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Blooming where God plants you

GOING Greyt!

For the past nine years in Going GREYT! we have featured stories about some of our ‘more experienced’ people within the LCANZ, who have been called to make a positive contribution in their retirement. We pray their examples of service continue to be an inspiration and encouragement to us all as we look to be Christ’s hands and feet wherever we are.

by Helen Brinkman

Retired South Australian social worker Colleen Fitzpatrick is a firm believer that God always puts people where they need to be and grows you where you are planted.

Her working life in caring ministries was itself nurtured through the encouragement of those around her and the knowledge that the Lord will always provide. This profound promise from Philippians 4:19 is one of Colleen’s key go-to texts, a testament to the faithfulness of God, assuring us that God will supply all of our needs.

‘That’s something that I see nearly daily in my life now, just as I did when I was at Lutheran Community Care,’ Colleen recalls. She worked for the ‘social welfare’ ministry of the LCA’s SA–NT District – today known as Lutheran Care – for 23 years from 1984, including 13 years as director.

During that time, she’d send letters to supporters requesting donations before the end of each financial year, aware that she had to do the next year’s budget without knowing how much they would receive to support their ministry. ‘We needed to have faith that the Lord would provide, and he did every time – every time,’ she says.

God’s faithfulness, working through the generosity of people, included one occasion when the office roof was leaking, and not only did a donation come in to help, but it was a gift of $1 million – enough to buy a new office building!

Colleen’s career in caring had its roots in a childhood on the family farm at Jindera, near Albury in New South Wales, through the role modelling of her generous father Eddie, who, despite being big and burly, was gentle-hearted and always provided a helping hand in the local church and community.

From the age of 12, Colleen boarded at St Paul’s Lutheran College at Walla Walla, NSW. Her university studies in social work followed at the University of NSW. ‘I didn’t really know what social work was, but I thought it was about helping people,’ she recalls. ‘It gave me skills in listening, understanding and communicating.’
Graduating aged 24 in 1974, she followed her sister Jenny (Wagner) to South Australia, where she began work with the SA Department for Community Welfare. ‘And that’s where I met (future husband) John, in the Port Adelaide office, where he looked after financial assistance and administration.

It was literally a whirlwind romance, kicked off in the aftermath of destructive tropical Cyclone Tracy that devastated the city of Darwin, in the Northern Territory, on Christmas Eve in December 1974. Due to the cyclone, community welfare offices opened on the three workdays between Christmas and New Year. Colleen and John were the skeleton staff on deck and spent the time talking, as no clients came in.

On Valentine’s Day 1975, they set out in Colleen’s Volkswagen Beetle, bound for Walla Walla, to visit her parents. Colleen said she was bringing a friend. While John was still outside cleaning bugs off the windscreen, Colleen was inside telling her mum they were getting married, just hours after John met her parents!

They married a month later and, in March this year, celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary.

Throughout her career, Colleen has been blessed by John’s support and his joint care for their two daughters, Claire and Anne, who were born in 1977 and 1980, respectively. This support also enabled her to take up many volunteer positions on church and community boards and committees.

Colleen was the first woman appointed to the LCA’s Commission on Theology and Interchurch Relations (CTICR) in the 1980s, at the request of then-president the late Dr Lance Steicke. This was followed by membership of the LCA’s Nominations Committee, among other volunteer roles. She also found time to go back to Flinders University to complete her master’s degree.

Retirement beckoned in 2011, when grandparenting duties took precedence.

Keeping active is a priority for Colleen and John. They have attended the local Fitness on the Park classes three times a week for the past 26 years, sharing a North Adelaide oval with a family of supervising magpies.

In their mid-60s, they also discovered frisbee throwing, which Colleen describes as ‘not too strenuous’, and she believes ‘more people should get involved’. It’s a sport she’s even promoted at church events (see the cover of The Lutheran from December 2018).

Colleen also remains an active member of St Stephen’s Lutheran congregation in Adelaide and is back playing the organ – a skill developed as a child on the piano, before expanding her range to the organ during secondary college.

And she delights in the St Stephen’s online prayer group. ‘It’s such an amazing vehicle for the Holy Spirit,’ she says, with friends, neighbours and family members often asking the group to add people to their list to be kept in prayer. ‘Even the plumber!’ she says. ‘They are thankful and appreciative that you are rattling at the “Pearly Gates” on their behalf.’

Indeed, it is God’s everyday miracles that keep her going. ‘For me, the gift of laughter is really necessary for survival, because as we get older, there are some things that are quite challenging,’ she says. ‘But as long as you find things to laugh about, I reckon you get through. On a daily basis, I know the Lord will provide.’

Helen Brinkman is a Brisbane-based writer who is inspired by the many GREYT people who serve tirelessly and humbly in our community. By sharing stories of how God shines his light through his people, she hopes others are encouraged to explore how they can use their gifts to share his light in the world. Helen has written this column on a voluntary basis for nine years and is now ‘retiring’ from this role. We thank her, as we thank and praise God, for this precious gift of her time and talents.

Know of any other GREYT stories in your local community? Email the editor lisa.mcintosh@lca.org.au

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Answering the call: ‘Lord, what should I do?’

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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Weaving compassion into beautiful gifts

by Helen Brinkman

The community of the Albury and Wodonga ‘twin’ cities area, which straddles Australia’s Murray River and the New South Wales-Victoria border, has a history of being big-hearted.

Albury is today home to Australian Lutheran World Service (ALWS), while the settlement of Bonegilla, fewer than 15 kilometres from Wodonga, was the birthplace of the LCANZ overseas aid agency. So, with humanitarian service seemingly woven into residents’ DNA, it’s no surprise that the region boasts a special team of people with nimble fingers, willing hands and hearts for helping others.

The members of the craft group of St Luke’s Lutheran Church, Albury, are quietly supporting the work of ALWS by sharing their sewing skills to create beautiful tote bags from bright Kenyan fabrics. These unique creations are gifted to ALWS ambassadors as part of the organisation’s Ambassador Boot Camp (ABC) training workshops for Lutheran school teachers, says ALWS Community Engagement Officer Celia Fielke.

‘The ABC is where we equip our teachers with a deep understanding of ALWS, humanitarian aid and service learning in schools,’ she says. ‘We seek to inspire them to be the drivers in their school communities to create awareness and encourage their students to have an impact in the world.

‘The bags are a reminder for the ABC participants – with their beautiful, authentic African colours and material – of the importance of understanding, compassion and action. We are all unique creations of God, and we all deserve opportunity, dignity and love.’

Craft group member Leigh Caldwell was excited to join fellow members in delivering their first batch of 59 bags to the local ALWS headquarters in May. ‘We think they look marvellous, even if we do say so ourselves! That glorious fabric sews up beautifully,’ she says.

Age is no barrier for the craft group, which ranges from 65 years old to the mid-90s, and varies between eight and 12 members each session, depending on the day.

‘We love meeting with each other and sharing our lives,’ says Leigh. ‘It is such a great little community. We enjoy doing our own crafts, and we love working together on projects like the ALWS bags and birthing kits for [women in] Papua New Guinea.’

Another member, Christine Nicholson, says being involved in the project has given her such a sense of achievement to know it will benefit others here and overseas. ‘It is also important in our society to have connections with others,’ she says. ‘People can feel isolated these days. Helping others definitely feels wonderful. Having a coffee, a chat and working together for a common cause is so uplifting.’

Fellow volunteer Patricia O’Brien agrees. She was delighted to join the craft group’s latest project. ‘I am a sewer and have been all my life, so it was a pleasure to help out ALWS and get to know fellow sewers over a cup of tea,’ she says.

And teamwork makes the dream work, according to Sandra Parry, who says the group collaborated on all aspects of the project. ‘To work as a team was very rewarding and satisfying,’ she says. ‘We had a “conveyor belt” system that worked so well! It’s a joy to be part of such a wonderful group of ladies.’

Group member Olive Severin shared her joy at being involved with such an enthusiastic group of women who share many craft skills and love to help others. ‘There is such a sense of achievement to complete a project like the bags, and sharing the chat, the laughter and the many cuppas and food during the journey,’ she says.

St Luke’s craft group has been going for more than 20 years, starting in the early 2000s with making aprons for the annual church fete and cushions for the church pews. The ALWS team asked the local group to sew the tote bags after COVID stopped an Adelaide sewing group from helping out.

Longstanding member Dorothy Dunkerton, also a pastoral carer at St Luke’s, recalls the days when the group first came together to support each other, learn new skills, and share company over coffee, cake and shared recipes. ‘We choose what we want to achieve for ourselves, knitting, crochet, card-making, beading, and joining in group projects,’ says octogenarian Dorothy.

‘We give crocheted and knitted knee rugs to our members who are experiencing difficulties or going into care. We love our coming together to socialise, to share our love for each other, to help solve our problems, and laugh together. I wouldn’t miss it.’

The colourful bags have also been used as thankyous to people who support ALWS and are sometimes gifted to Lutheran World Federation teams overseas.

And, as St Luke’s congregation heads toward its centenary next year, its craft group continues to reflect the legacy of love, compassion and action in its community. And they are also looking forward to another ALWS sewing project next year.

– with thanks to ALWS Supporter Care Officer Amanda Lustig

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Planting for God’s harvest

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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Connecting community: a job for all seasons

by Helen Brinkman

Jan Summers loves helping to connect the people of her Hope Valley retirement community in South Australia.

Whether it’s daily letterbox drops, coffee shop gatherings, community lunches, or livestreaming weekly church services to the village nursing home, the 88-year-old is all about bringing people together within her suburban community in Adelaide’s northeastern suburbs.

‘I just like organising things for residents to come to’, says Jan. ‘I like getting people out of their houses.’

And it certainly gets her out and about. As secretary of the Lutheran Homes Group Hope Valley residents’ group and the local church council, it’s a mission that keeps her daily timetable full.

Her passion for community is evident in everything she does, from coordinating rosters and directories to volunteering for the ‘Out to Lunch’ program, which supports people on home-care packages with a hot meal at the village community centre.

‘When I get to 90, I am going to retire’, she laughs, though it seems she has no intention of slowing down anytime soon. Early each morning she’s out on a mobility scooter for letterbox drops across 284 units in the village, ensuring that about 350 residents stay informed and connected. ‘Wonderful things, gophers’, she adds.

Born Jan Dickenson in Frances, a small railway town near Bordertown in SA’s South East in 1936, she moved to Adelaide as a young child and was brought up by her grandparents and 11 aunts and uncles. She boarded at Immanuel College in suburban Walkerville in 1949 for four years before joining the payroll department of the Commonwealth Weapons Research Establishment. It was there she met her husband-to-be, Colin Summers, a tall man with a lovely smile who worked in the office next to hers, she recalls.

While Colin’s role took him on regular trips to the red dust of Maralinga in SA’s Far West, her job was as a research comptometrist, using a huge, mechanical adding machine known as a comptometer. This was the era before computers, but the role helped Jan develop skills that ensured she has no fear of technology to this day – she still operates the church’s sound control board for Sunday services. Her only fear there is remembering to start the livestream of the service to the village nursing home.

Married in 1958, the pair honeymooned in Waikerie in the SA Riverland before moving into their home in the Adelaide suburb of Klemzig, which was at that time still surrounded by farmland. ‘Because there were no main roads out in Klemzig at that time, we got bogged on the dirt road before we could get back to our house after the honeymoon’, Jan says.

Jan had to leave her Commonwealth employment as government policy prohibited married women from being employed. After several years of working for the de Havilland Aircraft Company and Nestle chocolates, she and Colin started their family of two girls, Tracey and Trudy, and a boy, Philip.

Jan later worked as a school assistant at Ridley Grove Primary School in suburban Woodville for 21 years, a job she says she only got because she could play the piano. It was a skill she developed due to the insistence of her great aunt Ivy, who thought that all young ladies should play the piano.

Jan and Colin moved to the Hope Valley village 28 years ago, and two years later, she put her administration skills to good use as secretary of the residents’ group.

In 2003 she also added the role of congregational secretary for their local Trinity Lutheran congregation to her job jar.

As she wasn’t sure if she’d been baptised as a baby in Frances, Jan was duly baptised at Trinity that March, and after the service, everyone who came went across the road to a local hotel for a celebratory lunch.

‘I’ve always been one to put up my hand to help’, says Jan. ‘I volunteer for the “Out to Lunch” program supporting people on home-care packages with a hot meal in the village community centre, setting up and serving lunches four days a week.’

Her afternoons are for bookwork, and she lives through lists. ‘I just like doing things and … I like things done just so.’

On top of her volunteering, Jan is a grandmother to seven, and great-grandmother to five children – the latest born just before Christmas 2024.

As the village prepared for its 40th-anniversary celebration in March this year, Jan says she hadn’t yet stopped to reflect on her journey of service to the community. She was busy organising the community lunch for the celebrations!

But she does find comfort in her favourite Bible verse from Psalm 121, which reminds us all where our help comes from: ‘I lift up my eyes to the mountains – where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth …’ This psalm was read at Colin’s funeral 11 years ago at a popular family holiday spot on SA’s west coast. ‘We buried my husband’s ashes over at Tumby Bay and the grave faces the hills above the coast – the whole family chose it’, she says.

And if Jan hasn’t enough on her plate already, she is already thinking about new opportunities to volunteer.

‘My son and his family are into football, and he is setting up an inclusive football team in the suburban league this year, so I’ll probably be in on that.’

As always, Jan is quick to put up her hand to help.

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Keeping busy in the Lord’s service

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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Because we bear your name – Bishop Paul’s letter

Rev Paul Smith
Bishop, Lutheran Church of
Australia and New Zealand

‘Joy, O joy, beyond all gladness!’ These are astounding and inspiring words from the rarely sung chorus of the Christmas hymn in our Lutheran Hymnal and Supplement (LHS) 32, written by 17th-century hymnwriter Christian Keymann.

The good news of the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ is deeper and lasting beyond simply happy feelings. The angel told the Bethlehem shepherds, ‘I bring you good news of great joy!’ The telling of the nativity story is great joy. God has become enfleshed and dwelt among us out of great love for all humankind.

This story began with God’s promise at the dawn of time, to send a saviour to ‘strike the head’ of the serpent. At Christmastime, we remind each other that the promise unfolds in the story of the manger and the cross. God will bring about that exchange of our sin for the righteousness of the sinless Son of God so that we would have peace with God. This is the good news of great joy!

The chorus of Keymann’s hymn continues, ‘Christ has done away with sadness. Hence, all sorrow and repining, for the sun of grace is shining’.

This does not mean Christians are free from feelings of sadness, sorrow or struggle. Rather, this ‘good news of great joy’ of the coming of Christ means that, whatever we experience or whatever comes our way, we walk as people of grace in the light of the gospel. Because of the manger and the cross, we know God is with us. Because of Christ Jesus, we know God is for us.

With this sure promise of grace over us, before us and within us, we come to God with complete confidence with all our weariness and heaviness. We join with the psalmist, praying: ‘Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me. Cast me not away from your presence and take not your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation and uphold me with a willing spirit.’

The hymn’s image of the ‘sun of grace shining’ draws on another biblical promise spoken by the prophet Malachi where, in chapter 4, we read of the ‘sun of righteousness’ rising ‘with healing in its wings’. This image is also sung in the well-loved carol, ‘Hark! The herald angels sing’ (LHS 33).

As people of grace, the people of our Lutheran Church have been walking as sisters and brothers in Christ in the light of the ‘sun of grace’. We have travelled through 2024, during which our General Pastors’ Conference and Convention of General Synod met, and we resolved to remove our prohibition that required the ordination of only men as pastors in our church. We also resolved to continue as one church in which both the ordination of men only and the ordination of both women and men are received as faithful understandings of the word of God.

As we work through these things together as sisters and brothers in Christ, the words of Keymann remind us of the sure promises of God in all circumstances. We are people of the gospel who are given hope in what our Lord Christ Jesus has done for us: ‘Joy, O Joy beyond all gladness, Christ has done away with sadness.’

As we prepare for Christmas festivities, we know that around us are people who do not know or have forgotten the joy of salvation. As the shepherds left their flocks to ‘make known’ what had been ‘told them about the child’, may the Lord give us the opportunity to give a good account to family, friends and neighbours of the Christmas hope and joy within us.

Keymann’s hymn ends with a beautiful and hopeful prayer:

‘Jesus, guard and guide Thy members,
Fill Thy brethren with Thy grace,
Hear their prayers in every place,
Quicken now life’s faintest embers;
Grant all Christians, far and near,
Holy peace, a glad new year.

Joy, O joy, beyond all gladness!
Christ has done away with sadness.
Hence, all sorrow and repining,
For the sun of grace is shining.’

Praise the Lord!

In Christ,
Paul

 ‘Lord Jesus, we belong to you,
you live in us, we live in you;
we live and work for you –
because we bear your name’

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To God be the glory

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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God’s word lights the way to life

by Helen Brinkman

Hedley Scholz credits dairy farming for giving him his strong voice. To be more precise he says it’s a credit to the cows and the working dogs which herded them.

‘I think God has blessed me with a strong voice, as I was a dairy farmer for 69 years and I had been shouting to the cows and dogs so much’, says Hedley.

It’s this upbringing that has established a voice perfect for lay reading, a service that Hedley has provided to his local Lutheran congregations for the past 70 years. That achievement was recognised in April by his fellow members at St John’s Lutheran Church, Eudunda, in South Australia’s Mid North.

Despite being set to turn 90 in August, Hedley’s strong voice still allows him to continue to serve as a lay reader. It’s a role that he began at age 20 at the Ascension Lutheran Church, Julia, SA. Over time, he has also helped out at other local Lutheran churches in the parish.

Hedley recalls travelling the nine miles (14.5 kilometres) from his home to Julia church on a cold Sunday morning one August with thick fog developing. Despite there being only three members in attendance for worship that day, Hedley didn’t shorten the service!

Born in 1934, the youngest of four siblings, Hedley was part of the fifth generation of the Scholz family in the region. His great-great-grandfather, Johann Gottfried Scholz, was born in Silesia in 1805 in present-day Germany and migrated to South Australia in 1845.

Johann settled at Light Pass in the Barossa Valley and was known to walk the more than 40 miles (almost 70 kilometres) led by the light of the moon on a Saturday night to Klemzig in Adelaide. There he would attend church services led by Pastor August Kavel – which were known to last for hours – before returning home again on foot.

Hedley has documented the lives of seven generations of the Scholz family in a book called The Diaries of the Scholz’s of Buchanan. His second book, The Hundred of Julia Creek, informs the reader of the struggles his forebears faced, living through droughts, dust storms, fires, floods, depression and isolation.

Hedley’s third book, entitled The Pioneers of the Sutherlands Area, recounts the lives of some of the first German and English emigrants to arrive in South Australia in 1838.

Hedley’s interests have also extended to membership of his local Returned and Services League (RSL) and Gideons International.

A heart problem caused Hedley to miss marching in this year’s Anzac Day march, from the local cenotaph to the Eudunda RSL club.

However, it has not stopped him driving around his area witnessing at local schools and churches for the past 16 years, through his promotion of the work of the Gideons. This gives Hedley an opportunity to provide New Testaments to secondary school students and share stories of people who have been touched by God’s word.

‘I go with God’s help and always pray that the students will accept a New Testament because it is not compulsory that they take one’, he says.

In August 2023, Hedley celebrated 60 years of married life with wife Joy (nee Materne), their two sons David and Michael and their families, including five grandchildren.

When reminiscing on what has guided nearly 90 years of life, Hedley shares that one of his favourite Bible verses is Psalm 119:105 – ‘Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path’ (KJV).

Hedley says: ‘God’s word has been my guide in life. It offers direction, correction and forgiveness. His word helps me see right from wrong.

‘The world leads us the wrong way, God’s word shows us a forgiving God and the way to eternal life.’

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