Archive for category: Columns

by Helen Brinkman

Learning to see God’s messages in the simple, everyday things of life has enabled 81-year-old Bernie Dewar to share God’s love on the airwaves.

Through a weekly radio program produced by her local St Peter’s Elizabeth Lutheran congregation and broadcast on a northern Adelaide community radio station, Bernie writes, presents and shares short devotional messages that connect everyday life matters with God’s word.

Bernie honed her skill of devotion-writing during her 23 years as a school assistant at St Paul Lutheran School at Blair Athol in suburban Adelaide, where staff took turns to write devotions for a weekly newsletter.

‘God enabled me to see messages from him in the simple everyday things of life,’ Bernie says.

A contributor to St Peter’s past monthly newsletters, Bernie was approached by Geoff Burls – a veteran of the congregation’s 40-year community radio program and Lutheran Media supporter – about using her devotional material on the church’s radio show. Bernie countered with a much more generous offer of writing and presenting several new three-to-six-minute devotional segments per year as time permitted. Her first segments were first broadcast in November 2009, and they’re still going in 2025!

This has been the latest of many activities Bernie has put her hand to throughout her adventurous life. It’s an approach to living forged from a lifelong love of learning and teaching.

‘My confirmation text was Paul’s words on the road to Damascus: “Lord, what will you have me to do?” And it was obviously teaching,’ Bernie says.

At 16, she passed her Leaving Certificate at Clare High School in SA’s Mid North. She had planned to attend Adelaide Teachers College, but first spent a year as a classroom assistant at Hermannsburg (Ntaria) Lutheran mission, approximately 120 kilometres southwest of Alice Springs in the Northern Territory.

‘I loved it! I loved and was loved in return by the Aboriginal people,’ she says. ‘I got to play the old pedal organ for church, supervised the School of the Air kids, worked in the store and, of course, at the school. The next year I did come back to Adelaide, went to teachers’ college, and then my life really began!’

Bernie began her teaching career schooling children of English migrants at Smithfield, in Adelaide’s north, followed by roles at a school at Quorn in the Flinders Ranges, and at the Koonibba Mission near Ceduna in South Australia’s west in 1964.

From there, she went to Papua New Guinea (PNG) to teach at Menyamya, a school accessible only by plane from the eastern port city of Lae. Local people mostly still wore grass skirts and capes of beaten bark to ward off the cold.

Bernie’s first class in PNG consisted of 46 students, including little ones, teenagers and young men and four girls, and by the second week she was asked to take chapel in Pidgin English.

‘It’s amazing what God and the help of a good Pidgin dictionary could do,’ she says.

‘It was at Menyamya that I met my husband-to-be Tony,’ recalls Bernie. ‘On my second day there, a red Suzuki twin motorbike roared up the hill to the mission, off hopped a skinny little bloke – who’d been ill with some unknown tropical disease and weighed 6 stone 12 oz when I met him – and his first words were, “You’re the girl I’m going to marry!”. Says I, arms folded in typical teacher pose, “Well, I don’t think so!!”.’

Her attitude changed several months later after Tony, who ran an outstation hospital with indigenous staff, nursed Bernie back to health after she suffered pneumonia. ‘That was when I discovered he was a truly loving, caring, funny Christian man,’ says Bernie of her late husband.

The pair were married in Clare two years later in February 1967, before returning to PNG for working stints in the capital Port Moresby, Kainantu in the Eastern Highlands, and Madang on the north coast, where they survived experiencing an 8.3-magnitude earthquake.

Their son Steven was born in 1971, and as he approached school age, they were advised to leave. The family departed for Adelaide just after PNG celebrated its independence in September 1975, settling back in Adelaide’s north and joining St Peter’s Lutheran Church.

It was there Bernie regained her piano skills – ‘having a go’ – playing for Sunday evening services. She’s now the congregation’s only pianist, but stresses, ‘I’m not gifted, but an ordinary pianist totally guided by God.’

It’s that guidance from God, affirmed in her confirmation text, that she reflects in her busy life, which is filled with her love of hospitality, a lifelong love of gardening, and her leadership of weekly Bible studies.

And it’s God’s messages of love, revealed in our everyday lives, that Bernie continues to share with the community across Adelaide’s northern suburbs.

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by Helen Brinkman

For more than 60 years, retired teachers Trevor and Liz Winderlich have been working together to plant and grow schools in Australia and Papua New Guinea (PNG), sowing seeds of faith for God to harvest.

It was a match made in heaven when the pair met in 1959 while studying teaching at the then Concordia Seminary, at Highgate, in suburban Adelaide. Trevor still recalls their first date – a night at the movies to see Darby O’ Gill and the Little People, starring Sean Connery.

After their graduations in 1961, Trevor was unexpectedly called to a teaching post in PNG. Liz had been awaiting a teaching position with the SA Education Department, but once she heard Trevor’s news, she changed her plans. ‘I had always wanted to go there,’ Liz says, because her father, Pastor Fred Noack, had been a missionary there.

So, in 1962, they went to Melbourne to study at the Wycliffe Institute of Linguistics, before marrying. Three weeks later, they flew out to PNG.

Their five-year adventure began at Gelem school on Rooke Island, where Liz taught Grade 2 students and the school’s student teachers, while Trevor taught Grades 7 and 9 students. After they arrived in PNG, the Winderlichs overcame their language barrier with Pidgin English, and within weeks, they were using Pidgin to write Maths books for the students.

Only when the first pay cheque arrived did they realise that although Liz and Trevor both worked full-time, they received only a single wage. Church policy at that time meant that wives of married teaching couples did not receive a wage! However, that didn’t dint their enthusiasm, and the couple went on to work in Menyamya District, in the PNG Highlands southwest of Lae, where Liz supervised indigenous teachers and Trevor became a teaching principal and taught Year 4s. Beyond teaching, they loved being part of the community, helping to develop local gardens and expand dietary options by bringing in vegetable seeds and building a dam to support local aquaculture.

They even developed a travelling Christmas slideshow for surrounding villages featuring their students in the costumes of the Nativity, narrating the Christmas story in their native tongue. To power the projector on their journeys, they carried a battery in a wheelbarrow, with a borrowed sheet for the screen. ‘The good Lord had so many ideas for us,’ says Trevor.

One of the students who featured in the nativity play, Jesse Tanggwo, joined the family on a visit back to Australia. He later became a Lutheran pastor, and Trevor and Liz also supported his son Nicholas through PNG’s Martin Luther Seminary to become a pastor.

Their own son James was born in Lae in May 1964, followed two years later by their first daughter Kathy, now Matuschka. James, pastor of St Johns Southgate Lutheran congregation in Melbourne, was Australian Lutheran College principal from 2014 to 2023.

In 1967, the family left their peaceful Highlands life and headed to Tanunda in South Australia’s Barossa Valley, where Trevor became the teaching principal of Tanunda Lutheran School. ‘What a culture shock,’ Liz says about having to reacclimatise to a more structured life. Along with the birth of their youngest child, Christine, in 1969, another highlight for Liz of their new base was playing pipe organs at their Langmeil church and other surrounding Lutheran congregations.

Over the following decades, Trevor and Liz were called to establish three new Lutheran schools. Starting with Murray Bridge from 1978 to 1987, Trevor remembers visiting a dusty plot on the edge of town, which would soon become the primary school, where he became a teaching principal, and Liz established the library and later taught.

In 1988, both Trevor and Liz were called to establish Golden Grove Lutheran Primary School, co-located with the Wynn Vale state primary school. In their first year, the Winderlichs were the only school staff until a secretary joined them that October to help with administration. They established their classes in a large composite room, which, on the weekends, became the worship area. That required the weekly stacking of school furniture to make room for Sunday services!

By 1995, their three children had grown up and headed to Queensland, so Trevor and Liz moved north and set about expanding the Caboolture Lutheran Primary School on the Sunshine Coast. The Sunshine Coast remains their community following their retirement in late 2004.

As well as being active members of Living Faith Lutheran Church, Murrumba Downs, for the past two decades Liz has been a part of the Streams in the Desert network of Lutherans, which supports women’s contributions to God’s ministry.

After retirement, relief teaching over the next few years supported their next adventure, volunteering for Finke River Mission and travelling around Queensland congregations to promote and fundraise for the Central Australian LCA ministry.

Today, their hall walls reflect their pride in their six grandchildren and one great-granddaughter. They are also honorary grandparents to their young neighbour, Hugo, whose father, Glen, suffered burns to 70 per cent of his body in a road accident in 2020, underwent approximately 20 surgeries and lost his lower legs. Trevor and Liz have stepped in to co-parent Hugo, now 6, and continue to support his mum, Roni, while Glen recovers.

Trevor and Liz’s wedding text from Psalm 37:5, ‘Commit your way to the Lord; trust in him, and he will act’, reflects God’s continued grace as they tend to his earthly garden.

‘We’ll always have people in our sphere who just need someone to talk to and who just need to be loved,’ Trevor says. ‘I think God’s not finished with us yet. I’m tipping I’ll be around ‘til I’m 120. I’ve got so much left to do.’

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by Helen Brinkman

Early in the life of the Christian church, Paul sent a message to the congregation in the seaport of Corinth in southern Greece: ‘Keep busy always in your work for the Lord, since you know that nothing you do in the Lord’s service is ever useless.’

About 30 years ago, that same verse – 1 Corinthians 15:58 – was stuck onto the family fridge of Lyall and Lois Kupke. It was a note of encouragement from their teenage son Tim to his busy mum.

It was a thoughtful reminder during a very busy time for the family which had not long returned to live in South Australia after almost two decades in Walla Walla, in the NSW Riverina. Lois was working as a family support worker at an emergency family shelter, run by the Lutheran Church, which provided temporary accommodation for families in need. Lyall had started as the LCA’s Archivist. And their two sons were in high school at Adelaide’s Concordia College.

Lois recalls the challenges of her job, which brought her into contact with a broad spectrum of families in need. ‘It certainly opened my eyes, and I could see how many people were in need of God in their lives’, she says.

Meanwhile, Lyall had become the first full-time, first lay person and first archivally trained director of Lutheran Archives. It was a big change after 27 years of teaching, but a move close to his heart as custodian of the church’s stories.

Lyall and Lois met in 1972, as teachers at Concordia College, where Lois taught German and English, and Lyall was a history and mathematics teacher. The couple both worked on the school magazine, with Lyall doing the proofreading – a skill he continues to use to this day in a volunteer capacity as a proofreader for The Lutheran.

Two years after their marriage in 1974, Lyall and Lois moved to teach at St Paul’s College in Walla Walla, New South Wales, where they lived for 19 years and raised their two sons, John and Tim. Their time in Walla Walla was marked by a deep connection to the local church and community, and a love for the natural beauty of the area. They lived in a farmhouse on the edge of the Gum Swamp Reserve, surrounded by birdlife and an orchard with 36 fruit trees. ‘We went thinking we’d stay five or six years but stayed for 19 years’, says Lyall.

At age 49, Lyall’s lifelong passion for history led to a career change. It shouldn’t have been a surprise when you consider that he started studying genealogies at the ripe age of seven, spurred by the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953.

‘That got me interested in the genealogy of kings and queens … so I started looking through an old family encyclopedia’, he says. ‘I was only in grade three at school and I would have been seven years old. Seven-year-olds can be very inquisitive, and I had a very good teacher who encouraged a lot of inquiry.’

Lyall dedicated 19 years as LCA Archivist before retiring in 2014, including overseeing the Archives’ major move from North Adelaide to Bowden. ‘The Archives are the memory of the church. They contain the story of God at work with his people in the church here in Australia’, Lyall says.

He still returns there twice a week as a volunteer. Lyall is also researching the history of the family’s home congregation, Zion Lutheran Church at Glynde, in suburban Adelaide, which will celebrate the centenary of its dedication in August 2025. In retirement, Lyall and Lois remain busy serving through Zion’s community-focused activities, including language groups, a creche, a music program for preschoolers and tidying the church garden.

Lois teaches one of the Saturday English classes that attract people from many different nationalities. ‘Whether they are Koreans, Sudanese, Chinese, or Iranian, a lot of people who come in don’t know much about Christianity, and we might be one link in the chain to help them come closer to God’, she says.

Lyall’s passion for history, particularly the history of the Wendish people, has also led to his involvement with the Wendish Society for more than 30 years. He is president of the society in SA which helps preserve the history and heritage of the Wendish people, who were among the early Lutheran settlers in Australia from 1848 onward.

Lyall and Lois celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary in January 2024. Through the busyness of their lives, they come back to the message from one of their wedding hymns (Lutheran Hymnal 579): ‘Where’er I go, whate’er my task, the counsel of my God I ask.’

Lois reflects: ‘You don’t have to be brilliant at everything before you have a go. If you say “Lord, help me today to do what you want me to do to be of benefit to someone else”, he will give you what you need … just have a go.’

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by Helen Brinkman

Whether it’s a home-baked cupcake, a home-grown pumpkin, or a handmade bracelet, giving glory to God comes in many forms for retired teacher Anne Kotzur. Life is a whirl of baking, gardening and volunteering for the mother of four and grandmother of eight.

Despite celebrating her 80th birthday this past month, she’s as busy as ever supporting her family, her local Our Saviour Lutheran family in Rochedale, Brisbane, and even families as far flung as Ukraine and Ethiopia.

Her dance card is full with giving – everything from weekly cupcake bake-offs for Our Saviour Sunday school children, to distributing the 40 pumpkins grown in her own backyard.

It’s also in receiving that Anne gives thanks to God. She is thankful for the handmade ‘Swifty’ bracelet made for her birthday by a student at the local school where she volunteers, as much as she’s thankful for the $500 birthday donation she’s sending off to the Australian Lutheran World Service (ALWS) to support Ethiopian families. It was just what she wanted for her birthday!

The donation came from the high tea celebration her church friends hosted to honour her coming of age – becoming an octogenarian, that is. She didn’t want presents but suggested that people could instead donate to the latest ALWS campaign supporting Ethiopia.

Supporting ALWS has been a lifelong effort for Anne.

‘Ever since I was a little girl, my grandparents always had a bowl on their Christmas and Easter tables for gifts to support Australian Lutheran World Service’, she recalls.

‘So, I grew up under the banner of ALWS and I always have had a heart for this organisation.’

In May this year, Anne was among the volunteers at the registration desk checking in almost 900 walkers taking part in Brisbane’s Walk My Way Ukraine which supported Ukrainian families displaced by conflict. About $190,000 was raised. ‘It was such a joy for me to see so many young families with little children, strollers and scooters, as well as older people too’, she says.

‘It brought joy to my heart seeing people come to walk to support families in Ukraine. The reason I wanted to support it was so children could get back to homes and schools, so schools could be repaired and school bomb shelters built. That was my motivation. I love the way ALWS partners with different agencies to help in these situations.’

The Rochedale community remains the hub of Anne’s world. It’s where she was born in 1944, the eldest of three, to mum Pearl and dad Colin Francis, who were local farmers, cultivating paw paws, potatoes, tomatoes and more.

As an adult, she’s still in the same family home in Rochedale that she and husband Elmore moved into 54 years ago. Elmore died four years ago after 52 years of marriage. ‘I give thanks as we had a wonderful life together and I am very grateful for those years’, Anne says.

The only time she moved away was when, as a 21-year-old graduate teacher, Anne answered a church call for teachers at the Hope Vale mission school in northern Queensland.

‘I always had a heart for mission and for Aboriginal people. I loved teaching and loved the children, so when there was a call out for teachers at Hope Vale, I went, she says.

It was at Hope Vale that Anne met farm manager Elmore Kotzur. Two years later they married and moved to nearby Wujal Wujal, where they had their first two sons. They returned to Rochedale in 1970 and were later blessed with two more sons.

Anne went back to teaching when the boys were at school, retiring about 16 years ago. Retirement has allowed Anne to put more time back into her home and community. She still gardens, cooks and visits. She also volunteers every Wednesday for the breakfast club at the local state school, organised through the school’s Scripture Union chaplain.

Anne is inspired by her favourite text: ‘And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God’ (Micah 6:8).

‘I thank God that he helps me each day. And I can still walk, garden, mow, and help at church and be involved with my church family’, she says.

She comes away from her weekly hospital visits to the sick giving thanks, and grateful for the beautiful attitudes of those she visits.

And every day she gives thanks, having experienced breast cancer twice, five heart bypasses, open heart surgery and a stroke. She’s grateful for God’s wonderful healing hand which has made her well and grateful for his goodness daily. ‘To God be the glory – that’s the main thing I would say, just to give thanks to God for his goodness every day’, she reflects. ‘Wake up each day and thank God for his goodness. He is good all the time and his mercies are ever new each day.’

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