How Lloyd got back to the Lord

By his own admission, Lloyd Manukau (Tainui) didn’t have a great start to the Bridge programme he completed about five years ago.

“The programme was alright, it was me,” he says.

“I still had that nasty attitude, you know, and I had an anger problem. I’d just storm out of the class. I wonder how they never kicked me out because it was like that every morning. Slam the door, straight out.”

Luckily for Lloyd, when he did walk out he headed straight to the chaplain’s office and asked the chaplain to pray for him.

“He’d ask what was going on and I’d say ‘I want to kill that’…so he’d make me go for a walk with him around this paddock outside the Bridge and eventually he’d go ‘you alright now Lloyd’.”

Once he’d settled down, he was back into the programme and along with helping with his addiction and anger issues, it also proved to be a significant turning point in his life.

“We were outside having a smoke and this Pākehā boy, all ta moko’d up, he comes right up to my face. I thought he was going to get smart, and he goes, do you know Jesus?

“And I thought, yeah, yeah, I do and then it clicked. This is why I’m here, I’m trying to get back to the Lord,” he says.

“From that day on, everything just changed. I realised what I was here for. It wasn’t just to give up the drugs and alcohol, it was to get back to the Lord.”

Lloyd’s done that and after completing the Bridge programme, he began attending the Sydenham church before becoming a chaplain for Te Ope Whakaora ki Ōtautahi.

Even then, it took some adjusting.

“I’d been in the church for a long time but I wanted to do it my way, not anyone else’s, not God’s way but my way, and that’s why I spent 40 years in the wilderness. It wasn’t until I got straight, because prior to that I had no ears bro. I’m in my calling now, it just took a while to get there.”

Like Lloyd, many of the whānau Māori he works with whakapapa to the North Island and are often disconnected from their culture. Lloyd says it’s important for them to see a Māori face.

“I know I can relate to them and you know, our people need to see another brown face. We need people who understand where they’re coming from and sadly tauiwi don’t know that area, the mamae we carry, the shame we carry, they don’t know that stuff, but myself. I’ve been there.”

Lloyd has been in Ōtautahi since he was 26 after he did a runner from Otara in South Auckland after the last judge he stood before in court told him if he ever heard Lloyd’s name in his courthouse again having anything to do with drugs, he was going to throw the keys away and Lloyd would do the seven years in prison that he was supposed to do earlier.

“As I reflected on how I got here, I realised that my mother and her brother were runaways too. They were getting away from the trauma which caused them to run. They were all runaways like me, running away from something. I didn’t want to go to jail, but I was running from my shame and mamae as well,” he says.

Lloyd has done running and says God has given him the experiences, knowledge and skills to overcome the struggles he’s faced throughout his life and to help others navigate their own challenges.

“Even as we speak, God is helping me to confront the challenges that I am facing. But instead of running away from them, I now realise that to get the victory over them I have to go straight through them, knocking them out one by one, day by day,” he says.

“I haven’t been in this chaplaincy role for long but everything that’s come before was preparation for this. You come to a point in your life where you get a better understanding of things so I’m enjoying being around our people, seeing them bettering themselves and finding purpose in their lives and our new identity in Christ.”