The Overcomers
My life has fallen into a few stages.
As a child, I lived in Box Hill when it was village. I then became pastor to the slums of inner Melbourne for eight years. I was then a country parson and a teacher at a one teacher bush school out at Jackson Creek in Western Victoria and then for 13 years, I was a suburban minister in one of Australia’s largest suburban ministries.
And then, for more than 27 years I’ve been Superintendent in Sydney of Wesley Mission, Australia’s largest church ministry.
I’ve told you stories of people in each of these places.
Tonight I want you to come with me into the heart of the city.
It was my mother who taught me to care for people with disabilities. I was only about 11 or 12 when mother introduced to our home a new person. She was a real surprise package, and we had no room. We lived in a two-bedroom house with my widowed mother in the front room, my two sisters in the second bedroom and my brother and I slept in what was supposed to be the dining room but as we couldn’t afford to have a dining room, it was turned into a bedroom. Then onto the scene my mother introduced this woman. She would have been in her middle to late 30s and had nowhere to live. My mother took my younger sister into her bedroom to sleep with her and this woman slept in my sister’s bedroom.
My mother told us that she had offered her a bedroom because this lady was unable to work, she did not have anywhere to live, she had no family and she suffered from a very bad form of sickness. I did not understand this form of sickness. It was then for the first time that I heard the word epilepsy and my mother explained to us all that this woman would fall on the floor several times a day and have a grand seizure. During that time she would not know what was happening and that her limbs would jerk and she would froth at the mouth, but that we should not be afraid because after a short while she would become still and eventually returned to normal.
For a 12-year-old and the eldest of four children, this was a rather frightening prospect. However my mother’s description had been so vivid that when the poor lady fell on the kitchen floor for the first time, at a time when my mother was at work and I had returned home after school I was in the house on my own, I had been forewarned and therefore was not afraid as I might have been if my mother had not forewarned me.
Looking back in retrospect I don’t know how long she stayed in our house but the idea was that she would stay long enough for my mother to arrange alternative accommodation. It stretched out from many months or perhaps even a year or more before that was arranged. But introduction to her was the first insight I had of caring to someone who suffered disability.
From the time I became a student Minister we have had people with disabilities around us all the time. We had some people in my Ministry to the slums who had all of the usual kinds of mental illnesses. We had others with some disabilities we even had one poor girl with the most gross kind of disfigurement of face which so impacted her that she became a disfigurement of mind as well.
Throughout my Ministry I always became involved in providing practical care for people with disabilities. As I look back on 40 years of caring for people with disabilities the thing that stands out in my mind most of all is the fact that so many of them could be termed the overcomers.
These people in spite of all that had happened to them had become very able people. At my first chapel in the city of the first Thursday in February in 1979 I met a very remarkable blind lady by the name of Sue Newman. Sue was in her 20s. She was totally blind and walked with a long white cane. She also suffered very badly from epileptic seizures. However with my experience of epilepsy this was not going to be a problem. Soon we became close friends and she attended every church service each week. I remember inviting Sue to take part in services and to read from her Braille bible and then one night in July 1979 I was doing a special “Church in a Theatre” which was going to be telecast at the ABC network. I was going to interview her about her life and faith.
Sue was born blind. Her eyes which portrayed the white part of the eyeball when her eyelids were open had never been functional at all. She never blamed God for her blindness, nor did she believed she had missed out, being born blind. She said to me in that television interview I would rather be born blind than to have lost my sight because I feel I would have lost out so much more if I had gone blind later.
Sue had not missed out on much of the 20 years or so of life. She was very active in bushcraft and had worked for the Duke of Edinburgh award. She was also very active in athletics particularly running. She used to go mountain climbing in the Blue Mountains and other places and enjoyed surfing both in the pool and in the surf. She went on an expedition on one occasion through the Blue Mountains without a great deal of help. There were times when climbing a steep rock face she needed people to call out to her where to put her feet but with that help she was able to successfully scale a very forbidding cliff face. During her time she also spent a week nursing small children in a children’s home. She set herself the task of winning the Duke of Edinburgh top award and over a period of years completed all that was necessary to win her bronze award and then her silver award and finally the Governor General of Australia presented her with a gold Duke of Edinburgh award.
Eventually she went to Buckingham Palace and received a gold award from the Duke of Edinburgh himself. The Duke was greatly impressed with Sue’s courage and personal commitment to overcoming.
It was while she was with us at Wesley Mission that she joined helping some young people struggling with drug addiction in the inner city of Sydney. She worked with some of my staff in reaching young people who constantly pitied themselves and gave themselves every excuse for their abuse of drugs. She did a training course with us and was in a class that I taught every week through our Lifeline.
After that she was involved in helping latchkey children in the inner suburban areas. At the same time she did a bible college course to equip herself. Never once did sue complain about the fact that she was totally blind. In 1980 Rev Fred Nile appointed Sue as an office worker and administrator for the International year for disabled people. This was part of the excellent work that he was doing through his new organisation, “Festival of Light”. Sue used a Braille typewriter and other special equipment. She wrote the International Year for Disabled Peoples Beatitudes which were found by many to be a real blessing.
There was a great loss to us all when Sue took an epileptic seizure and died on Tuesday the 14th of July in 1981 at just 27 years of age. We held a service of remembrance for her at the chapel in the city which crowded out Wesley Chapel. A second service of Praise and Thanksgiving was held at St Andrews Cathedral where Rev Fred Nile gave the eulogy. The Festival of Lights subsequently named an award in honour of Sue, the Sue Newman Award—for services to humanity. The first winner of that received it here in Sydney. And that winner was Mother Teresa of Calcutta. Sue Newman was one of those remarkable overcomers.
Miss Elizabeth Schiller was a member of the Wesley Mission congregation and a very special friend of Wesley Mission. She was regular in her attendance, support and encouragement of all our activities. Although profoundly deaf and mute she had read and participated in everything we did. She read very closely all of our printed material even though she had a limited writing capacity herself.
I remember her as a faithful steward who, with limited resources, supported many good causes. She loved her Jewish roots and the traditions of the people, but loved even more, Jesus as the Messiah. Whenever I taught or showed films of Jewish places or customs she was particularly excited. I had known her 10 years and she decided to entrust me by recounting her experiences during the 1930s and 1940s when she suffered terrible trauma with other members of her family at the hands of the Nazis. That profound suffering affected her whole life. She never spoke again. She totally lost the power of speech through what had happened to her.
She loved young people and enjoyed their music especially the music that other people could hear but thought too loud. She could not hear their music but loved the vibrations. She accepted her handicap but lived full of faith. Each year she enjoyed celebrating both the Jewish Passover and Christian Easter. She died in faith in March 1991 and will, throughout eternity sing everlasting hallelujahs. She was a Jew who had heard the good news, rejoiced in her race and culture, but rejoiced more that Christ was her messiah and Lord. She also was an over comer.
A third overcomer, currently works with us at Wesley industries. Stephen Harding is a young man in his late 20s. He also is profoundly deaf but the development of a powerful hearing aid has allowed him to hear many sounds and through the capacity of lip reading is able to understand what other people say to him. Many people would regard Steven as being mentally disabled but Stephen has in his own way proved to be a most able person.
His fellow workers at Wesley industries elected him on to a board to work out an enterprise agreement on behalf of the staff of Wesley Mission. Obviously we brought in some very experienced people to help us in labour relations and to get the best deal for our staff so that all of the disabled people who work within Wesley Mission have first rate opportunities to advance themselves, to undertake further skills training to earn a bigger wage than they would earn anywhere else, to get appropriate superannuation, long service leave and other employee benefits. Stephen very carefully over a period of time with another staff member Leslie Wilson went through all of the areas of employee benefits to which they believe they should be entitled. In the end the workers and Wesley Mission came together and signed an enterprise agreement. Most of these workers are involved in fairly repetitive jobs. Some help make hot water services and hot water containers. Others are involved in learning horticulture and providing complete garden care. Others are involved in contract cleaning services offices, schools and professional suites. Others are involved in Wesley laundry and some have developed their skills in certain trades. One only in this past month has been taken on as an apprentice for a trade and was admitted instantly into the third tier of the apprenticeship taking into account the skills he has already developed. Stephen spent some considerable time learning, acquiring and then passing all of the tests involved to become a registered forklift operator.
But Stephen’s great passion is for the South Sydney rugby league team, Rabbitohs. Stephen was devastated when the Rabbitohs were throw out the National Rugby league and has never watched a game of rugby league since. However he has thrown himself into supporting the South Sydney Rabbitohs legal challenge to get them readmitted into the rugby league. It was this passion that led him to discuss with some of our senior staff what he wanted to do most. He was a single man who had carefully saved his money and had worked hard and he believed that the thing he wanted to do most of all was to help the legal challenge faced by the South Sydney rugby league club.
Having discussed it with advisers, he presented George Piggins the president of the Rabbitohs with a cheque for $15,000 to help pay for the lawyers to argue the case successfully in Melbourne before the high court. As you know the Rabbitohs won. The Rabbitohs were appreciative of the work that Stephen Harding had done and for his financial support and that is why early this year he was elected the youngest life member of the South Sydney rugby league club. Stephen Harding is an overcomer.
A fourth disabled overcome is Charles Zahra. Charles has been working at Wesley’s mission’s David Ball enterprises a centre for intellectually disabled people. Charles attended the Hassall Street special School at Parramatta. From that school he came to David Morgan Enterprises as a work experience student in 1980 for two days a week.
I remember Charles coming all those years ago. By the following year he was employed full-time at David Morgan Enterprises and recently I was pleased to present his 20 years certificate of service working in disability services. Over the years Charles gained a great deal of confidence and has developed his skills and experience on many kinds of machines in the general packaging area. He has worked on a variety of packaging projects including packaging dry cat food and heat sealing various products and providing plastic skin packaging. The some time he also gained valuable work experience in a McDonald’s restaurant and proved himself to be a good employee.
Over the years he has achieved a number of promotions and has been a leading hand for many years in charge of specialised ANZPAC section at David Morgan Enterprises. They manufacture and fit the cardboard around collars that go around the McDonald’s Big Mac. It is in this area that Charles leading hand responsibility has come to the fore. He keeps the work flowing and overseas more than 12 other workers keeping a tally on the output of each worker and completing all the documentation for the product. They have put together over $1 billion McDonald packs.
Whenever I visit the David Morgan Enterprises Charles shakes my hand and explains to me what he and his colleagues are doing at that moment. He is a very gentle and caring person and yet can be quite firm and decisive in his work. He has a great Christian faith and regularly attends daily devotions held at David Morgan Enterprises and even helps lead in the prayer and Bible study. He has a wonderful positive outlook on life.
Charles is an ardent Parramatta football fan where he is a season ticket holder. If you ever asked him a question about Parramatta he will give you a full and detailed explanation of the exploits on and off field of all of the players. In October this year the Rotary club of Beecroft honoured Charles Zarah by presenting him with the Rotary award of pride in Workmanship. Charles is another overcomer.
There are so many people who complained constantly about not having opportunities in life. Then I meet these people who have suffered profound disabilities over the years but haven’t let their disabilities restrict their growth and development. Sue and Elizabeth Stephen and Charles belonged to that special group of people called the overcomers.
The city of Sydney will grow to be one of the world’s great cities and Wesley Mission will grow to be one of the world’s great churches and I was privileged to spend each day in the heart of both.