The Big Change - Standing firm in life’s storms

Andrew Robinson | 28 November 2006

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It was an accidental conversation that brought Frank Rasmussen back to God. He had recently retired from the police force and was nervously awaiting an operation when the telephone rang.

At the other end of the line was Irfon Griffiths, then a lay reader at Denham Court Anglican Church, who was ringing Frank’s wife, Elaine, about Sunday School. Frank took the message, but the conversation that followed changed the course of his life. When Elaine arrived home, she remembers Frank telling her that Irfon had prayed for him over the phone.

“That man’s a Christian!” Frank said. “If I do come out of this operation, “I’ll go to church and see him!”

For Frank, now in his eighties, this was not his first visit to church.

“When I was a youngster, I used to go to church three times a day!” he says.

“But as I got older, I just dropped off. The next time was when I was in the army: if you didn’t go to church, you’d get caught up in kitchen duty, so I went!”

But the horrors of the war in Borneo, his work investigating Japanese war crimes, followed by his long police career back in Australia all took their toll.

“I think he just lost his faith,” Elaine says. “In his job he would see things happening, and ask ‘Where is God here?’ He’d do anything but go to church. There would always be an excuse!”

“Well, night shift you couldn’t do it, afternoon shift you couldn’t make it, day off you needed a rest,” grins Frank.

But things changed after his conversation with Irfon.

“I think Frank realised that God loved him,” Irfon says, now an ordained minister in St Leonards, Tasmania. “I think God used me to help him realise that we’re all valuable to God, that God loves us for who we are.”

Frank jokes about being a ‘reformed gentleman’, but Elaine insists that the change was dramatic.

“When I used to talk about the Bible, he just wasn’t interested,” she says. “When he did come along to church, he was so bored sitting there. He’d always ask me how long until it was finished.”

“Afterwards, though, you’d find him out there doing Scripture homework with the kids! The only day we’ve missed church was when Frank was crook, and he was upset that we were missing it!”

“You couldn’t get a better crowd of people,” Frank says. “It’s changed our lives.”

The most difficult test came in 2004, when Bill Aquilina, their grandson who had shared their home for eight years was shot and killed by security guard Karen Brown after a robbery. Both Frank and Elaine were resentful and in disbelief.

They soon realised that their resentment and bitterness would only weigh them down, and that they need to trust God and forgive Karen.

Cameron Munro had only been minister at Denham Court for two weeks when Bill died. “This would knock some people for six,” he says. “They’d curl in on themselves and buckle down for the next ten years. But the Rasmussens are at church every week welcoming newcomers.”

He says that suffering “sorts out faith that’s convenient from real faith. If the wind never blows, you’ll never know if the house will stand.”

“When you’re feeling down and you talk to God, you feel so much better afterwards,” Elaine says. “Our faith has got a lot stronger knowing that God’s there for us.”

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