Road closure at Bayfair roundabout

Later in Auckland, a Sallie got to know me by name and felt comfortable busting out Friday night pub drinks for a $10 donation. It wasn’t a donation he insisted. It was an investment should things go belly up for me.

Warts and all

Then a cynical old colleague fell for a Sallie and suddenly Saturday night became a shift at a soup kitchen. Add Laurie Bell to that mix of good Sallie people doing good, good work. An effusive, irrepressible character, with a delightful earthiness, who has been shamelessly and successfully pitching stories to me for a few years. This time he is the story. It was ask me anything, warts and all, so we did.

He was born a Sallie, and never so much as whiffed alcohol, even though he’s been surrounded by what he calls the “sponsor’s product” all his working and sporting life.

No drink but there are demons. “People tell me I have an addictive personality. So who knows?” And there was the sister, who he says, embarrassed him over the years. “She was a drunk, she was addicted. She went on a methylated spirits binge and in the end it killed her.” Perhaps he fears the same weak gene lurks close. “If you are susceptible…?”

Hope and encouragement

In the same breath he talks proudly of the “celebrating and sharing” he’s conducted every Friday for 13 years. “The Recovery Services for those temporarily clean and sober – off the drugs and booze. We don’t cure, we give hope and encouragement when relapse is the biggest danger.” He has banned the word hopeless. “No-one’s hopeless.” But he has seen despair. And he tut-tuts again.

This is a soldier not without sin. He has been married three times. He explains he was just unlucky in love until he met Susan. He talks proudly about her. “We were both Army Lieutenants during 10 wonderful years running Army churches.” Susan, he says, was the highlight during the heyday of his Army career. This was a man, who as a professional firemen would put out property fires and then, at shift’s end, slip into his Salvation Army kit to put out personal fires. His life has been busy and pressured.

He also, inadvertently, got tangled in one of the biggest issues facing churches today – gay rights. “One day my eldest daughter asked me if I was sitting down because I was about to get a shock.”

When he got his head around the fact one of his daughters was gay, he decided he would just continue to love her.

Nothing had changed. Laurie and Susan went to her wedding in London. But bigotry dies runs deep. “A fine Christian man asked me to conduct his funeral. But when he found out I had a gay daughter and I hadn’t condemned her, he didn’t want me to do his funeral anymore.” He just shrugs off disappointment and fixes on the positive.

Like when he was running the local Red Shield fundraiser, Tauranga was the second best ‘giving’ place in the country. ”Something to be proud of.”

Also from his skite sheet – while mission coordinator, which he says is “just introducing people to Jesus” he got 50 people on board. “Should have been more. That’s what drives me.” We raise a glass of lemonade to you Laurie.

Hunter Wells