In 1985 I contacted Alan Langstaff who was living in Minnesota at the time. Alan had previously been the Director of Vision Ministries known for their large Charismatic Conferences held every year during the Vacation time on the calendar.

Alan had the social capitol to convene a large meeting of all the Charismatic and Pentecostal leaders which he did from my appeal to consider having a National Gathering on the weekend before the Monday Opening of the New House. The meeting of leaders was the largest and most representative that I have experienced in my life time. Alan prosed my proposal but it was not possible to get a sufficient consensus to make a decision to move forward with planning. Some wanted to go broad and include all denominations of believers others wanted to narrow the gathering and go “Deep”. Broad seemed to be shallow for some. We postponed a decision to be made later in January of 1986 when the Pentecostal Leaders would convene a National Gathering in Melbourne. Alan had been invited to be one of their Speakers.

Alan’s first words from the platform was that he was withdrawing from the National Gathering Vision and handing over the decision to the Pentecostal Leadership. The representative response from the platform immediately by the Pentecostal leaders was ,”There will be no National Gathering in Canberra”.

I was stunned and began to weep and walked to the front of the conference and appealed that they reconsider. They decided to delay a final decision until their next meeting in May of 1986. I arrived at that meeting late and was met by one of the leaders when I was searching for the entrance to the meeting. His greeting was, “ What are you doing here. “ My response ,”I’m here to process with you the decision about the National Gathering”. His response, “ Oh that’s already been decided. There will be no national gathering “. I was devastated and invited into the meeting from which I was relieved to leave.

So there was Mal sitting on the steps waiting for my arrival. I was quite weepy and delighted to have a lovely warm Mal embrace. We shared our hearts and were delighted to learn that our visions meshed. Mal had the social capitol and YWAM had a small army of enthusiastic runners . We covenanted to encourage both tribes to mesh together to serve the body of Christ and facilitate an easy road to the Gathering . Mal met with the Denominational leaders and numerous congregations facilitating the media releases and YWAM ran the Cooee March in every State along the main arterial highways calling the people of God to gather in the Capital and lay a foundation in prayer. My love for Mal has not diminished from that lime onwards. I’m thrilled that he will have already heard his “Well Done “ greeting at that great “ Heavenly Gathering”. Love blessings and Comfort to Jen and family. Tom and Di Hallas.

During more than 45 years of working with young people, both in church youth groups and as a high school teacher, I have frequently shared with them the profound insights that I learnt from Mal. I reckon nearly everyone of those young people at some stage heard me talk about the Granny Smith apple story, the Johari window, currency lads and lasses and Transactional Analysis, just to name a few.

I did this because the way he integrated these sorts of things into a kingdom building perspective had radically changed my life and I knew it could do the same for others.

When the roll is called up yonder, there will countless thousands of people who will be there because, either directly or indirectly, Mal and Jenny have been God’s ‘good and faithful servants’. Thank you.

- Warrick Simmons