front of him. They both began talking to me, but it seemed like their words were coming from light years away; I was so overwhelmed by the Presence of Jesus that I couldn’t understand a thing they were saying. And that night, kneeling in front of the Son of God, I became a Christian at a camp meeting in the country.

From that night on I felt the Presence of Jesus every day for one to two months. His Presence was especially prevalent in the mornings when I would awake. I would fall to my knees as soon as my feet hit the floor in total awe of what I was experiencing. I didn’t see Him during these times, but I knew exactly where He was standing each morning, and the entire room was filled with His glory. (The Holy Spirit witnesses to my heart right now as to how precious and how real these experiences were and how, to this day, the Lord uses them to help me from time to time.)

A few years later an elderly lady invited several people to her house after church one Sunday morning for some snacks and cold drinks. My wife and I attended. At one point this lady asked us to come into her kitchen. Another couple heard her invite us and they came, also. The lady then addressed me and said that she was the nurse on duty when I was born. She said that when she entered the delivery room Jesus was standing in a corner. She explained His Presence as being almost overwhelming. She went on to say that Jesus was also in the room my mom and I were placed in after my birth. She would pause each time she came in to check on us because His Presence was so glorious it was hard for her to bear. He stayed in our room until we were released from the hospital. It was so humbling to know that Jesus was present at both my natural birth and my spiritual birth.

About six months after my wife and I were married, we moved to Houston, TX where I would attend Gulf Coast Bible College (which later became Mid-America Christian University in Oklahoma City, OK). We both worked for a year before I started school. A man I worked with that year happened to be a student at the college. He invited me to a prayer meeting at a house in the Houston Heights that several young men from the college had rented. The house was built like a mansion. Just inside the front door there was a huge foyer and two stairwells, one to the right of the door and one to the left of the door, both leading to an open hallway upstairs that formed a half circle overlooking the downstairs foyer.

There were approximately twenty people present. Most of them were standing in the upstairs hallway. A few were on the stairs. I took a seat about four or five steps up the stairwell to the right, hugging the wall, in case someone might want to get by me. There were two or three men sitting several steps behind me, but none below me. This was in the evening and there were a couple of lamps left on in the foyer and also rays of light from a street light shining through some windows with sheer curtains on the front wall parallel to the stairs.

At a point in the prayer meeting, I think near the end, there came a period of complete silence. During that silence, someone put his hands on my shoulders. I sat frozen, not knowing what was happening. I then heard a voice say, “I ordain you to preach my gospel”. When the person removed His hands I opened my eyes and saw that it was Jesus who had ordained me. He then started up the stairs. I leaned back and, with my right hand, I reached out and touched the hem of His garment. I saw His garment move when I touched it. He stopped, looked back, and smiled at me. He then walked to the top of the stairs and disappeared. A man who was standing in the upstairs hallway was made aware that the Lord had dealt with me that night. The Lord actually let him see the same thing I saw after my ordination, an unclean spirit that was pursuing one of the students present in the prayer meeting. Twenty-four years later a church presented me with an ordination certificate. There was no ceremony. Jesus is the only Person that has laid hands on me.

My ordination is not from man, nor through the agency of man, but through the laying on of the hands of Jesus. I did not choose Him; He chose me. I now belong to Jesus and my allegiance is to Him and the Father alone.

Several months after that night, I started Bible College. A few weeks into my second semester my wife got a phone call from my biological father’s wife. (I had met them when I was sixteen and my dad had a bad heart condition. My wife and I went to see him the day we left for Houston. He was still working and doing okay.) His wife said that he had recently been forced to take a medical retirement from his work. The doctors weren’t giving him much time to live. He wanted us to move back to Oklahoma before he died. When my wife told me about this, I thought, ‘I can’t just drop out of college. It’s a four year college.’ However, after a week or two, I began to feel that God might really want me to leave school and move back to Oklahoma.

I prayed about it for several days and the feeling wouldn’t leave. I asked the Lord to please let me know for certain if He wanted me to do this. I then put a cotton work glove on the grass outside our apartment and, with my finger, I drew a twelve to fifteen inch circle around the glove. I prayed and asked the Lord to let there be dew on the ground but not on the glove, nor within the circle, if He wanted me to leave school and move back. I checked the following morning and the dew was on the ground, but not on the glove, nor was it in the circle.  I then asked that He do the opposite the next day, let there be dew on the glove and within the circle, but not on the ground. That next morning I overslept and was almost late for school. I rushed outside and quickly checked the ground, and it was dry. I crawled to the glove and it was wet with dew, as was the circle around it. We began packing our belongings and within days we were on our way back to Oklahoma.

After driving over eight hours we stopped and spent the night with my wife’s family. My dad lived approximately thirty-five miles north of them. The following day we visited with her mother most of the morning, then drove to my dad’s house. We arrived around noon. He and his wife were so surprised to see us. They had no idea we were coming. We never thought about letting them know. I had just asked the Lord what He wanted me to do, and then did it. They weren’t prepared for company so my wife and his wife immediately left for town to get some food to prepare for lunch.

My dad and I were standing outside talking when they left. They hadn’t been gone one minute and my dad had a heart attack. I helped him inside the house and laid him down on a cot by the wall just inside the door. In approximately one and a half minutes more, he passed away. I just stood there beside him, looking into his open eyes that were so still and so quiet, not knowing what to do. We had no cell phones back then so I couldn’t contact my wife. He lived a few miles from the nearest town so I didn’t bother calling an ambulance. I soon went outside.

My dad wasn’t a Christian when he died. I began asking the Lord to give him another chance. I sat on a porch step and prayed and prayed and prayed. Every once in a while I would stand up and pace back and forth on the patio and then sit back down. Twice I went back in the house and checked to see if my dad had come back to life. After what seemed like an eternity of sitting and pacing, sitting and pacing (it was actually about twenty-five to thirty minutes), I sat down for the last time and heard the words, “I have heard and I have answered; I have given you the desires of your heart”. I rushed inside and he was still dead. I went back outside for a few more minutes, and then went back in, and again, he was still dead.  I thought, ‘Maybe I have to tell him to wake up,' but, before I could speak, the last Adam, Jesus --- the life-giving Spirit --- breathed into him and he awoke from sleep. His first words were, "I was dead!” He said it three times and then began to praise Jesus.

As he was praising the Lord our wives returned. His wife went into a panic and started screaming, “What happened. He’s never looked this bad before.” I assured her he was okay and that he only needed a bath (he had passed his bowels and urine). After this day my dad still had a bad heart but he had renewed energy and vigor. He and his two brothers began going from one Church of God to another in Oklahoma, each giving their testimonies. My dad always worked into his testimony a statement saying, “People say that when you’ve been dead as long as I was, your brain will be affected, and I can attest to its truth – my brain was affected drastically -- I was a sinner, now I’m a saint; I was dead, now I’m alive.”

Several years after this experience, I was at a prayer meeting in North Carolina that was being held in the loft of a barn. There were about twelve to fifteen people present. I was sitting in a chair beside a middle aisle that ran down the middle of the loft. As we were praying in silence, I was suddenly filled with faith that what was beginning there would spread to the north, south, east, and west. I stood and began to speak but was cut short before I could complete a sentence. In the blink of an eye, I was standing beside Jesus in a place far above the earth. I don’t know where we were, whether in heaven, or on top of one of the highest clouds. God knows.

Jesus was standing to my left, facing me; Peter and John were to my right. I saw someone coming up from behind us and turned to look, and it was James. When I saw him, I glanced down and saw my body lying on the floor in the loft. Jesus began telling me I had been born before my time, and that the knowledge I had received would be usable, but I must wait until God completed a work in His people. He didn’t tell me what that work was. While Jesus was talking to me, Paul appeared, walking from my right to my left, several feet in front of me.  He was looking straight at me. I had the feeling that he knew me. Jesus then told me about my call and I returned to my body. My physical body ached for almost three weeks after this experience.

These have been just a few experiences that I’ve I held in my heart for nearly fifty years. Recently I shared them with two different people in two different places at two different times and both of them felt that I should share them with others. So I now believe the Lord wants me to share them. I have written them for the sole purpose of exalting Jesus and the Father, who love us beyond our ability to comprehend.

If you would pass me on the street you wouldn’t even notice me. I’m just another nobody from nowhere. There’s nothing good in me except that which Jesus has worked in me. I realize this may sound like a cliché, but it’s the absolute truth.

Rev. Jon David Banks, God’s most unworthy servant

[redeemedbymygoel]

Missions and Adoption: Seeing His Larger Picture Purpose in Not Going to Med School 3 Years Ago

“For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.”~ Jeremiah 29:11

I would have never imagined in a million years when I was deciding not to go to medical school three years ago in 2016 that the Lord would lead me to teach at an urban school which would cause me to struggle so much with my own sin yet the Lord would use it to work in my heart a desire for adoption!  On January 1st, 2019, I was accepted into a year-long volunteer internship program with the Christian organization, Bring Me Hope- a ministry that desires to “Love and Defend Orphans” and at-risk kids, primarily in China. Each year, the ministry runs a week-long summer camp for Chinese orphans in six different locations in China throughout the month of July where volunteers from anywhere around the world came come to love on orphans and are equipped to continue to defend orphans when they leave. As an intern, I am able to go to China, but also during the year, I am trained on orphan care, child trauma advocacy, non-profit skills, and mission skills.

How it all started was honestly when the Lord had opened the door to go to medical school during my senior year at Case but at the same time, through a plethora of bible studies with sisters in Christ on campus, slowly and surely, I found my desire for graduation was to do ministry instead of medical school. Therefore, in May 2016, I deferred a year and was looking for a job that would allow me to support myself to stay in Cleveland but also give me time to do ministry on campus. Through a dear sister at church, God opened an opportunity to work at an urban school close by as a Special Education Teaching Aide, an entry level position that allowed me to provide for myself but also had less responsibility than that of a teacher, so I was able to do ministry after the work day was over. 

Although my intention was never to make teaching a career, through working at this school, I saw the brokenness of what happens in a society that does not uphold the Word of God regarding family order. My students often acted disrespectful, defiant, and violent and were struggling a lot academically and I found that a lot of them had parents that weren’t involved or working third shift, so they did not have that parent consistency in their lives. Additionally, I had a few students who were adopted or in a foster-care situation due to abandonment or parents in jail. My work place had quite a bit of teacher turn over too, which didn’t help the students’ instability. Despite the difficulties in working with my students, I found the Lord working in my heart to think, “These children didn’t get to choose who their parents were. Especially for those fostered/ adopted or are ‘the fatherless’, what if they were brought into a family that know the Word of the Lord? How different would their lives be?”

That same year, the Lord brought be to CROSS Conference 2016, where He affirmed a growing conviction me that to be a following disciple of Christ, to be involved in the mission of bringing the gospel to the nations. Before CROSS, a sister and I had been reading Desiring God by John Piper and upon reading Matthew 24:14, 

“This gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in the whole word as a testimony to all the nations and then the end will come”,

immediately God opened the eyes of my heart to see partly why missions was so necessary. Seeing how the broken state of this world could find no other answer than in the gospel, a theme of my life at that time was a yearning to see Christ come back. When the gospel is preached to all the nations or people groups on earth, God states as a fact that Jesus will come back. Therefore, if I call myself a servant of God, how could I stand here and do nothing about praying for and being part of this Great Commission? The Lord blew my expectation of CROSS Con out of the water from being taught passages that matched bible passages I had been studying, to meeting a pastor who similarly had given up medical school for ministry, and learning how the Lord had been aligning my the trajectory of my life with characteristics for effective missionaries, I decided to surrender my life to praying for opportunity to be part of missions, for now in sending but in the future for going, in His will.

Shortly afterward, I decided to withdraw my spot in medical school and was unsure of how God would get me to the mission field but three months later, my work place offered me a position to be a 6th grade science teacher for the 2016-17 school year. My particular students constantly leaving them and I didn’t want to be one of those teachers so for the sake of these kids, after much prayer, I took the job. Since becoming a teacher, I have never faced a more physically, emotionally, and spiritually difficult year where I have sinned in all categories more than I ever wanted to see but I found that in God’s grace and mercy, He has never allowed a heart for missions and wanting to love on the fatherless depart from me. In fact, despite all the times of disrespect and failures at work, I still in the back of my minded desired to adopt one day.

As summer 2018 rolled by, I met some sisters and brothers during our church mission trip to Detroit involved in foster care. It was beautiful to see the couple- a Caucasian husband and Asian wife fostering two African-American babies. I asked them if I could hold they baby and they said yes. I held the baby and she threw up on me. After the slight surprise, I brought her to kitchen to clean her up and something about wiping the throw up off her face softened my heart to realize, not only were these kids fostered into a family but they got the whole family of Christ as well! It opened my heart to wanting to do foster care or adoption more and more.

As the fall semester of 2018 came by,  I read some books and was convicted that I desired to be involved somehow with adoption even if I couldn’t adopt or foster with my current status as a single (whose finances would definitely not qualify for adoption). By the beginning of November, I actively prayed that the Lord would give me a chance to be involved with loving on the fatherless. Amazingly, shortly after, I found out that a couple at my church were adopting (check out their journey here) and was so amazed at God’s quick answers to my prayers! If only I had seen what He would do next...

In December 2018, during a vacation to Key West with my family with no computer and expecting to not be checking my mail often, I received a ministry post from Girl Defined titled, “Singleness and Missions”. Having prayed about going to mission field for the last two years and knowing a dear friend was going to get engaged soon and praying for strength to continue in contentedness about singleness, I decided to give the vlog a look. On this blog was a sister, Ellissa Baird, who similarly had a heart for missions but also wanted to help orphans and she had the opportunity to do so through an organization called Bring Me Hope. 

At that point, I was praising the Lord for it fit my desire to love on the fatherless and missions perfectly! I looked up the internship and I only have 5 days to apply which gave me some doubts. Plus there was a fee and my phone screen was so small to operate on I started thinking, “Hmm, but I didn’t pray about this... but then again, I’ve been praying about this for the last 2-3 years. God, what should I do?” Ultimately, I decided to step out in faith that this was a possible answer to my last 2-3 years of prayers. Additionally, I had already applied to so many other jobs in the last semester but they were closed doors so what was the issue with one more opportunity? 

On New Years Day, I interviewed with Bring Me Hope and was amazed at how much the Lord affirmed that decision to apply. The organization talked about how they really wanted the gospel to be the focus so much training was on biblical foundations and how we read through the bible together! Additionally, I found out that after being trained in orphan care and child trauma counseling, we get to train Chinese students on how to do so with hopes of sharing the gospel with them which was PERFECT considering that this year, my involvement in international student ministry had really decreased but I wanted to do something more. We also go to learn missionary skills (which when I went to Cross Conference 2019, this decision was even more affirmed), along with orphan advocacy which was definitely a great opportunity in helping me with the whole long term missions thing. The craziest thing though was, each year Bring Me Hope has a different theme, and it just so happens this year, they were trying to start a school for orphans (wow... praise the Lord)! 

They accepted me and the internship started the second week of January! The journey has been incredible including one of the assignments being keeping a blog about what the Lord is doing through all this so this is where I will keep updates about what the Lord has been doing through this internship! If you are a friend, please pray that He would increase my faith through this internship as I continued to work as a teacher and grow in my walk with Christ as preparation for the mission field sometime in the future (God willing)! If you are a guest, I pray that this would bring you hope that everything that happens in your life is NOT meaningless, especially when you know Jesus, because He has planned everything so intentionally to work together for good for those who love Him! 

“And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.” ~ Romans 8:28

[douchebagbrainwaves]

EVERY FOUNDER SHOULD KNOW ABOUT YC

But if you look, there are some ideas where the proof that the experiment worked. We use the word intelligent as an indication of ability: a smart person can grasp things few others could. Right then, give me your laptop and set them up on the startup. The fiery reaction to the release of Arc had an unexpected consequence: it made me realize I had a design philosophy. So when do you approach VCs? These were the biggest surprise for me. It issued in 2003.

The best type of intro is from a founder who said we didn't focus enough on customer acquisition: YC preaches make something people want as an engineering task, a never ending stream of feature after feature until enough people are happy and the application takes off. In a startup, you'll be able to understand something you're studying, then it isn't hard enough. It's practically a mantra at YC. We try to pick founders who are good at seeming formidable is that they make two mistakes that cancel each other out. He returned to Harvard for the fall semester after starting Microsoft. Where did they get their investment back before the common stock holders that is, you get millions of dollars, and you can solve it manually, go ahead and do that for as long as it has a quantum of utility, and then ask: what should I do now to get there? Usually you have to be in this business; it's just where they were forced to move when they needed more space. Founders who succeed quickly don't usually realize how lucky they were. I'm not sure myself. About 20% of the fund's gains. A related problem since it tends to be done by bad programmers is choosing the wrong platform. On historical time scales, what we have now is just a bunch of guesses, and guesses about stuff that's probably not your area of expertise.

Startups do that all the time, instead of the angel's. We recommend startups treat them as auxiliary sources of money. Angels who've made money in technology are preferable, for two reasons: they understand your situation, and if we raise a few hundred thousand to a few million to build the company, regardless of whatever obstacles are in the way. They won't be as committed; they'll need to be solved, and d deliver them as informally as possible, preferably in the first half of his talk on a fascinating analysis of the limits of the conventional explanations of the difference between the people who'd been out in the same position as a big company will be a flop and you're wasting your time. Involve your friends if you want to take just enough money to last for a year, in January and June. America Has Dynamic Typing for Careers. So when I ran into the Yahoo exec I knew from the old days in the Yahoo cafeteria a few months in, they probably didn't. This amounts to asking what I got wrong, because if your sponsor goes out of business, you have to assume that someone, they're not all innate. It's slightly dickish of investors to care more about who you can recruit as a cofounder, and that you should lower your expectations initially. But the founders I know are programmers. If there are three founders and one who was away half the time what they are talking about and are years behind in their thinking.

And passion is a bad way to put it, because it made us harder to push around. I wrote a new essay with the same outline as this that wasn't summarizing the founders' responses, everyone would say I'd run out of money, you should do it in such a boring way that it's only by bouncing your idea off users that you fully understand it. In our startup, I think, is to find good books. And when I wasn't working at my day job I'd start trying to do real work. If you talk to investors and explain what they plan to do. Perhaps they need to get their capital back. There are two reasons founders resist going out and engaging in person with users made the difference between wisdom and intelligence are the average and maximum are the same. And it is also the essence of hacking. When you demo, don't run through a catalog of features. One reason this advice is so hard to get rolling that you should worry?

[facesofmonash-blog]

Meet Your Counsellors: Freddy Peredo

Cassie Spry, one of our Mental Health Champions, has been talking with some of the support staff at Monash University to share their story with the wider Monash community.

Are our counsellors flesh eating zombies or friendly (un-undead) humans who want to help Monash staff and students? Find out in the second Meet Your Counsellors article, with Monash psychologist Freddy Peredo.

Freddy is a senior psychologist at Monash Clayton campus. Read his story!

Stay tuned each week in Semester 2 for #MeetYourCounsellors every Wednesday and #FacesofMonash every Friday!

For more information about the counselling services offered at Monash University, please visit http://www.monash.edu/health/counselling

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I had the pleasure of speaking with Monash Clayton Psychologist Freddy Peredo the other day.

Why did you choose to become a psychologist?

I had a career prior to becoming a psychologist. I worked as a nurse for 18 years; and I used to work in intensive care where I worked for 9 years. Throughout my nursing career, I have always enjoyed psychology because in nursing you also studied psychology. In intensive care, you deal with a lot of the patient’s family because the patients are too critically ill to talk; so, there was a lot of “psychology” in dealing with the family. After my critical care course I naively started psychology, and that was ten years in the making – all part time. Then I became a psychologist.

How long have you been a psychologist?

It took me ten years part-time, while working, having a family and building a house.

Do you think it was worth the career change?

Yes, definitely. Even though nursing is a great profession, I thoroughly enjoy being a psychologist as well. It’s all in the helping profession.

What is the best thing that you do for your own mental health?

I’m a big believer in practicing what you preach. So, I sometimes give clients strategies for how to deal with their issues, the most common things being stress, anxiety, and depression. I tend to talk about study/work-life balance. I also try to make sure that I am getting work-life balance. I also talk a lot about physical activity, so I play sport and make sure that I’m getting enough physical activity. [I also make sure that] I’m sleeping well, relaxing, socialising; so all those things I think help me feel better, and usually also help clients. I also have other interests – sport’s one, but I’m also a keen gardener. I love gardening. At the moment, it’s a bit cold, but I’m still getting out there a little bit; chipping away over winter.

I like gardening as well.

I’m more ornamental than veggie, I love my bougainvillea and also have a veggie patch as well. But I’ve just got some basic edibles (Citrus trees and herbs) on it and like to plant more veggies.

What personality traits do you value in yourself?

As I said before, it took me ten years to do Psychology part-time, so I’d say patience is a one personality trait. I’m also persistent. Just to round it off, I think I’m an optimist. Half-full rather than half-empty.

Optimistic is a good trait to have; I’m trying to be more optimistic myself.

I think that’s one of the traits that I’ve had for a long time. I try to be positive. Saying that, we can all sometimes be negative, but I try to keep that in check.

What are three interesting facts about you?

1.   I was born in Chile, in South America. I came out here when I was eight and I speak Spanish, even though my Spanish is decreasing over time. I understand it pretty well, but speaking, I’m losing a little bit – more conversational these days.

2.   Like I said before, I’m a keen gardener.

3.   I still play basketball every Wednesday. I used to play lots more, but as I get older… just basketball. But I try to do other things, like take my dog for a walk on a regular basis.

It was amazing talking with Freddy. He is such a bright and dedicated person. I’ve also been talking to a few of the other counsellors at Monash, and it turns out all of them are really cool!

If you need any counselling services, do not hesitate to drop-in or book an appointment with one of the kind Monash counsellors. You can make an appointment on 9905 3020.

If there is an emergency, please call 000 or Lifeline on 13 11 14.