I was born in Sydney into a Coptic Orthodox family of Egyptian heritage in 1984. I grew up in Western Sydney and always had a knowledge and fear of God. My parents got saved when I was around 15 and our family started attending Nepean Baptist Church in Kingswood (Penrith) NSW.

In my late teens and early 20’s, I stopped going to church and started to live a selfish life that was all about pleasing the desires of the present. However, at the age of 22, I realized that the constant pursuit of worldly pleasures was bringing nothing but emptiness and sorrow.

I began starting to have a desire to ‘reconnect’ with God by reading the bible and going to church occasionally. One night, after a university lecture, I was waiting at the station and noticed a fellow student, Joanna. She was waiting for the same train as myself and getting off only a few stops before me, so we caught the train together.

During our conversation she mentioned she attended a Baptist church, to which I mentioned I had been attending a Baptist church (albeit on and off). We got to talking more over the following days, weeks and months, and eventually I started to attend the church where Joanna attended and where her father was the pastor – that was Faith Baptist Church Blacktown.

About 12 months later, in January 2008, I repented of my sins and believed the gospel. I followed Christ in baptism on 29th February 2008 and married the same women I had spoken to some 2 years earlier on that train station platform on the 29th of August 2009 and God has blessed Joanna and I with 3 beautiful children, Joshua (6), Nora (3) and Anna (1).