Trevor Bendrien

Businessman and musician with Power Praise Band

My name is Trevor Bendrien, and I’m from a village called Queensbury, England. You might have heard of it, being world-famous as the highest village in England, with the highest school and the highest church. We also have the Black Daniels Band, which is the world champion brass band. We have the Road Studs and Cat’s Eyes, invented by the guy called Percy Shaw while he drove through the village on a foggy day. We also have Crippen the murderer, who murdered his wives and broke them up in the cellar and he went to school with a gunman. I came from a notorious village with some notorious inhabitants.

My father was a prisoner of war, and came from Prussia, which is an area north of Poland, which is now part of Russia. He met my mother who fed him, because there was no food for them and he started helping on the farm.

Then he started working as a brick boy, a laborer in the day time and got a job at Mackintosh’s coal industry at night making chocolates and falling asleep. Then he got the little farm and he managed to get up to two thousand pence and a hundred-fifty pig in his spare time. He did that for seven years until he established himself and built a company.

Interviewer: Hardly, there used to be a holiday once in a while. And he went.

When we were married, we borrowed a boat and a big car to pull it for our honeymoon. It got interesting because it

The following day we coming home with the boat and trailer, and we’re traveling down the M6. Helen shouted, “It’s overtaking us!”

I looked, and there was a big truck overtaking us. The driver looked a bit worried and in front of him, a wheel was going down the center lane of the M6. I realized that the wheel had come off the boat trailer and it was going about 70 miles an hour down the center lane of the M6. I very carefully got onto the hard shoulder, got out of the car and walked down the M6 and picked the wheel up that landed in the central reservation. I pick the wheel up, and right underneath it was a wheel spanner wrench. I thought it was a silly place to leave a spanner wrench in the road. I picked it up and put it in my pocket, and went back to the boat trailer. I had the wheel in my hand and the front is stuck on the studs.

This was extensive and I wanted to strip the hook off from the axle and there wasn’t a spanner wrench to fit. I got the tool kit from the car, same thing, not a spanner to fit. Oh well, I’ll drive to the nearest town and buy something. I picked my jacket up and put it on the side of the road, and I noticed a spanner. I pulled it out of my jacket pocket and it fit. I strip the hook down, and we came home.

It was about a fourth night later, when I was repairing a machine in the factory, and there was a nut and I got a spanner, but it didn’t fit. I got another spanner wrench and it didn’t fit. I finally found thirty of them, and then it dawned on me, that I’ve got a spanner I used on the boat trailer wheel and it fit all the nuts and bolts. I thought, good grief this is too powerful, this is too awesome for me. I need to tell the churches.

Some days I used to run the factory forklift, and went for tea to my parent’s home. One day, they happened to leave early and we set off on a road trip. We were passing a little church and Helen said we should go in there? We had an hour and a half to kill, so she has plenty of time and seemed keen to go. When we walked in, they were signing the exact same songs that we sang a year earlier when I went to that lake in Millbury stone. I felt comfortable, and there wasn’t a blinding light or a life-changing experience. I got fed up of dashing out of church to get to the Fork Club. So I stopped going to the Fork Club.

Instead of going to Morris dancing practice, and made the Bible study night, and I played the dance band and we were the top-notch. The rest of the band decided to give up, so I stopped all the things that I have done before and were all replaced by the things of God.

Then I started all the musicians to play in of the churches in our ceremony. After I became a Christian, I came back to going to church. A year later, I was challenged to go to church in the village where I lived that I spoke about earlier, and was asked to speak at the service. So I went to the service and read the Bible and lectured. My mother was on the back row and she didn’t know whether to be proud of ashamed yet. She didn’t have a clue what happened to me. She just knew I was different. I read the passage from the Bible, because that’s what I was going to speak about, and I’ve never really done it as well. Actually it’s becoming a Christian and I got over the problem with the dyslexia, and was able to read the Bible. From then on I went to read all the books.

We started to make furniture when I was seventeen. I left school at the age of sixteen and started in the company. From being twelve years old, I was always going there to join them, stripping things down; rebuilding shops, doing what needed to be done, was natural to me and the business grew from strand to strand. We were doing very well and then I was married, we had two beautiful children.

We had some decorators to actually rebuild the outside of the factory, and it was back in the days before foam rubber became fire retardant. They decided to burn the old paint off the doors. While they were burning the old paint off, it was time for the tea break. They went for tea and the paint was still burning, and when the foam started, it was within seconds before the whole place was burning. They came to me in the office, and said the foam store’s on fire. They said the fire engine’s on the way. I ran down into the area and was about ten yards from the door that was wedged open in front of me was where the fire was, and we kept the gas bottles of the forklift truck in the foam store.

This thing exploded and all I can see then was a white light that was absolute — so intense and the noise and the silhouette in front of me. Being brave as I am, I turned to them and I said “come on, let’s get out of here.” When I got to front of the factory, I was looking out to see and thinking it was one of the guys that worked for us that were living there and there’s was nobody there. It happened on a Friday at lunchtime. That weekend, I was speaking on a Sunday morning and it sounded no offense to speak up clearly to into my spirits that actually He was there. When I went back into the building once we’re allowed back in, between the explosions, a piece of wood was blown off the side of the door. The door in between was closed, the piece of wood came right through that door and stuck out just about head level. If that door hadn’t closed that piece of wood would have come straight toward me and Jesus was there to protect me.

Interviewer: So what’s happened since 2003?

I had a life of ups and downs really. Not everything was easy. Some people think that when you’re a Christian, everything becomes perfect. I didn’t you get mad at God because of my bankruptcy and then the back payment, all these challenging experiences.

I would say that if you think that God’s not interested in you, you’ve made a big mistake. He’s interested in every aspect of your life and he wants you to be blessed. He wants to look after you. It doesn’t necessarily mean that you won’t go through hard times but it doesn’t mean that whatever times you go through, He is there to help you and to comfort you, and to be close to you, and to be a friend. Because quite often when the firm went, everything disappeared, you just need a friend. And a friend is someone you can talk to in the time of need and tell them your deepest, innermost thoughts and feelings. And you can do that with Jesus, you can tell him your innermost thoughts and feelings and He understands and He will come alongside you and help.