George | Rarotonga
“Kia Orana everybody looking on the little box of television or TV. My name is George. They call me back home ‘Action Man’ and I’m a minister of the government back home in Rarotonga in the Cook Islands.
Well, to be honest with you, I’m brave. I’m a warrior, but I did anything that I wanted in my young days, especially bad things, stupid things. I was dumb in those days, but I did a lot of brave things that I wasn’t scared to do, but today I’m with the Lord and I’m scared. That’s the only person I’m scared of, is God or Jesus. Before I was never scared of anybody. I wasn’t scared of Him, and I always wanted to fight with Him, but I never saw where He was. So, today I know where He is. He stays in my heart. He stays in our heart, but that’s your belief, and that’s my belief, because God gave us the freedom of choice, and I chose Him, and I chose my people, and I chose the love.
First, a little story about my life; I grow up with my old lady, my grandmother with three of us boys, and two girls. She’s a part of us, we were looked after by our grandmother, because I’ve never seen my dad, never seen my mum, and didn’t see my brother and sisters again until I was 37 years old. Now, we keep connected with each other. But about my life when I was back home in the Cook Islands in Rarotonga, the main island, I start doing bad things, stupid things. You know what I mean? Like, breaking in, fighting, and I also, in my young days, formed a gang, back home in Rarotonga. So, I was the leader in those days, with the gang, but I never achieved any good things in those days, and anytime I did bad things, to me it seemed normal, until my last time I went back to prison in 1992. That’s when I would start thinking about God. I changed my life through the Bible. I asked one of the wardens to get me a Bible and asked one of my mates to teach me how to read, to write, and to talk English because I didn’t know these things in my life. I’ve been to school and I finished school in Grade 6, Grade 6d, and what that class means is a special class for people like me. There were eight of us. We can’t write. We can’t talk English. We can’t read, and we call that class, the special class. Grade 6d. D stands for Dumb, in those days.
Now, if you can look at the way I changed my life, it’s not that hard to change your life, because God gives you the freedom of choice in your heart, in your mind and in your brain, for you to change your life. It’s up to you. Not up to Him. Not up to anybody. It’s up to you to change your life. So, I decided to change my life, because, before that, I used to use the Bible, to make me a smoke. I was a show-off, very cheeky. So, I made people see me tearing the Bible, and rolling it to make me a smoke. That’s how bad I was in those days. That’s how powerful the devil was in me, and that’s how strongly the devil controlled my life for 24 years. Later on, when I sit down and think hard, there was something I was missing because I’ve got a wife, I’ve got six kids, but we never enjoy our life, and I decided, I want to change my life, and the problem was too much drinking. Alcohol takes me into trouble. All the crimes I’ve been doing is through alcohol, and when I listened, when I received Christ or God in my life, I promised to God I will never touch it again.
It’s been 28 years now, I never touched it again, and one promise I promised to God, once I finished my last sentence in prison, was that I will go back and be the servant of my people. I never thought about being a member of parliament, but I thought about going back and helping my people, and back in those days in 2000, I started to learn how to build a house. First, I build my own house for my wife and my kids, and then I started my company, getting some boys to follow me, and I start teaching them how to build, and that’s how I helped a lot of boys in my village, how I helped a lot of people on my island.
There’s a lot of jealousy in human life. People go to church. They sing to God. They pray to God, but the jealousy in their hearts remains there. They can’t take it away, and that’s what I’m doing today, to teach the people and to tell them, if you take that jealousy, that greed in your heart away, you’re number one. That’s what my party stands for; one Cook Island, one man, one love, one Lord. So, if you don’t have that peace in your heart, and you’re talking about love, that’s all rubbish. Because God says in the Bible in Matthew 5:9; blessed are the peace-makers for they inherit the world. If you’ve got the peace in your heart, and you put the love aside, you’re number one. Why? Because you don’t want to talk bad about anybody. You don’t need to go to church to know God. Jesus says, go in your room and close the door and pray to Him. There’s a lot of things in the Bible we don’t see. It says in John 5:39; search the Scripture. We’re not searching. The people are not searching. They just read it, and close it and go. So in my life, I’m searching the Scripture, Paul said in Philippians 3:12; I’m not saying I’m good, but I make every effort to be. I’m still trying every day. In 2009, three pastors came and asked me to be a member of parliament. I said, I won’t fit in there, because I’m a criminal. And, the pastors said, nobody’s going to say you’re a criminal, let God decide. Then, I put my name in 2010 to go with the first election, and a lot of people talked bad about me, because of my background. I never think about those people. I pray for them. What happened in 2010, in the election? I won the biggest vote in the Cook Islands ever. Then, I tried to do more work for the people, to help more people, to give the love to them, and make peace with the people, but there are still some criticising people out there, but they’ve never changed their life. They’re still there. I’m moving up. 2014 we went back to the election. I beat my record again. What’s that to you? That’s to show you God loves me. God put me up there. You can’t see God. God is a Spirit.
In 2018, I beat my record again. Three times I win in the election, and my votes always keep going up.”
