Long road leads to Wairarapa for new Officers

It’s a long way from the nightclubs of New Plymouth to the Salvation Army Corps in the Wairarapa, but it’s a journey which has been the making of newly commissioned Salvation Army officers Nikola and Ashton Vaitaki.

The couple graduated from Booth College of Mission in December and are on the move to Masterton before officially starting their new roles on January 9.

They have been married for 12 years, have five children and are looking forward to the future and what God has planned for them.

The couple met when Ashton – who grew up in the South Taranaki town of Hawera – was out with friends in New Plymouth and Nikola was visiting the city for work.

“Part of my job was on the weekends, me and the boss would travel around New Zealand for auctions. One weekend we were in New Plymouth and we went out and I saw Ashton there,” he says.

And she saw him.

“When you’re from Taranaki, you know everyone, and then we see this group of out of towners,” Ashton says.

The couple hit it off, “but he still lived in Auckland and I still lived in New Plymouth”.

At the time, Ashton had little involvement in the church, having abandoned her Baptist upbringing when she was young.

“I grew up just going every Sunday,” she says.

“But when I was about 12, and had just given my heart to the Lord, my mum got diagnosed with MS and in my little 12 year old mind I couldn’t work out how that could happen, you know, how God could let that happen.”

She also turned her back on what she calls a fairly dyfunctional upbringing.

“I was raised by a solo mum and she was raised by a solo mum. They were strong but it was just full of abuse and addictions and just real dysfunction and I didn’t know how to understand it all or deal with it. So I left home, left school, just started living, flatting, working, drinking, doing drugs, all of that, and then I met this guy. We got married pretty fast. I was already pregnant and moved to Auckland and we started going to the Tongan Methodist Church.”

That Nikola was attending the Methodist Church was a change in itself, having been brought up Catholic in his native Tonga.

“I was Catholic, very, very strong Catholic. In Tonga my dad is a choir master so they are very strict Catholics,” he says.

He came to Aotearoa in 2002 and following a stint in hospital with a head injury, decided to stay and make a future here, rather than return to Tonga.

“I stayed here with my uncle and he took me to the Methodist church. It was very different and new for me, a big change. I was there for 10 or 11 years in the Methodist Church.”

Ashton says moving to Auckland was tough and her struggles as a new mum brought back painful memories.

“We’d got married and had two babies in one year and that just brought up everything,” she says.

“I didn’t really know how to be a healthy mum or how to care for these two beautiful babies.  And I didn’t know how to be a wife, I was really messed up, that really broke me,” she says.

Things didn’t start to change until she came home feeling worse forwear after a night of partying and found Nikola cooking her breakfast.

“I felt that disappointment,” she says.

He told her that something had to change and she assumed the worst, that he was about to leave.

“But he was like, ‘we’re going to the Salvation Army tomorrow’. At the time I didn’t know what was worse, him leaving me or having to go to church. I’d only been to the Salvation Army one other time and that was when I had to do my community service hours there in New Plymouth.”

She says it was the first time at any church she’d felt that someone actually cared about them as people.

“I could feel it, and we both agreed that we had found a home in the Salvation Army.”

After initially being invited by Tongan friends to the Westgate church, they soon moved to the Manukau Corp – which was closer to their South Auckland home – and have been stalwarts there ever since.

“We loved it there,” Ashton says.

“It still took me two years before I gave my heart over to the Lord and he took me on a massive healing journey and showed me what real love is, and what real community is,” she says.

That community played an important role in her healing journey,  while Nikola faced his own challenges, having to tell his wider whānau he was joining the Salvation Army, and then leaving a well-paid job to work for less money at the Salvation Army.

“It was a big challenge to go and knock at the door of my pastor and tell him that I’m moving churches but in my mind, this is my church now and I feel like I have a calling in this church. My family were so upset,” he says.

At the time he was working for Fletcher Steel, making good money and saw a healthy future with the company, but when he was offered the job of running the Salvation Army food warehouse in Auckland, meaning less money and longer hours, he took the plunge.

“It was tough but even though I logged more hours for the Salvation Army, my wife, my family we’re so happy. This was the start of the life change,” he says.

Things were also on the improve for Ashton, who began working part-time as an administrator at their corp offices as a way of slowly re-entering the workforce.

“We thought it would be a good way to just ease back into the world, because I had really bad anxiety but just being around this group of God fearing people everyday, that just gave me the space for God to do his work on me.”

God was also working on Nikola, who decided to become a soldier and encouraged Ashton to join him, although she was initially reluctant.

“I felt that people only became soldiers if they were going to be an officer and I never thought that officership would ever be for me. But then God revealed to me that actually soldiership is a step for me into officership and a few months later I became a soldier too,” she says.

And it wasn’t long after that when the idea of officership took hold after being encouraged by their corp officers and discussing it over dinner with (Candidate Secretary) Kylie Tong.

“She just straight out asked us ‘has God been talking to you guys about officership?’.”

“Two months later we were here for our assessment weekend, and then two months later we were here at college,” Ashton says.

Now two years of study later – and overcoming many more challenges along the way – they have graduated and are taking up their first appontment as officers in the Wairarapa, an area they had felt good about on previous visits, with Nikola feeling the presence of God in the region and other encouraging signs since their appointments were announced.

“Since the appointment, God’s revealed spiritual things to us about the Wairarapa so it’s been good,” Ashton says.

Nikola says settling in to their new home, meeting people and forming strong relationships will be their first priority.

“The last time I went there I went and talked to people and felt that in my heart I can build relationships here,” he says.

“I don’t have to go there with a mission, we’ll just start by having conversations with people to build relationships and then see whatever comes of that.”

For Ashton, it’s as much about learning what has gone before, before introducing anything new.

“A part of our being appointed there is that we replanting what mission looks like there through the Salvation Army, but we can’t replant there unless we know what has gone on there.  We feel and sense in our spirit there’s a bit of healing and reconciliation needs to happen so it’s like taking a step back and learning about what has happened and if God chooses to use us as a part of some healing and reconciliation, we will see what it is God will use us to do.”

Without doubt they will tackle whatever is in God’s plan for them and the region with smiles on their faces, love in their hearts and the knowledge that sometimes it takes a long journey to find your way home.

• Lieutenants Ashton and Nikola Vaitake begin their new roles in Masterton on January 9.