How Chicken Wings Changed My Life

You’re probably wondering by reading the title how some mouth-watering, throat-burning absolutely heaven-like finger food can have such an effect on someone’s life. I’ll get to that in a little bit after I tell you a little bit about myself and my story.

I am the eldest of six and have always lived in a small country town somewhere in Australia. Throughout the tail-end of primary school and all high school, I lived quite a privileged life. I played representative footy most of my schooling years, was school captain in high school, had a large number of friends and went relatively well with my grades. Somehow despite all that, I was this arrogant person who took a lot of things for granted.

Ever since early high school, I wanted to be an engineer, so I pursued that desire by moving to the big city of Brisbane and studying a degree in engineering. I probably should’ve mentioned earlier that even though I was raised in a catholic family, I never really got the whole truth around God and the bible. I quickly adapted to the ‘uni-style life’ and soon enough I became too busy playing footy, working and most ‘importantly’, partying, to even worry about a silly, unnecessary relationship with the creator of the whole entire universe.

Everything was going extremely well, I was thriving at work, footy was getting momentum, I was passing all my university papers, at least I thought my life was good.

Until it was not and all of a sudden, my world was falling apart, and we were all going to die. Well that’s what was going through my head anyway, and it took that thought to realise that there was more to life than what I was doing with it. There was more to life than footy, partying and friends. Who would’ve known?

And that’s where the mouth-watering, throat-burning absolutely heaven-like finger food chicken wings come into play. I was desperately searching for about a year for that missing piece of the puzzle and it was late last year when a good friend of mine that I hadn’t spoken to in a long time just out-of-the-blue invites me to catch up over chicken wings.

It was that night that he recommended that I serve a year with NET. In my head, I thought he was insane and delirious, does he know who I am and what I’ve done? But a seed was planted that night despite the life I was living, a seed that literally in all facets changed my life. I’ve found God in my life through my time serving on mission so far and I have not looked back.

My life was changed through a simple encounter, there were no bright lights, or sun rays or clouds opening up but God revealed himself to me through one dollar wings and a friend, quite unexpected! The God of the universe spoke to me in the ordinary to lead me into the extraordinary, to the more.

Peter Wolbers

NET Missionary | Caloundra Team 2020