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Two weeks after moving overseas for volunteer work, Ian Riley and his wife are hit by a massive cyclone that turns daily life into a test of survival: horizontal rain blowing through the house, roads washed out, no pumped water, no working banks, and a long recovery where reliable power can take months. We talk through what it feels like to teach and serve in the aftermath when the adrenaline fades and the real challenge becomes endurance, uncertainty, and the decision to stay when others leave.
Ian also takes us inside the unique communication reality of Samoa in the early 1990s. With no internet, limited phones, and little local reporting, news becomes word of mouth and rumor. Yet the same community networks can be remarkably effective, with handwritten notes carried village to village and responses returning the next morning. That contrast sparks a bigger conversation about how we handle incomplete information, culture shock, and the mental strain of not knowing what happens next.
From there, we follow the thread of how chaos can shape a life. Ian shares why he wrote Encounter: A Journey Into Chaos, Culture And Compassion in present tense, designed to pull you into the moment and let you decide what you would do. He connects lessons learned in crisis to later work as an engineer and entrepreneur, including building world-first virtual cattle fencing, raising capital, scaling a startup, and eventually selling the company. If you care about faith under pressure, resilience after disaster, cross cultural volunteering, and finding purpose in uncertainty, you’ll find a lot to sit with here. Subscribe, share this with a friend, and leave a review to help more listeners find the show.
Ian Reilly’s website
https://ianreilly.com.au/?utm_source=ig&utm_medium=social&utm_content=link_in_bio
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