GordonMoyes.com

In 2003, with other newly elected members of Parliament, I wrote to Kristina Keneally to invite her to join the Parliamentary Christian Prayer Fellowship. A number of new coalition members joined and three new Labor parliamentarians. They have all made a significant contribution to the prayer meeting I run each Thursday.

Rev. Darren Box, 39, is a voluntary member of the ministry team at the Lakes Evangelical Church, Berkeley Vale, New South Wales, where I attend. When Darren scoots in to preach, he already has our attention.

If I was in charge, then the next Young Australian of the Year would be Sophie Delezio. It is impossible to imagine what the recent years have been like for Sophie Delezio and her friend Molly Wood.

The first thing you notice is his size. He is head and shoulders above everyone. And his shoulders – they are wider than the barn door. He often wears shorts to church (ours is a relaxed fellowship!) and that is when you realize his thighs are like tree trunks.

All over the USA are thousands of theme parks, each one different from the last, and each one bring life to cities and remote country towns. All of them together cannot satisfy the American thirst to be entertained.
Communities scratch in the dust of their history frantic to find some historical event from the past that will give them a hook upon which to hang their future, much the same way as Glenrowen is Ned Kelly’s town and the Eureka Stockade gives life to Ballarat.

The last weekend of the year is a not a good television ratings period. All the major shows are concluded for the year, so many people are enjoying summer holidays and the television fare is usually old and minor in scope. Not even the television magazines bothered to write up some of the old movies That was why I almost missed it. There suddenly on the screen was a scene I recognized.

During the last week of September I received a warning from a reliable source concerning books sold to school children. As a great advocate of reading and buying books, but also being aware of false information on the internet, I decided to check the details for myself.

As a teenager in Christian Endeavour, I was deeply moved when a former missionary to China, Mr H.A.G.Clark, explained how the Christian missionaries in China had been expelled after the Communist take over in 1948 and what was happening to the persecuted Christians left behind. Especially Pearl Anderson. Pearl was a nurse, who had been adopted by Mr and Mrs Albert Anderson, Churches of Christ missionaries in China, after she was abandoned as a baby.

The winter recess in Parliament is a marvellous time to catch up on ordinary things. I was speaking round our branches and churches each week on behalf of our Senate candidate Paul Green, writing this magazine and other materials, conducting interviews in my office, and preparing my talks for our national convention.

My life has fallen into a few stages.

As a child, I lived in Box Hill when it was a 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 [...]