Ministry in Australia

of donating his organs. They kept him on a respirator and to look at him, no one would have known that he was brain dead. I worked with the parents through the issues which enabled them to make a choice. They agreed to donate all his organs, and his mother said: "this would have been what he wanted."

Another time of great stress was when Steven Crean from our congregation got lost skiing in the Snowy Mountains. I saw his wife frequently as the days dragged on with futile searches. Eventually a memorial service was held at St.Andrew's Presbyterian church, as his father, Frank, had been treasurer in Gough Whitlam's government and was well known in Canberra. There were over 500 at the memorial service. Steven's body was eventually found late in spring, when the snow had melted. It is assumed that he got caught in a blizzard and lost his bearing. His ashes were scattered at another brief ceremony at the Scout camp near Green Hills in the ACT.

When Thien Gresham became ill with cancer, I was greatly distressed. Bill and Thien had met in Kupang at the work camp we had organised. He had stayed with us during his courting time. They had become good friends of ours, and since we had moved to Canberra, we visited each other regularly. Her long suffering was carried heroically by both. Bill asked me to conduct the funeral, which I gladly did for a good friend.

I also found counselling couples with marital problems very stressful. Unfortunately, we had more of them than the average in Canberra. I would spend sometimes with the couples hours, even late into the night. My aim was to help them see that their relationship had broken down, and that it was useless to apportion blame on just one partner. If there was no hope of mending the relationship, I tried to help them separate with dignity and without recriminations. But most of the time I didn't succeed, and they ended up in court fighting each other and often losing half of their assets in the process. One partner usually left the church while the other found support from our members.

There were three hospitals in Canberra. Woden was quite far away and so I would not call in there unless I knew of someone being a patient there who came from our Parish. But I regularly went once a week to Calvary and Canberra to visit members from our Parish. Later I was appointed the Uniting Church chaplain for Calvary Hospital, visiting all U.C. patients once a week. This would take me usually a whole morning or more, but it was very rewarding to bring comfort to people in distress and to show them that God loved them.

On the few occasions when I had no meeting to attend at night, I would make appointments to see couples for pre-marriage counselling or for a baptism interview. The latter was always a good opportunity to lay before the young couple their responsibilities as parents for the spiritual welfare of their child. I told them that as physical hunger comes to all of us, so does spiritual hunger. If that is not satisfied through the church of

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