"Out of a Deep Pit," by Trudee Hunter  

I was born in Hamilton, New Zealand in 1951, and enjoyed a healthy environment of camping, fishing, swimming, ballet and reading. I trained as a nurse and then married my husband John. My love of art found the ideal out-let as I learnt his trade of sign-writing and silk-screen painting. Working from home while bringing up our three sons, was my recipe for true fulfillment. I’d have those years back in a heart beat. My ensuing involvement with Nutrimetics resulted in three international seminars, instilling within me a lasting passion to travel. We immigrated to Australia in 1988, settling in a patch of paradise called Redcliffe, just north of Brisbane. Twenty years later, we have been blessed with seven awesome grandchildren; the delight of our lives. I discovered the joy of writing, late in life. Part of my homework while immersed in a writing course, was to “Find someone interesting and write a 1,200 word article on them.” Pastor Harold Jones came immediately to mind. Years earlier, he had held me spell-bound with his strong, Welsh accent recalling amazing stories of survival during World War Two. When I approached him for permission to write his ‘testimony,’ he told me that he had been praying for an author to write his story for over ten years. I started to pray then, for the time to do his story justice and the before we knew it, John and I found ourselves in China, where I taught English part-time while continuing to write. Thousands of words and 265 pages later, ‘Out of a Deep Pit’ emerged. Our first trip to China in 2003, was during the outbreak of the Sars epidemic, the second in 2006, was during the outbreak of the Bird-flu epidemic…..but I wasn’t about to let those little hick-ups interfere with the completion of this book…..and here it is!