From Mob Member to Pastor

From Mob member to National Youth Worker and Pastor

Wayne Poutoa

I was born In aotearoa (New Zealand), my parents having migrated from Samoa to give us kids a better education and a better lifestyle. But sometimes things don’t go according to plan. My father was very militant. He was a “wharfie”, who worked for years on the wharf in Wellington. He used to come home and all of us kids would be sitting at the front door, by the hallway, seated cross legged with arms folded, waiting for him to arrive home. I remember looking underneath the front door and seeing the shadow of his feet. He would creak the steps and open the front door. We would still stay there when he walked in. Then he would go through every room and wipe the windowsills to check for dust to make sure that the whole house was clean and that everything was spick and span. And if it wasn’t, we got a hiding. So, we lived in fear quite a lot.

My sister and I come from a blended family. When my mother first met him he already had four kids, so there were eight of us. Anyway, things didn’t go really well for us. I remember one time that my stepbrother and I went to the dairy. In those days you could buy a bottle of Coke and could take the empty bottles back and get some money for them. We used to build trolleys out of pram wheels and load up and do a bottle run then go to the dairy and cash in for the money. But what we started doing was we would go to the front and cash the bottles and then go to the back of the dairy, steal more, and put them back in the trolley and go to the front again for another cash in.

But we eventually got caught and the police took us home. I remember saying to the police clearly, “Please don’t take us home”. But they did and I remember my father talking to them. We were in total fear.

The cops knew the situation, but they couldn’t do anything. They walked away. And then we walked into the house and my father tied our hands behind our backs.. Then he just smashed us. He belted us with everything he had. That’s how we grew up. So it wasn’t rocket science as to why my mother wanted to leave him. Sometimes she would make the attempt to leave. My brothers and sisters would hide me under the bed. Although all this violence was going on, I did not want to 20

leave. They were my family. But finally my mum and partner did separate, and my mum went to Auckland.

I was left in Wellington to attend the Newtown primary school. When I was about 11 Dad said, “I want you to go to Auckland, and spend the holidays with your sister”. That sounded great and I went there for two weeks. But then my mother hit me with the words, “You’re not going home, you’re staying here now.” So I lived with wanting to go back home to my brothers and sisters and not wanting to be in Auckland permanently. Anyway, I stayed with my mum and went to school. But I missed everyone in Wellington. Then one day I got the news. My mum came to me in the sleep-out and she said, “Your sister’s gone”. She had died giving birth to my niece. That struck me really bad and I wanted to go home. But in those days, Wellington and Auckland were like from here to Timbuktu.

Eventually I left home at about aged 15 and joined a gang called the King Cobras in Ponsonby. They occupied a three-storey industrial building in the neighbourhood. It was a rough building, but there was a boxing ring in it. And so we’d all jump in the ring, and spar with each other. At that time, Ponsonby wasn’t what it is today. It was a low socioeconomic environment, housing Pacific Islanders and those who came over as part of the labour workforce.

That’s where the Polynesian Panthers came from. And so we got caught up with them also. I became the flat mate of one of these guys. His name was Tigilau Ness who worked with a Polynesian band, and so we as street kids lived with him and got to know stuff about activism and causes around that sort of thing.

One day, at 16 years old, I was drunk on Ponsonby Road, and I assaulted a constable. I was sent to a youth prison. But first, I had to go to Mount Eden Prison for a week on remand for medical, so that they could assess my physical capability to attend this youth prison. It was sort of like an army style run base camp for young people – a boot camp. Walking into north block with three grey blankets and a red stripe down the middle I was panicking. I was just totally in fear of my life; I’d never been to prison before.

I walked into that receiving office. They checked me out, did everything that they do, and they walked me up the staircase. The staircase had bars on the side and bars over the top of it. Then I walked into this wing, and then into a cell. It was lock up time -- after four o’clock. There was another guy in the cell called Sam. He looked like something out of a movie, with long hair and a missing front tooth. Like I said, right then at that time,

I was panicking. And he just said to me, “Do you know how to fight? Because when you go out into the yard, they’re gonna smash you. So you better know how to fight!” 21

I never slept that night. As soon as I heard the key turn for unlock in the morning I thought, “Man, this is it!” When I walked out onto the landing, and was standing there, I looked to my left and to my right. I saw some of the most meanest, ugliest men I’d ever seen in my life. It was easy to see why they were in prison. So again I thought, “This is it, I’m gone.” Then they told us to move left and go to the yard. As we were going to the yard I kept thinking about my life, my family, and that this was my last day.

As I walked out into the yard I heard a call I recognised because it was a Pacific Island call. I responded to that call. There was a Nuian boy in the corner of the yard. So I made a beeline for him. And he assured me that everything was going to be alright. Because we were young, we weren’t in the game -- we were in a gang, but not in a big gang. The guys that came behind me were less fortunate. They got smashed. These guys just walked up to them and asked, “Are you Black Power?” Before they could answer, “Boom! Boom!” They were on the ground. Black Power wasn’t accepted. I was there for a week just watching these guys getting smashed while the guards did nothing; they just looked on.

When I left after that week I went to court. Then I was taken to a youth prison. The first youth prison I went to was Waikeria where we had to stay a couple of nights. I remember walking into that wing and it was spotless, really clean. There were young people my age scrubbing the floor. I sat there getting a haircut because they shave all your hair off. I could see into an office and through the office to the adjacent wing. Some guys had white stripes down the sides of their trousers. I said to one of the boys, “What does that mean?” I was told, “Those guys are doing two years in Borstal, because they tried to escape”. I thought to myself, “I ain’t doin’ two years in this dump!”

I was then transferred to Tongariro Prison Farm where the boot camp was. When I got there, it was like a real military facility. You go to work with slashers cutting down trees. And then after that, you come back, you do an obstacle course, and you have a methylated spirits bath, which comprises a tank with methylated spirits. You put your hands in, take your hands out, put your feet in, and take your feet out. It makes your hands tougher and your feet tougher to wear the steel cap boots that you have to wear every day and to hold the slasher you have to hold every day.

On release, I went down to Porirua. Dad had remarried and things weren’t going too well. All my brothers and sisters left and when I went to see them they had made their own lives. They said, “We love you, but we can’t take care of you”. So to make a long story short, I found myself with the Porirua Mongrel Mob for quite some time, and just kept going in and out of prison. When I was in prison, I thought to myself, “Man, things need to change”.

A couple of years later I was in my car (a Valiant Hemi 265) in Papakura and I pulled into a gas station. All of a sudden, a motorbike turned up, and there was a guy with a different patch on. We looked at each other, started fighting and I smashed him against the pump. The cops came and I got arrested again and booked for 22

assault with intent to injure. I went before the judge and got 15 months. So I went to prison again. But while I was there, I kept watching people come back, leave and come back. I thought, “It has to be more to this, man! Is this the pinnacle of gang life? Is this all I’m gonna do?”

Where I was in Wing 3, there was a library. It took me six months to walk in there, but I finally walked in and found a book written by a criminologist, Greg Newbold. I read this book and it showed me another way. So I kept reading. And I started getting a whole lot of books just wanting to read. Finally I thought, “I’ve got to get out of here. I’ve got to leave the Mob. It’s not doing anything for me. I’m going nowhere fast. And I’ve got kids, I’ve got a daughter. Now I’ve got to think about her.”

So when I left prison, my boys came to pick me up and we had a party and all that sort of stuff, as you do. Then I went to get my daughter and we went to stay at an emergency housing space. The guy there was a Christian. He welcomed us, sat us down and we had a meal. And then he was talking, and we got to know him a bit more. Eventually he said, “We go to church”, and I said, “I get it that you guys do, seeing all these Bibles”. He said, “Yeah, we go to church”, and he said, “Would you like to come?” I thought, “I’m just gonna keep up this con”, because I was already borrowing this guy’s car and living cheap. So I said, “Okay, cool. I’ll come”. So we went to church. It was like a lecture theatre, and we sat in the middle row.

At the end of the service the pastor gave an altar call: “Does anybody here want to know Jesus?” In making this call he asked us to stand. My heart was beating. The Holy Spirit was coming upon me. But there was another voice saying, “What are you doing here? You’re wasting your time. Mob members don’t go to church. Sit down, you idiot.” But even though that voice was coming, it was the overwhelming calmness of the Spirit that was overtaking me. It was great. And I just felt the

Spirit of God like a heater. The pastor kept calling for those who wanted to come. And then I turned to my right and made my way out onto the staircase. As I started walking down the stairs, the voice got louder. “Don’t do it! Don’t do it!” So halfway down I ran to the front really fast. And this guy said to me, “Are you here to give your life to Jesus?” I replied, “Yeah, hurry up. Hurry up. Let’s do it right now”. And he had this big smile on his face. He knew I was wrestling with this. So he led me through the sinner’s prayer. After I had prayed, he hugged me.

This was a big shock because I’d never been hugged by a pakeha man before. I thought,

“Why is he hugging me?” But at the end of the day, it was so overwhelming, I just began to cry. After that this elderly lady came up to me and said, “You are going to be a Paul”. I said to myself, “Whose Paul?” After that it was really cool. But although

I had given my life to Jesus, I still had other consequences to deal with. I went back to the house and I kept wrestling with this and wondering what was going to happen to me and my daughter. But the church people came and they all rallied around me and started praying for me. They prayed, and we prayed. And so, with their prayer coverage,

I went to the Mob president’s house, and I also had a prayer warrior in the car. I walked into that house, and he was doing the dishes. I said to him, “There’s no other way to say this. But I’ve come to say, I’m out. And the reason I’m leaving is because I found Jesus Christ.” You should have seen the shock on his face! He couldn’t believe it. He just looked at me with like, 23

“What’s wrong with you?” Then he said to me, “Well, you know, you’ve got to go with what you believe”. But then he added, “If we ever find out that it’s not the case, we’re going to take you out.” I said, “Yeah, sure.”

With that, I left his place. When I left, it wasn’t easy because I went to the woman that we had my daughter with, and I said to her, “Are you coming with me?” She said, “Nah, I’m not coming.” I said, “Well, I’m taking my baby”. So I took my daughter with me. As time went on, she went back to her mum and came back to me and back to her mum and back to me. But she’s doing really well. When I left the Mob, I still had court criminal assault charges that I had to answer to. I hadn’t done burglaries, but I had assaulted cops and smashed other gang members. As I went to court I thought, “I’m going to go to jail for this”. I said to the judge, “I could plead not guilty. (I had previously threatened and silenced witnesses). But I am guilty. Because I now follow Jesus I’m telling you the truth. So it’s up to you what you want to do with me.” He asked, “Who did you come with?” I said, “I came with this guy”. And so the pastor from the church stood up, and he spoke on my behalf. He explained, “This is a true conversion”. At the end of it, the judge gave me periodic detention for something that I should have been in jail for.

And then I started getting into church and finding out what it was all about. But before you know it, I got invited to different places to share my testimony. And then all of a sudden, it became all about my testimony and not so much about God. I wondered, “Am I now a trophy of this church? Is this all about me? Where is God in all this?” I felt hurt and left the church and decided to do something different.

A guy who knew me when I was in the Mob, also a good friend and a prayer warrior with other members of the church, were praying for me. He asked me, “When are you coming back? God loves you”. I replied, “Yeah, but I’m just fighting with where people used me. I’m still recovering from that”. And he said, “Fair enough”. And so I got a job in furniture as a truck driver, and then operations dispatch. But soon I found out it was getting to my knees that weren’t good enough for the job. My body was wearing out.

At that time another Christian brother knocked on my door. And he said to me, “Wayne, have you seen this ad in the paper? This is what I’m going to do”. He was going to do a social work course. And so I said, “Oh, yeah, I think I can do that”. So I went to this course and stayed for four years getting a degree in social work. After that I went to Victoria University, and entered into a Master’s for a social science researcher. All this time I was working with youth gangs in Porirua and creating initiatives, doing work on placements while I was getting this degree.

Because of what we were doing with youth in the streets some people advised me to apply for “Vodafone World of Difference Award” in which I was successful. Five of us out of about 255 people were selected for this award. And so I went there with Billy Graham, the boxer who started the Naenae Boxing Academy that I knew from my boxing days, Frank Bunce from the All Blacks and a few women from different women’s initiatives.

From there, they paid me a salary to actually start running the program called

“Brothers not Colours”. It was about taking kids out of gangs and giving them a better choice and a better option. This was in my own neighbourhood. So you need to 24

understand the impact of this, because I had left the gang in this neighbourhood, but was still in there. Not many gang members who have left gangs stay in the same neighbourhood. So I was running a program that was against gang life, turning kids away from joining the gang that I had come out of. Not only that, I also became a city councilor in Porirua, representing the Eastern Ward and so became a community leader, lecturing here and there with Te Wananga o Aotearoa.

As a result of working with Mongrel Mob members, some of them hated me. But some of them came to me saying, “It’s too late for me. Can you work with my son?” or “Can you work with my daughter?” I said, “Yes, sure”. So I started working with them. Then all of a sudden the funding dried up, so we decided to do something different. Accordingly we spent five years working with Te Wananga o Aotearoa, doing “Youth Guarantee” programs.

After that 5 years’ funding, we then drew up an official name – “Youth Guarantee” (https://youthguarantee.education.govt.nz/) -- that would ensure it was a government initiative, running throughout the nation.

Through the second largest energy provider in the country, we were given the ability and scope to develop, with the capital to do so.

Our managing director was really into the youth work to see it expand. “We can do this”, he said. And so we did. I set up “Youth Guarantee” programs as part of a team, setting up programs from

New Plymouth to Invercargill and different satellite groups all over the country. And that went really well. So we’ve been working with all sorts of youth all over the place. After the five years we were still at the

Hosanna Baptist Church in Cannons Creek,

Porirua, for 11 years, looking after life groups preaching, doing all those sorts of things.

And then my pastor said, “Look, Wayne, I’m, stuck. I’ve double booked myself. I’m meant to be in Carterton. Can you go and cover for me?” I thought, “Carterton? Where’s

Carterton?” I found it was in the Wairarapa.

So I went there to preach. Because we come from a church with about 300 people I thought this must be a huge church. I can’t wait to get over there and have a look and meet the people and see what God is doing in their lives. I walked into a church with five people! But I just preached like there were 500 or 5000. Afterwards, as my wife and I were walking out, an elderly lady came up to us and she asked, “Are you going to be our new pastor?” I said, “Just keep praying. He will send you the right one.

God bless you and have a great day!” I was thinking, “No way”. But the Lord’s way is not our way. That was our introduction to Carterton.

So we’ve come here and I went from where

I was to becoming a pastor. What happened was, they needed a pastor here. They had a range of people who would come and speak 25

and help. But they said, “We think Wayne is the one to come and be our pastor”.

I felt it was also a time to leave what we were doing, having done all we could. But I thought it would be Auckland or somewhere, not Carterton. The Lord, however, had been pressing this on our hearts. And so we decided, let’s keep praying. So we kept praying about it. And then the church in Carterton had a vote and the vote passed 100%. So, with that confirmation we said, “Let’s go”.

Hence we came to Carterton. I remember the first day that we came here and they gave us the keys. I walked up to the church and unlocked the doors. I sat in the middle of the church and started crying to myself, “I don’t think I can do this. Why have you brought me here, Lord? Look at this place. There’s nothing here. I can’t do anything here”. And then I felt like almost the “Samoan slap”. The Lord seemed to be saying, “What is wrong with you? This is the agenda. Have I not sent you? Start doing what I sent you to do.”

So, I went back to Jennifer after wiping my eyes. I told her what had happened. And she said, “Good job. Now what are we going to do next?” And so we started praying. I thought, OK, so the church needs income. Because I was opening up all the satellite groups, I hired the church hall out and began a program in here.

About six months before I came they had begun saving for the salary for the next pastor to come. So when I came, we were able to open up a group in Masterton as well. And then we had about 30 to 40 students. Jennifer gave them all a piece of paper and said to them, “Write your stories, write who you are, and tell us who you are”.

Eighty percent of those stories that came back from those young people were things around suicide ideation, domestic violence, gang life, crime, sexual abuse. Jennifer and I took the first five that we thought were an important priority, and we made them come and live with us in the manse for two years. It was then we realised we were running out of space and needed to create something like a village. We needed more accommodation. We had our friend and helper, Henry, here at the time. He suggested that we use freight containers for the purpose.

It wasn’t until we opened that course that we understood what it was we needed to do. Because we had always been working with youth we thought, “There’s no youth in the church to work with youth. That’s what God wants us to do. This is the future of the

church”. And then all of a sudden we found there was too much “red tape”. So I went to the council and said, “Don’t tell me what we can’t do. Tell me what we can do”.

Christine Dugdale from the Dugdale Trust found out what we were intending to do with these containers. So she came to visit us and she said, “I will put the first cabin up”. And I outlined what was necessary. She bought the first one. Then someone else bought the second one, and another the third. So we eventually had about $160,000 to $200,000 worth of work done here. None of it has been government funded. It’s all church and community. Rotary did the plumbing, Lions in Masterton paid for the concrete for the paving from Allied Concrete. I had a meeting with the Reformed Church and they brought their people in to work on the painting. They have builders on the staff to build and guide to get the ceilings done to keep the running costs down.

So from here, we want to create villages in other places. At the time of writing, Nelson has eight cabins, Christchurch was looking at what they wanted to do. I had a meeting with Palmerston North, covering the creation of a village there. And I want one in Auckland as well. The reason is we want to create “Bro Towns”. What that actually means is that if there’s a kid who wants to have a new start, they can travel from the Auckland village to a Wellington one with a totally different environment where we can put them in their cooking class or their budgeting class or job recruitment for employment, etc. But, aside from all of that, if you look at “Maslow’s hierachy of the peoples’ needs*”, it’s food and shelter first, and then self-actualization at the end.

But our interests are primarily eternal. So what we are looking for in these “Bro Towns” is that they are headed by Christians. I also would like churches to come to the party, especially in the context of how a country deals with housing, in providing spaces like this. We need to concentrate on personal, professional, and spiritual development. And I believe that’s what the aim needs to be.

In the last three years, we’ve had 40 young people come through here with a range of different outcomes. I would say our success rate is probably in the vicinity of 80%. And I’m happy with that. That’s a lot better than prison.

This place is an outreach post where we plant spiritual seed all day, every day. And then we water the seed and then they move to the next stage where someone else furthers their progress. But then churches need to “cross pollinate” and start making some headway towards this. The days of being denominational and worrying about competing with one another need to be gone. Let’s be the “Body of Christ” and get it done. Right now the churches are limping and not actually walking. We all need a spiritual heart transplant. That’s the space I want to move in.

*Maslow’s Hierachy of Needs: A theory of motivation which states that five categories of human need dictate an individual’s behaviour. Those needs are phsyiological, safety, love and belonging, esteem and self-actualization.

For further information or help, please contact:-inu.poutoa@gmail.com 27

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