It was Patrick’s own experience of God as a father to him when his dad died that inspired this now permanently smiling 35-year-old to set up Viva. Patrick, who has recently completed an MBA, was waiting for his wife Emily to give birth to their fourth child, when I interviewed him at his offices on Oxford’s Cowley Road.

He is a far cry from the troubled teenager who moved away from home in Denmark at the tender age of 15. As the youngest of three children, living in a large house on top of a hill, he said all was well until he was five. ‘We were in a very bad car crash and my middle brother, then 10, was killed. It broke my father’s back and my mother’s heart.’He said the crash left his family troubled. ‘My mother and father split up, and my dad gave up his quantum physics career to become a teacher trainer on the same site as my school. He became my primary care giver.’ Exposure to radiation gave Patrick’s father bone marrow cancer and he died on September 5, 1986.
‘My brother came up the hill towards the house and told me “the old man had died.’’ I walked to the back of the garden and began to run. I ran for as long as I could before I tripped over some twigs and cried tears of despair. At that moment I had a very powerful experience. On the ground I first had a strong sense of God walking up to me, kneeling down and giving me a hug.’
 

Patrick became a keen ornithologist, tagging birds for the University of Copenhagen. ‘I’d get up at 4am, go to the woods, go to school at 8am, then afterwards go back to the woods.  ‘This was time with my heavenly father. People were worried that I was a lonely boy. I wasn’t in a church but I realised Jesus wanted to be my friend and he was a father to me. What I failed to realise was that he not only knew and loved me, but that he had a purpose for my life.

Patrick drifted into Denmark’s green movement, eventually moving to Belfast in the hope that the IRA would train him as a green terrorist. ‘Instead I ended up connecting with a group of people from Youth With a Mission,’ he says. The group included a Danish knight, Robert Beck. ‘He was a former Supreme Court judge, a very venerable man and a captain of industry. He sat me down and taught me scripture.’ 
 

After three months of Bible study, Patrick decided the Bible was either an elaborate but consistent fake or it really was the word of God. He decided to test the theory by hitchhiking around Europe. ‘I put myself in a place where I needed God. I had no money and I was homeless.’ During this time Patrick realised, he says to his horror, that the Bible was true. ‘I say horror because the claims of Christ and his commands are fundamentally different to what most people, even most Christians, are prepared to really embrace.’
 

While hitchhiking Patrick found a leaflet about street kids in Hurlach Castle, Germany. ‘I thought there couldn’t be that many street kids in the world and discovered there was work done through YWAM in Bolivia.’ He hitch hiked home, picked up the telephone in his mum’s house volunteered to join them in Bolivia. He became superintendent of a soup kitchen and after seeing two street children lost in horrific circumstances, found himself, aged 17, heartbroken and asking God what his plan was for these children.
 

‘I had a sense that God wanted me to do more, and wondered at the time if he wanted me to stay and just run a soup kitchen on a Tuesday or if there were other ways of helping children more effectively. I had no commitments and was ready to stay in Bolivia but I needed to be sure of a sense of hope and God’s vision, otherwise the desperate situations we saw daily would have driven me to despair.’ 
 

Then, late one night on the streets Patrick had a powerful vision to see the countless local churches around Latin America mobilised, equipped and networked to better reach children. He met Emily, who was working in a Mennonite children’s home, while in Bolivia and he followed her to Oxford, where she was studying. 
It was here they started the ‘Half Holy Club’ (a play on the name of the ‘Holy Club’ founded by John and Charles Wesley) at Magdalen College. The prayer meeting of undergraduates soon set up their first ‘office’ in a red telephone box on Pembroke Street, Oxford.
 

‘What we are called to do is to find out what God is doing and connect people together in networks that can equip and resource them. When local projects work together they can powerfully transform their community.’ says Patrick. And that’s what he’s been doing ever since. He says Viva, which now employs 126 staff, has 3,000 volunteers and serves one million children across 43 countries, but is still embryonic. 
 

As the Door went to press Viva staff and volunteers were busy selling tickets for Christmas parties for children at risk in countries across the world. Those parties involve lots of food, a big cake, silly games and everything you would expect for children at Christmas. But they allow staff and project leaders from different organisations in a specific area to link up and strengthen the services they offer, making a real difference in the lives of those children.

For more information see www.viva.org email  This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it  or call 01865 811660.