The rainbow never sets

his kingdom, and no one was to be excluded.

The Wattle Park elders organised a monthly prayer breakfast. This developed into a support group for them, where we could share and learn new things from one another.

The annual Harvest Festivals of Wattle Park were quite famous in the district. They went back to the early days of the church, when the services were held in the afternoon, and the produce was sold the following Monday. In my days it was held on the third Sunday in March. First came a very special church service, often led by an invited preacher. The church was usually filled to capacity. Then the ladies served a most delicious meal in the hall, and then the produce was sold. Apart from the usual garden vegetables, fruit, jams and cakes, one could also buy a live sheep, still on a trailer. Whenever Mother was with us she had great fun in selecting and buying a sheep for us. This was later slaughtered by the farmer and we filled our freezer with the meat.

Wattle Park reflected more a typical country congregation, where it was more difficult to get lay participation at services. People seemed to prefer to sit in their pews and let me do the whole service. But gradually this was also changed. I was particularly pleased when one member of the youth group showed gifts for preaching. David Southwell had come through Sunday School at Wattle Park and was studying at the ANU. When I suggested that he preach a sermon he was at first doubtful. But then I told him that I would help him in the preparations, and he accepted. I think he got as much out of it as the congregation, who were thrilled to have one of their own young people standing in the pulpit. He also enjoyed it very much, for he preached several times while I was there.

As Melba had no church building, Wattle Park church was widely used for weddings. Sometimes people just liked the look of the church and asked me to marry them there. This was often a good opportunity to remind them of what the church stood for and pre-wedding interviews took up quite some time, as I conducted about 45 weddings during my time in Canberra and each couple had between three and four sessions with me. Initially I used a self-designed questionnaire as the basis for our discussions. After I had taken part in a training course for a pre-marriage counselling course called 'PREPARE' I used their questionnaire, which had about 120 statements to which couples had to reply whether they agreed or disagreed. The forms were then fed through a computer, and the printout results became then the basis for our discussions.

A few couples became aware that they were not yet ready to commit themselves to each other, and the wedding plans were cancelled. I considered this successful counselling. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, I will never know how many of the marriages I conducted were successful, and how many have failed, but I can only say that I considered the pre-wedding counselling of utmost importance.

Canberra Presbytery had appointed me to a settlements committee at

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