Part 1
My name is Salvador. I grew up in a Christian home. Although I was born in Portugal my parents moved here when I was nearly one because my Dad was born and raised in Bolton and we lived there till I was 11 and then moved to Salford. The first street we lived in was rough. My mum had bricks thrown at her when she was pregnant with my youngest brother, when I was 2, but none touched her. The estate I lived on was called Top O'th Brow and was one of the three roughest parts of Bolton. In our street alone there were burglaries and murders.
When we were there, people knew that we were a Christian family and mocking and Harassment would go on. One time my Dad had someone bow down to him mocking worship to him. My Dad just told him that he better get off his knees as his mum would probably be annoyed if he soiled his trousers. My parents desperately wanted to move. I remember before we left, my Dad went to the door and someone had left a bag of vomit on the floor as a going away present. When we had packed our things into a van to move to Salford, the local youths patiently sat waiting for us to leave, no-doubt to ransack the place.

While living in Bolton my parents shielded us and always kept us in eyesight. The furthest we could go was the back garden so I never really saw the evil of the place eye to eye. Being sheltered didn't really bother me because I was an imaginative kid and never got bored. I always had this thing in my head that I was special and I liked being different or unique and the notion of people not being able to put me in a box was important to me. I liked the fact that I was from a rough area but I wasn't the same as everybody else from there. In fact a teacher from my primary school told me that our family was the only one that was there, who's Mum and Dad had stayed married and all three sons were from the same 2 Parents. Going to church was also important to me and for me it was so alive. In fact when I couldn't go there I would cry and not understand why we couldn't go. I saw that God was real and couldn't understand why no one else didn't believe. I remember once I was putting Lego bricks in my mouth, playing about with them, when I swallowed one and got it stuck in my throat. My dad tried everything possible, slapping me on my back hard, which I didn't appreciate and was getting redder in my face. My Dad prayed to God to dislodge the brick and when he finished praying I coughed up the Lego piece.

I was 7 when I made my own decision to be a Christian and to confirm my belief that Jesus was the Son of God, who died for me. My Dad would always read bible stories at night before we would go to sleep and he read about Phillip and the Ethiopian Eunuch. In this event Phillip explained how a prophet, called Isaiah, was foretelling the suffering of Jesus over 600 years before Jesus was born. Here the Ethiopian Eunuch hearing about Jesus said, "Look here is water, what stops me from being baptised?" Now I hadn't been baptised and when I heard this statement, I knew I had to be baptised and I said "Why can't I be baptised?" and my Dad said if you believe Jesus is the Son of God you can be to which I replied "Well I believe." So my Dad prayed with me and told me to see one of the leaders of the church on Sunday. So after the service on Sunday I go to an elder, and I go alone, and told him I wanted to be baptised. He asked me why I wanted to be baptised, so I told him that the bible said that a person must be baptised and that I needed to be baptised to be a Christian, and he couldn't argue with that, so he said that he would speak to the other elders and some time later I was baptised.

At this stage I understood the need for belief and baptism but in Sunday school they brought up the need for repentance and they asked us if we had repented. I had just said yes automatically but I didn't understand what that was. I could understand Jesus dying on a cross for me but there wasn't a time where I decided to stop living a bad life, I hadn't had a conversion experience.

Part 2
When I moved to Salford, I found the first few years until I was 14 I was facing bullying occasionally from gangs near where I lived but I never once remember being punched. One occasion a gang of lads were staring at me as I was going to the shops for some sugar. I knew they were bad news so, on the way home I went the other way home and reaching halfway down the street I had a sudden sense that they were waiting for me so I changed course down a ginnel to bypass and outsmart them, and reaching the end I was suddenly surrounded by the gang and trapped in front and behind me. They outsmarted me! After having them chucking little bits of stones at me and them giving some aggressive name calling and nasty threats trying to get me to fight, I began to cry which made them feel guilty. They began to say "oh c'mon leave it" and one of them started shaking my hand and apologized saying "soz mate, I thought you were a packie."

Another time a gang of kids were doing the same kind of things to me when I was crossing through their area and I started to cry, making them feel guilty. When asked why I didn't start to fight them, I said "Because I am a Christian and I don't want to". To which a kid replied "Oh I'm a Christian too!" Just then the Pastor from my church arrived in his car, just happening to pass through and picked me up. Another time I escaped from a lad, who was trying to hurl a brick at me after falsely accusing me of breaking the window of his Grandmother's car in Swinton, an area I had never been to at that time. I did a few things in those years that I regret. Especially to my brothers. I would get into fights and aggravation with them due to having my pride hurt because I felt I had to be better than them. Once I put my foot in the living room door with a flying kick where one of my brothers should have been standing but he shut the door in time. I then contested when I had to pay for new varnish for the door because my brother was the one who put the door in the way. I didn't mean to get the door but him!

I also did a couple of unspeakable things to my youngest brother too. I repented of these but I wish they had never happened in the first place. What makes this situation worse was that I was telling my friends at school about Jesus and saying that I was a Christian but being unchristian in these areas. At school I always hung around a small group of friends. We were a little geeky group of people and felt that I was seen to be part of the geeky clan. I don't know in reality if that is what people thought of us.

Part 3
At A-level College I started the year off by cutting myself from the entire old crowd to just be by myself. I wanted to recreate the way people saw me. This soon changed as I got to know people and integrated. I liked the lazy atmosphere of the canteen where I would just hang about, eat and chat being careful not to get stuck with one group of people but with as many people as possible. In my first theatre studies lesson we were asked to share the most important thing to us. When it came to me I said that it was my faith. I never even said that it was my faith in Jesus Christ. I left Jesus out of it. This was my first mistake. Second was that I said that this was because you can get to know God in a deep way. It doesn't stop you from enjoying yourself, going to parties or from going out. How much I had fallen! Jesus said anyone who would follow Him must deny himself or herself. Here I was saying you could live any way you want and have Jesus too. I told a lie that Jesus would allow himself to take second place in someone's life. As I have heard people say, If Jesus is not Lord of all, He is not Lord at all. So I started my downhill slope into the world.


After doing the Christmas pantomime I got involved with a semi-professional theatre company doing Macbeth. Here I got into the workshops on Sundays but in one of the weekday rehearsals we did a warm up and one of the actors did a hypnosis- relaxation exercise. I didn't feel comfortable with this but neither did I object because I had found something that I could make a go of. I wanted to be a professional actor. I knew that it was a pursuit where I would probably be out of work with it and not get anywhere with it but I didn't care, I wanted to at least give it a blast. I fervently prayed to God "Please let me become an actor". I was pleading with God because somewhere inside there was an uneasy feeling about this endeavour that was drowned out by the excitement of my ambition and of the atmosphere of being on the stage. At the end of that show was the end of show party and consequently the first time that I got drunk. I wasn't paying for the drinks and was given quite a few pints and a couple of shots of spirits. I can't remember what it was I was drinking but I knew when I had drunk too much when I started to see double vision. When I started seeing two of everything I then thought, "Oh no, I'm drunk" so to compensate I downed 8 pints of water in succession, which after left me shaking. I stayed over at the pub overnight with 3 - 4 hours sleep and then I got up early for church. At church my Dad said "You better not have a hang over!" I said no and I honestly answered him because I thought a hang over necessitated a pounding and hurting head, especially when someone shouted down your ear hole. I didn't have a hurting or pounding head but I felt heavy, lousy and sickly and I was still under the effects. Continuing at college I would go to the pubs occasionally, never getting that drunk ever but having drunk enough and never staying out too late but late enough. I had also tried my first cigarette at college just to see what it was like, but I didn't think much of it and didn't intend to make a habit out of it. There were only two other times I smoked. One was for a theatre project in an exam performance and afterwards in the pub drinking.

I lit up and was smoking through it when I started to feel really heavy and ill. I went to the toilet and wretched my guts up. I was due in work that evening but felt so ill. I phoned in sick. But on the way home on the bus I started to feel better so I went into work after all and by the end of the shift I felt perfectly fine. During my time at college my family changed churches and I went with them feeling this was the right decision as 6 months previously I sensed that my time with this church was going to come to an end. At this church the preacher was emphatic about the bible. Also he always stated that a person couldn't live off their parents' faith. I know that that word was for me but I couldn't see it at the time. I agreed with what he was saying but I didn't see it apply to me. I hadn't stopped believing in Jesus. I was quite fervent at college at various times in sharing about my belief in Jesus, and being a part of the Christian union which we set up, and the weekly prayer and worship meetings confirmed this to me. How little I knew I was living and believing a false gospel. I understood that it was only through Jesus that we could get salvation because he was perfect, without sin and he died in our place. I understood that belief in him was the only way to get to heaven, but how lacking was my belief because I still hadn't got to grips with the word repentance. In the 2 years at college I had also gone out with 2 girls. The only ones ever. The first was a non-existent relationship, which lasted one week. We only met at college; I never really spoke to her much. After our first kiss she dumped me. You see, all I did was hold her hand and I was a drip around her. The second lasted 2 months. There was obviously more conversation but again most of the time spent with her was in and around college. Even though we didn't have sex I was moving too fast, the relationship remained in the physical realm and we never really bonded as a couple. One day I realised that I was lonely. I prayed to God "God, I don't really need a girlfriend, what I need is a soul mate."

Not surprisingly about a week or two later I get a phone call from her saying she needed to talk to me, but wouldn't tell me on the phone. I knew what it was going to be and I was right, she dumped me. I was gutted. And I suppose all this was a part of what I was feeling underneath all the enthusiasm and laughter I showed at college. I know it was selfish but really I felt lonely, and this emptiness manifested itself in my songs but especially my poems. Inside I knew I was slipping away in my faith. I felt ashamed so I would fabricate the lyrics a little and make my verse vague so that I could hide the reality that they were about me. It wasn't the case that I was going out every weekend and getting hammered because I wasn't, I didn't go to the same lengths as other people. The first time I went to a nightclub was mid second year and I have never been to the same club twice. Most of the time I would be at home and just listen to CDs or watch TV. If I had been going out every night then maybe I would have questioned the way I was living but the way I lived enabled me to remain in good conscience as my worldly activities were entered into occasionally. And, looking back, I am sure this would have seen my right into hell without myself realising it, had not Jesus spoke to me a year later on my degree course. Such was my delusion!