During Year Seven, Tony was expelled from four different high schools. He was introduced to a gang and that set him on a course of home invasions, intimidation and drug dealing. “Looking back now, the acceptance I wanted from my father, I found in the gang at the age of 13,” reflects Tony.

While he was a teenager, Tony became addicted to heroin and saw many of his friends die due to murder or overdoses. But, incredibly, Tony found a “way out” of a life that almost had him gunned down at 19.

Watch Tony tell his life story and how a “sign from God” caused him to radically change – and move to becoming the minister at The Potter’s House, a church in the south-western Sydney suburb of Liverpool.