Registered by Australia Post Printpost approved PP 100005221 Y WAWR THE DAWN The Magazine of the Melbourne Welsh Church John Rees celebrates his 97th birthday Llongyfarchiadau Medi 2020 September 2020 2 CHURCH SERVICES AND ACTIVITIES SUNDAY SERVICES Fellowship group Currently all services from the Melbourne Welsh Church will be on Facebook live and also posted on our website Each Wednesday at and on Youtube. Pleasecheck in on our Facebook page and on our 10:00am website for regular updates. Via Facebook or our Please contact either Rev. Siôn or Rev. Sara if you’re website experiencing difficulty logging in to our services. Prayer list SEPTEMBER 6 ‘FATHERS DAY’ 11:00am English Rev. Siôn Gough Hughes Communion - please join us online with your own version of the elements ready. SEPTEMBER 13 11:00am English Rev. Sara Villarreal Bishop Please remember the following in your prayers: 2:30pm Welsh Rev. Siôn Gough Hughes Sian Harrison, Dorothy Communion Thomson, John Rees, SEPTEMBER 20 ANNUAL QUEEN VICTORIA Bronwen Holding, John HOSPITAL MEMORIAL SERVICE Lewis, Alan Morris, Val Rendell, Mac Harris, Loris 11:00am English Guest Preacher Williams, and Wilma Lomax SEPTEMBER 27 Remember all the sick, 11:00am English Rev. Sara Villarreal Bishop sad, scared, hungry, 2:30pm Welsh Rev. Siôn Gough Hughes lonely and vulnerable in our community and 5:00pm Lutheran Eucharist Service beyond at this Rev. Sara Villarreal Bishop particularly anxious time. Communion - please join us online with your own version of the elements ready. BIBLE FELLOWSHIP, JUNIOR CHURCH, "A fo ben, bid bont" - SOCIAL CHATS , QUIZZES, COOKING If you want to be a leader, be a bridge DEMONSTRATIONS & BOOK CLUB are all available to anyone who is interested and "Dywed yn dda am dy streamed via zoom, with information on how to access gyfaill, am dy elyn these sent out prior to each. If you would like to be on dywed ddim" - Speak our email list to obtain access information, please ring well of your friend; of Fred on 9758 6997 your enemy say nothing 3 CHURCH announcements SEPTEMBER birthdays Best wishes and congratulations to : 6th Vivian Ow 10th Mandy Morrison 23rd Medi Jones-Roberts 9th Irene O’Brien 18th Ana Valleau-Gardiner 29th Bronwen Holding 10th Wendy Couch 22nd Willie Ow SEPTEMBER anniversaries Congratulations to all couples celebrating their wedding anniversary in September, including: Doreen & John Lewis celebrating their 64th on the 10th Colleen & Lloyd Berry celebrating their 43rd on the 29th Arianwen and Tom Scally celebrating their 53rd on the 30th COVID 23 The Lord is my Chief Health Officer, I am content to stay at home. He lets me walk outside for an hour, He tells me to wear a mask, He wants to save my life. He assures us daily so that we can remain safe. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no social event, For you are 1 1/2 metres away from me, Your curfew and your mask they comfort me. I shall prepare a feast with what is available from the supermarket And you anoint my hands with sanitiser, my sink overfloweth. Surely goodness and mercy shall not be socially distanced from me All the days of my life, For I will virtually dwell in the house of the Lord during isolation. A child asked his father, "How were people born?" So his father said, "Adam and Eve made babies, then their babies became adults and made babies, and so on." The child then went to his mother, asked her the same question and she told him, "We were monkeys then we evolved to become like we are now." The child ran back to his father and said, "You lied to me!" His father replied, "No, your mum was talking about her side of the family." 4 sion’s MEssAGE Dear Friends, I don’t like September and I never have. September is the saddest month of the year. I not sure why but it seems to herald the end of the year. It might be because when I was growing up September was the month we’d go back to school and the days would start to get shorter and the weather even colder than over the summer (we are talking about the UK here after all). Anyway, September is the saddest month of the year for me and it begins the run up to the end of the year. I know that it should feel different in Australia, winter is ending with the promise of warmer, longer days on the way; I don’t have to go to school anymore and the end of the year is still 4 months away but somehow it doesn’t. Reading September on the calendar takes me straight back to Marks and Spencer where I’m getting new school shirts and Clarks for new school shoes and for the older me it’s time to start thinking about the busy next few months and what that means. So when I began to think about writing this article for this SEPTEMBER Dawn my head took me back to M&S and that new school shirt smell and sore feet from new Clarks shoes and I began to ask myself where is all this dwelling on the past was coming from? Well I think I found out, I was searching for a quote I read last week and was re-reading some Bible notes, in case the quote I was looking for was in there, and this Bible verse struck me again. It was what had started my mind spiral into past times. It is from Isaiah 46 and verse 9 - “remember the former things of old; for I am God”. The quote is stuck in the middle of an angry rant from the prophet about how Israel is turning to other gods in Babylon but reading it made me think of childhood days in September. Sitting with it and remembering ‘the former things of old’ my mind turned to a Sunday evening in another September, a few years later. I was sitting in the back of the Presbyterian church in Llandudno at the 6:30pm service. Unusually I was alone (Mother usually came to church with me in the evenings) and the Rev. W.O. Jones was preaching. I don’t remember what he was saying or what text he used but I remember vividly watching him and thinking, “I should do that”. I was at a crossroads in my life and searching for a direction to go and that’s when God tapped me on the shoulder and said, “You should do that.” To cut a long story short the next September I found myself in the United Theological College in Aberystwyth studying to become a minister. A few Septembers later I found myself getting ready for ordination and starting work in a new pastorate. A lot of good former things of old seem to happen in September for me, and yet, given all that, I still don’t like September - it still feels like the year is starting to die and it feels like the saddest month of the year. So I have to find other things to focus on, so I look to happier things and this Septem- ber is a busy one for us - with all the usual zooms and services. The bookclub will be reading Huckleberry Finn, the Bible Study group is looking at Proverbs and the quiz will 5 have a special guest host (I hope). The services this month include a Fathers’ Day service and the annual Queen Victoria Hospital Service so there is plenty to look forward to. If we can (and it’s a big IF at this point) but if we can we’ll have a drive in service at the end of the month. So I still don’t like September and my mind is still dwelling on the former things of old but at least there is plenty of good things happening this one. So stay safe, keep warm, keep wearing those masks and I’ll see you on Zoom sometime soon. Yours, in His locked down service, Siôn. sArA’s MEssAGE I am going to speak to the elephant in the room. On September 18th, we will have had the doors for the church closed for six months. 180 days. And there is no end in sight for when we will open them again. On top of that, we’re all beginning to experience ‘alert fatigue’. In the military we called it “Mission Creep”, when the normal level of anxiety and alert and hypervigilance become normalized and you stop paying attention to the details quite so well, they’ve become normal. And slowly what is considered normal changes. I’ve noticed this with abused spouses, who look back eventually and realize just how much they’ve adapted. We do it to survive, we’ll go nuts trying to pay attention to all the details. But I’ve noticed these details slipping in our house. We used to do a daily wash of our reusable masks, my husband and son walk to the now-take-away coffee shop by Tooronga Station, masked, of course. But I don’t see them in the wash every day anymore, we’ve started re-using them, which is not what we are supposed to do. DHHS calls it Quarantine Fatigue. Our brains are not designed to be on high-alert for SUCH an extended period of time. This feeling you have, this is what people with debili- tating anxiety live with.