May 17, 2024 • 19 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, Helen Smallbone is a mother of seven - a family devoted to a generation of Christian music. Here's her story of globetrotting and overcoming her homlessness upon moving to America from Australia.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we're back with our American stories. Up next joining
us with her story is the real mother who's the
basis of the newly released film Unsung Hero. Helen Smallbone
is the mother of Christian artists, and that's Christian musical artists.
One her daughter, Rebecca, that's Rebecca Saint James, and her
sons Joel and Luke, the duo who make up the
(00:33):
platinum selling Christian band for King and Country. She's here
to share her family's personal story of true perseverance.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
When we got married, David was working in music. He's
really been working in music since he was sixteen. Music
has always been his passion. He's always had a gift
in marketing and management, and so he was working for
a secondar record company and he realized that in marketing
and promoting these artists that when they got up fans
(01:08):
just adore them, but when they got up the stage,
he recognized they had nothing. And so it gave him
a passion for marketing, using his skills to market and
promote Christian music. And so in nineteen seventy seven, when
I was pregnant with Rebecca, we changed towns. We moved
from Brisbane down to Sydney, and he actually started his
(01:29):
own company and it was to do concerts, a recording company,
artist management, and he set that up in nineteen seventy seven.
So Rebecca's first concert that she ever attended was when
she was six weeks old and it was a Larry
Norman concert in the Sydney Opera House. So David would
bring down international artists to Australia. At about that same time,
(01:54):
sort of scripture and song or praise and worship music
had just started that genre and he was involved in
the early days of recording and marketing and promoting a
lot of that music as well. A concert tour that
he promoted in nineteen eighty nine, he was expecting an
audience turnout of twenty five thousand throughout Australia. He did
(02:15):
not get that. He got an audience attendance of fifteen thousand,
which meant he was going to lose an awful lot
of money. And so we knew this was going to
be major life change. We were attending Hill's CLC at
the time. HILLCLC ended up being renamed Hillsong and he
had started a record company with them and he was
(02:37):
putting out their new praise and worship songs in those
early days, and he had looked at that as being
maybe a way that he could continue in Christian music
and hold the family together. And then on his fortieth
birthday he got called in to the church officers and
(02:59):
they said that they didn't need him anymore, that they
were going to bring it back in house and to
thank you for his contribution, and that was the second
major door close. In desperation, he looked at some of
the artists that he had brought down to Australia and
he contacted an artist called Carmen in nineteen ninety and said,
(03:20):
why don't I come to America and I can set
up a praise of worship record label for you, and
I'll manage it and I'll do all this stuff because
I've already been doing it. And they had an arrangement
that they would do that we would go to live
in Tossa. Carmen actually bought our tickets to America. He
toured with David in nineteen ninety one. In March of
(03:41):
nineteen ninety one. That tour went well, but in April
of nineteen ninety one, I think someone had spoken to
him about the money he lost on the Amy Grant
tour at about how his name was sort of tainted
in Christian music fields. Carmen came to David and said,
I don't want you to come and work for me anymore.
(04:03):
And we were now on the other side of the world,
and he didn't now have a job anymore. So that
was pretty desperate days, as you can imagine. So when
we came to America, we came with six kids, and
I was six months pregnant with our youngest girl. We
(04:26):
had sixteen suitcases. We arrive in our rental hallum in.
Speaker 3 (04:30):
Nashville with no furniture, no car, very little money, and
with hope because we had the job at that time
and we just were living really by faith. And wherever
we would go, everybody knew money was tight.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
The whole family knew. When we would go to the
grocery shop, sometimes we were going with a very limited
amount of money. It could be twenty dollars, it could
be forty dollars. One of my sons would go to
all the candy outlet things and they would look to
see if anybody had left to dine there. Then he
would look in any phone boxes and try and find
(05:07):
coins there he was just scavenging for coins, like wherever
kid think of, there might be a coin that someone's left,
and that when we would go grocery shopping, he would
look under the shells to see if anything had come
out of anybody's purses or whatever. And he pitched jackpop.
One day he found twenty bucks that had fallen and
(05:28):
was underneath one of the shells in one of the stores,
and he just took that as a directive from God,
our pastor when he saw our movie, he said that
he recognizes that in life, if you want to see
a miracle, you need to need a miracle. And in
those days, we were actively looking for miracles. We were
actively looking for God, and we were actively seeing God
(05:52):
turn up. We saw really the church, the local church
surround us, the local community. We started doing everyday sort
of tasks of cleaning and babysitting and raking lawns and
mowing just to put food on the table. The kids
(06:12):
were all helping and working together. And when we were
going through our hard time in nineteen ninety one, there
was a man that we met through the homeschooling group
who was going through his like good season when he
was being well provided for as a songwriter here in Nashville,
and he called up, or his wife called up and said,
(06:36):
we'd like to invite you to our Thanksgiving you know,
the home lot of homeschoolers are getting together, and we'd
like you to invite you to our Thanksgiving dinner. And
I said, well, I'm sorry, we'd love to come, but
we're a family of eight and we won't be able
to We have no cars or I wouldn't be able
to get there. And she was like, oh, don't worry
(06:57):
about it. I'll just get John to borrow a van
and we'll pick you up. So he did. He came
and picked us up. We went to the homeschooling Thanksgiving dinner.
We were very blessed, and we were making some new contacts.
And as the night goes on, the kids are getting
very tired, and I'm looking around for where John is,
because of course we just can't sort of say goodbye
and get in a car and go home. We've got
(07:17):
to actually wait for him to take us home. And
eventually I saw him and I went up and I said,
we need to take kids home. They're all pretty tired,
and thank you for your hospitality. Would you just mind
driving us home. And he held up a set of
keys and he said, you can drive yourself home. And
I said, no, you don't understand. We've borrowed some cars
(07:39):
from some neighbors and they called their insurance company, and
their insurance company said that if we have an accident
that they would be held financially responsible. And I said,
if I have an accident in your car, you're going
to be held financially responsible. And I can't ask that
of anybody. And John made a statement that I just
am in shock, and or still to the stay thirty
(08:00):
years later. He said, I feel like God has told
us to give you this car. If you have an
accident and I get sued and I lose my house
and everything that I have, then that is God's world
for me, So be it. And that just blew me away.
That statement, knowing the risk that he was carrying, that
(08:23):
statement of total trust that God was in control, just
blew me away. Didn't know us, It only met us
that night. I just just stagree. And it wasn't the
old car that nobody was using down the backyard. It
was actually a car that he had bought for his family.
It was a van. It fitted us. It was an
eight seat van. We were eight at the time. It
(08:45):
just just blew me away. I mean, he met us
that night, like it's not like there's a long standing friendship.
It's not like he you know, he met us that night.
And for him to feel the prompting of the Holy
Spirit and be obedient to that, knowing that there might
be a cost, is just mind blowing.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
And you've been listening to Helen's Smallbone share the story
of her family and my goodness of faith walk that's
quite remarkable. The ability to just pick up and move
like that with just some suitcases in hand and follow
what you think is God's call. And my goodness, what
that one stranger did for them, just handing over the
keys to a car because well, he felt that God
(09:28):
had called him to provide that car for a family
who needed it. When we come back more of the
story of Helen's Smallbone, her family, her life here on
our American Stories, and we returned to our American stories
(10:11):
and to Helen Smallbone's story, the mother of Christian artist
for King and Country and Rebecca Saint James. Let's return
to Helen sharing the rest of her family's story.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
David had quite a few Christian music contacts because of
his work in Australia. He was both with managers. He
was very aware of producers and directors and whatever you
know that were around marketing people, and so he was
having a lot of meetings with different people. Well, there
was interest from Word Records in signing.
Speaker 4 (10:46):
Rebecca, and he knew the two producers that were going
to probably be taking her on or looking for a
new artist, and so we went out to dinner one
night with the producer, Greg Nelson and his wife Pam.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
And when we got home, David he wanted them to
come in and meet the family, and so we invited
them into our house to meet the children. And in
meeting the children, he realized we didn't have any furniture
at that point. We had I think a kitchen table
and two chairs and that was it. And it shocked
(11:22):
him because we hadn't we hadn't told him that, you
know yet, We hadn't complained that we hadn't have any furniture.
It was just we were more preoccupied with introducing the
kids to him, and so, unbeknownst to us, he went
away and he went to his Sunday school class at Sunday,
and he said, listen, I've just been to the home
(11:42):
of some people who have just recently moved into the area,
and they really have no furniture. I mean like we
went into their home and there's nothing. And so the
next we knew was one night there was a knock
on the door and then like six to eight people
just came in and Greg was with them, and the
people just started wandering around the house and it was
(12:03):
sort of like, I'm not even sure we knew what
they were doing, you know, they just I mean they
just I suppose in a way just barged in. Well,
they were going around to see what our needs were,
you know, how many beds there were, what our needs were,
like what we had, we had nothing, and they were
just observing for themselves. And then they all went back.
(12:25):
And the next we know, as two box trucks pulled
into our drive and they unloaded all this furniture and
they put it into the different rooms. Prior to that,
the kids had been sleeping with winter clothes that had
been tucked in by sheets on the floor. I actually
had a mattress and because I was pregnant, and the
guy who owned the house could not bear to think
(12:47):
of a pregnant woman, you know, sleeping on the floor.
They had a single mattress. A washing machine and dryer
was given to us. Apparently someone had a spare one,
either in the garage or somewhere, and they just brought
I mean, I think they were new. Like I just
I was so in shock that someone just could bring
a washing machine and dryer. But I was so thankful
(13:09):
because up until that time I had been hand washing
all the clothes in the bathtub after the kids had
had baths, and then using the kids or David to
help me squeeze out the water and hang them on
the line in the house. So we knew it was
crazy because things are falling apart, a lot of doors closing,
(13:31):
feeling of not sure what's going to happen and what
the future held. But there was also miracles happening on
pretty much a daily basis of where we saw God
opening these not our destination doors, but like these little
doors that were going to help us on this journey.
(13:52):
We definitely saw God caring for us. And I think
when you go through a time of trial, and that
time of trial, welcome be illness. It can be grief,
it can be financial. Anytime you're going through a deep trial,
it shows you where your foundation is built. It shows
you what you'relying on. And I'm just very thankful that
(14:14):
God had breathed us by having a foundation where we
knew the reality of who Jesus is, and we turned
to him in those days. So we'd gather in our
furnitualist living room and we would pray together as a family.
The kids were very aware of what was going on
in our lives and the hardnesses of what was happening.
(14:35):
We did not shield them from what was going on,
and our mental attitude at that time was really gratefulness,
I think for God caring for us, and then sort
of looking to see where God what God was going
to do, and just clinging together to God and each other.
Sometimes I feel like God just wants us to make
(14:58):
the next step and follow where his leading, not necessarily
knowing where the destination is going to be, because sometimes
our lives, he's taking us on a journey to that destination,
and in that journey he's going to refine us and
teach us what we need to know. And so that's
what He definitely did with us in doing the menial
(15:21):
tasks of raking leaves, babysitting, cleaning houses, mowing lawns. We
were learning how to work together as a family. We
were learning that every person mattered. We were learning what
it means to have purpose, what it means to work hard.
We were learning relationships, how to give each other grace,
how to accept each other's strengths and weaknesses. And from that,
(15:45):
when Rebecca ended up getting signed two years after we
were here, when she started touring, when a record came out,
we realized we did not wish to be separated, that
the bond that we had created in those few years
was so strong that to be separated was just still
too hard. So I have bookend girls, and then I've
got five boys in the middle, and those five boys
(16:08):
actually then became Rebecca's crew, and they would set up
and pull down the stage and the lights. It definitely
gave us a deeper connection together, great love and support
for one another. So God had a purpose in it all,
which makes me realize that we've just got to look
for him. We've got to know his whippers and know
(16:30):
he's caring for us, and then we've got to take
the next step. The family still works together today. The
five boys still working together in some capacity or another.
The oldest son, Daniel, learnt lights during his time with Rebecca.
He learned how to program moving lights and do her
(16:50):
stage design. He still does that for for King and Country.
The next boy down, Ben was given a video camera
and he was filming a lot of the background scenes
for Rebecca in the early days and he's still in that.
He's done a lot of the boys' music videos. The
next boys down to Joel and Luke. Joel, I think
at the age of twelve, started background singing for Rebecca,
(17:13):
started stage managing. Luke knows how to program moving lights
and how to run the lighting board, and Luke is
in for King Country. The youngest boy, Josh, he started
doing smoke, doing the smurt stage smoke. In those days
you would have a burner and a fan and he
was responsible for that. Then at about eight he graduated
(17:34):
to running a spotlight and was very very good at that.
He would help set up the lights. He knew how
to run cables, and then at age fourteen he ran
Rebecca's merchandise and today he is the general manager for
for King Country. God had different paths and plans that
(17:55):
we did not know about. And I've learned from those
scenarios that sometimes a closed door is not a disaster.
A lot of times we see a job loss, we
see it, Dajus city, we see you know, just change
as humans very hard. And a lot of times God
is using closed doors or change to get our attention,
(18:17):
to turn our eyes towards him, to trust him in
deeper ways. And so I've learned that. And sometimes he
leads us in paths that we don't understand. But He
is doing amazing things in our lives if we trust
him and follow him.
Speaker 1 (18:35):
And a terrific job on the production editing and storytelling
by our own Madison Dericut and a special thanks to
Helen Smallbone. And by the way, the new movie Unsung
Hero is about her life. If you have a free
day over the weekend, go and see the movie again.
It's Unsung Hero, and my goodness, what a life story.
She stepped out in faith, and as she put it,
(18:56):
little miracles occurred, not the big ones right away, the
little ones furniture arriving in her house when they had none.
Anytime you go through a deep trial, it shows your foundation,
the foundation you're building your life on and my goodness,
what she did with her kids and what she taught
them about attitude and gratitude. All that's the difference between
(19:18):
living a good life and living an entitled life. Helen
Smallbones story. Here are now American stories.
And we're back with our American stories. Up next joining
us with her story is the real mother who's the
basis of the newly released film Unsung Hero. Helen Smallbone
is the mother of Christian artists, and that's Christian musical artists.
One her daughter, Rebecca, that's Rebecca Saint James, and her
sons Joel and Luke, the duo who make up the
(00:33):
platinum selling Christian band for King and Country. She's here
to share her family's personal story of true perseverance.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
When we got married, David was working in music. He's
really been working in music since he was sixteen. Music
has always been his passion. He's always had a gift
in marketing and management, and so he was working for
a secondar record company and he realized that in marketing
and promoting these artists that when they got up fans
(01:08):
just adore them, but when they got up the stage,
he recognized they had nothing. And so it gave him
a passion for marketing, using his skills to market and
promote Christian music. And so in nineteen seventy seven, when
I was pregnant with Rebecca, we changed towns. We moved
from Brisbane down to Sydney, and he actually started his
(01:29):
own company and it was to do concerts, a recording company,
artist management, and he set that up in nineteen seventy seven.
So Rebecca's first concert that she ever attended was when
she was six weeks old and it was a Larry
Norman concert in the Sydney Opera House. So David would
bring down international artists to Australia. At about that same time,
(01:54):
sort of scripture and song or praise and worship music
had just started that genre and he was involved in
the early days of recording and marketing and promoting a
lot of that music as well. A concert tour that
he promoted in nineteen eighty nine, he was expecting an
audience turnout of twenty five thousand throughout Australia. He did
(02:15):
not get that. He got an audience attendance of fifteen thousand,
which meant he was going to lose an awful lot
of money. And so we knew this was going to
be major life change. We were attending Hill's CLC at
the time. HILLCLC ended up being renamed Hillsong and he
had started a record company with them and he was
(02:37):
putting out their new praise and worship songs in those
early days, and he had looked at that as being
maybe a way that he could continue in Christian music
and hold the family together. And then on his fortieth
birthday he got called in to the church officers and
(02:59):
they said that they didn't need him anymore, that they
were going to bring it back in house and to
thank you for his contribution, and that was the second
major door close. In desperation, he looked at some of
the artists that he had brought down to Australia and
he contacted an artist called Carmen in nineteen ninety and said,
(03:20):
why don't I come to America and I can set
up a praise of worship record label for you, and
I'll manage it and I'll do all this stuff because
I've already been doing it. And they had an arrangement
that they would do that we would go to live
in Tossa. Carmen actually bought our tickets to America. He
toured with David in nineteen ninety one. In March of
(03:41):
nineteen ninety one. That tour went well, but in April
of nineteen ninety one, I think someone had spoken to
him about the money he lost on the Amy Grant
tour at about how his name was sort of tainted
in Christian music fields. Carmen came to David and said,
I don't want you to come and work for me anymore.
(04:03):
And we were now on the other side of the world,
and he didn't now have a job anymore. So that
was pretty desperate days, as you can imagine. So when
we came to America, we came with six kids, and
I was six months pregnant with our youngest girl. We
(04:26):
had sixteen suitcases. We arrive in our rental hallum in.
Speaker 3 (04:30):
Nashville with no furniture, no car, very little money, and
with hope because we had the job at that time
and we just were living really by faith. And wherever
we would go, everybody knew money was tight.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
The whole family knew. When we would go to the
grocery shop, sometimes we were going with a very limited
amount of money. It could be twenty dollars, it could
be forty dollars. One of my sons would go to
all the candy outlet things and they would look to
see if anybody had left to dine there. Then he
would look in any phone boxes and try and find
(05:07):
coins there he was just scavenging for coins, like wherever
kid think of, there might be a coin that someone's left,
and that when we would go grocery shopping, he would
look under the shells to see if anything had come
out of anybody's purses or whatever. And he pitched jackpop.
One day he found twenty bucks that had fallen and
(05:28):
was underneath one of the shells in one of the stores,
and he just took that as a directive from God,
our pastor when he saw our movie, he said that
he recognizes that in life, if you want to see
a miracle, you need to need a miracle. And in
those days, we were actively looking for miracles. We were
actively looking for God, and we were actively seeing God
(05:52):
turn up. We saw really the church, the local church
surround us, the local community. We started doing everyday sort
of tasks of cleaning and babysitting and raking lawns and
mowing just to put food on the table. The kids
(06:12):
were all helping and working together. And when we were
going through our hard time in nineteen ninety one, there
was a man that we met through the homeschooling group
who was going through his like good season when he
was being well provided for as a songwriter here in Nashville,
and he called up, or his wife called up and said,
(06:36):
we'd like to invite you to our Thanksgiving you know,
the home lot of homeschoolers are getting together, and we'd
like you to invite you to our Thanksgiving dinner. And
I said, well, I'm sorry, we'd love to come, but
we're a family of eight and we won't be able
to We have no cars or I wouldn't be able
to get there. And she was like, oh, don't worry
(06:57):
about it. I'll just get John to borrow a van
and we'll pick you up. So he did. He came
and picked us up. We went to the homeschooling Thanksgiving dinner.
We were very blessed, and we were making some new contacts.
And as the night goes on, the kids are getting
very tired, and I'm looking around for where John is,
because of course we just can't sort of say goodbye
and get in a car and go home. We've got
(07:17):
to actually wait for him to take us home. And
eventually I saw him and I went up and I said,
we need to take kids home. They're all pretty tired,
and thank you for your hospitality. Would you just mind
driving us home. And he held up a set of
keys and he said, you can drive yourself home. And
I said, no, you don't understand. We've borrowed some cars
(07:39):
from some neighbors and they called their insurance company, and
their insurance company said that if we have an accident
that they would be held financially responsible. And I said,
if I have an accident in your car, you're going
to be held financially responsible. And I can't ask that
of anybody. And John made a statement that I just
am in shock, and or still to the stay thirty
(08:00):
years later. He said, I feel like God has told
us to give you this car. If you have an
accident and I get sued and I lose my house
and everything that I have, then that is God's world
for me, So be it. And that just blew me away.
That statement, knowing the risk that he was carrying, that
(08:23):
statement of total trust that God was in control, just
blew me away. Didn't know us, It only met us
that night. I just just stagree. And it wasn't the
old car that nobody was using down the backyard. It
was actually a car that he had bought for his family.
It was a van. It fitted us. It was an
eight seat van. We were eight at the time. It
(08:45):
just just blew me away. I mean, he met us
that night, like it's not like there's a long standing friendship.
It's not like he you know, he met us that night.
And for him to feel the prompting of the Holy
Spirit and be obedient to that, knowing that there might
be a cost, is just mind blowing.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
And you've been listening to Helen's Smallbone share the story
of her family and my goodness of faith walk that's
quite remarkable. The ability to just pick up and move
like that with just some suitcases in hand and follow
what you think is God's call. And my goodness, what
that one stranger did for them, just handing over the
keys to a car because well, he felt that God
(09:28):
had called him to provide that car for a family
who needed it. When we come back more of the
story of Helen's Smallbone, her family, her life here on
our American Stories, and we returned to our American stories
(10:11):
and to Helen Smallbone's story, the mother of Christian artist
for King and Country and Rebecca Saint James. Let's return
to Helen sharing the rest of her family's story.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
David had quite a few Christian music contacts because of
his work in Australia. He was both with managers. He
was very aware of producers and directors and whatever you
know that were around marketing people, and so he was
having a lot of meetings with different people. Well, there
was interest from Word Records in signing.
Speaker 4 (10:46):
Rebecca, and he knew the two producers that were going
to probably be taking her on or looking for a
new artist, and so we went out to dinner one
night with the producer, Greg Nelson and his wife Pam.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
And when we got home, David he wanted them to
come in and meet the family, and so we invited
them into our house to meet the children. And in
meeting the children, he realized we didn't have any furniture
at that point. We had I think a kitchen table
and two chairs and that was it. And it shocked
(11:22):
him because we hadn't we hadn't told him that, you
know yet, We hadn't complained that we hadn't have any furniture.
It was just we were more preoccupied with introducing the
kids to him, and so, unbeknownst to us, he went
away and he went to his Sunday school class at Sunday,
and he said, listen, I've just been to the home
(11:42):
of some people who have just recently moved into the area,
and they really have no furniture. I mean like we
went into their home and there's nothing. And so the
next we knew was one night there was a knock
on the door and then like six to eight people
just came in and Greg was with them, and the
people just started wandering around the house and it was
(12:03):
sort of like, I'm not even sure we knew what
they were doing, you know, they just I mean they
just I suppose in a way just barged in. Well,
they were going around to see what our needs were,
you know, how many beds there were, what our needs were,
like what we had, we had nothing, and they were
just observing for themselves. And then they all went back.
(12:25):
And the next we know, as two box trucks pulled
into our drive and they unloaded all this furniture and
they put it into the different rooms. Prior to that,
the kids had been sleeping with winter clothes that had
been tucked in by sheets on the floor. I actually
had a mattress and because I was pregnant, and the
guy who owned the house could not bear to think
(12:47):
of a pregnant woman, you know, sleeping on the floor.
They had a single mattress. A washing machine and dryer
was given to us. Apparently someone had a spare one,
either in the garage or somewhere, and they just brought
I mean, I think they were new. Like I just
I was so in shock that someone just could bring
a washing machine and dryer. But I was so thankful
(13:09):
because up until that time I had been hand washing
all the clothes in the bathtub after the kids had
had baths, and then using the kids or David to
help me squeeze out the water and hang them on
the line in the house. So we knew it was
crazy because things are falling apart, a lot of doors closing,
(13:31):
feeling of not sure what's going to happen and what
the future held. But there was also miracles happening on
pretty much a daily basis of where we saw God
opening these not our destination doors, but like these little
doors that were going to help us on this journey.
(13:52):
We definitely saw God caring for us. And I think
when you go through a time of trial, and that
time of trial, welcome be illness. It can be grief,
it can be financial. Anytime you're going through a deep trial,
it shows you where your foundation is built. It shows
you what you'relying on. And I'm just very thankful that
(14:14):
God had breathed us by having a foundation where we
knew the reality of who Jesus is, and we turned
to him in those days. So we'd gather in our
furnitualist living room and we would pray together as a family.
The kids were very aware of what was going on
in our lives and the hardnesses of what was happening.
(14:35):
We did not shield them from what was going on,
and our mental attitude at that time was really gratefulness,
I think for God caring for us, and then sort
of looking to see where God what God was going
to do, and just clinging together to God and each other.
Sometimes I feel like God just wants us to make
(14:58):
the next step and follow where his leading, not necessarily
knowing where the destination is going to be, because sometimes
our lives, he's taking us on a journey to that destination,
and in that journey he's going to refine us and
teach us what we need to know. And so that's
what He definitely did with us in doing the menial
(15:21):
tasks of raking leaves, babysitting, cleaning houses, mowing lawns. We
were learning how to work together as a family. We
were learning that every person mattered. We were learning what
it means to have purpose, what it means to work hard.
We were learning relationships, how to give each other grace,
how to accept each other's strengths and weaknesses. And from that,
(15:45):
when Rebecca ended up getting signed two years after we
were here, when she started touring, when a record came out,
we realized we did not wish to be separated, that
the bond that we had created in those few years
was so strong that to be separated was just still
too hard. So I have bookend girls, and then I've
got five boys in the middle, and those five boys
(16:08):
actually then became Rebecca's crew, and they would set up
and pull down the stage and the lights. It definitely
gave us a deeper connection together, great love and support
for one another. So God had a purpose in it all,
which makes me realize that we've just got to look
for him. We've got to know his whippers and know
(16:30):
he's caring for us, and then we've got to take
the next step. The family still works together today. The
five boys still working together in some capacity or another.
The oldest son, Daniel, learnt lights during his time with Rebecca.
He learned how to program moving lights and do her
(16:50):
stage design. He still does that for for King and Country.
The next boy down, Ben was given a video camera
and he was filming a lot of the background scenes
for Rebecca in the early days and he's still in that.
He's done a lot of the boys' music videos. The
next boys down to Joel and Luke. Joel, I think
at the age of twelve, started background singing for Rebecca,
(17:13):
started stage managing. Luke knows how to program moving lights
and how to run the lighting board, and Luke is
in for King Country. The youngest boy, Josh, he started
doing smoke, doing the smurt stage smoke. In those days
you would have a burner and a fan and he
was responsible for that. Then at about eight he graduated
(17:34):
to running a spotlight and was very very good at that.
He would help set up the lights. He knew how
to run cables, and then at age fourteen he ran
Rebecca's merchandise and today he is the general manager for
for King Country. God had different paths and plans that
(17:55):
we did not know about. And I've learned from those
scenarios that sometimes a closed door is not a disaster.
A lot of times we see a job loss, we
see it, Dajus city, we see you know, just change
as humans very hard. And a lot of times God
is using closed doors or change to get our attention,
(18:17):
to turn our eyes towards him, to trust him in
deeper ways. And so I've learned that. And sometimes he
leads us in paths that we don't understand. But He
is doing amazing things in our lives if we trust
him and follow him.
Speaker 1 (18:35):
And a terrific job on the production editing and storytelling
by our own Madison Dericut and a special thanks to
Helen Smallbone. And by the way, the new movie Unsung
Hero is about her life. If you have a free
day over the weekend, go and see the movie again.
It's Unsung Hero, and my goodness, what a life story.
She stepped out in faith, and as she put it,
(18:56):
little miracles occurred, not the big ones right away, the
little ones furniture arriving in her house when they had none.
Anytime you go through a deep trial, it shows your foundation,
the foundation you're building your life on and my goodness,
what she did with her kids and what she taught
them about attitude and gratitude. All that's the difference between
(19:18):
living a good life and living an entitled life. Helen
Smallbones story. Here are now American stories.
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