Don Dowling's Blog

TheDon's Blog

Hi all.

Highlights this week.

Story 1. As you are aware we have a display outside the church. Part of this event includes an ‘Angel’ handing out postcards about the display and our Christmas services. On Saturday a woman who had just landed in Perth from South Africa approached him looking for a supermarket and he began to give her directions for Woolworths but then decided it would be easier to take her there.

What he didn’t know was that before leaving South Africa she was told by her Minister that there was an Afrikaans service in one of the Perth churches. On arrival she looked around Perth but couldn’t find it however on the way to Woolworths she saw Trinity Church and noticed the sign advertising the Afrikaans’s service. As it happened the service was to be held on the following day. On Sunday when she arrived at the service Rev Chris Crause met her and asked how she found her way to Trinty.

She replied, ‘an Angel sent me!’

Story 2. Also as part of the display we have a ‘Graffiti Board’ and passers by have been encouraged to write a message for the City of Perth. One young woman wrote. ‘Christmas is a time of sharing with family”. After she had finished writing I asked her, ‘Is your family here in Perth’, to which she replied, “My mother lives here in Perth, and my father lives in New Zealand.’ We had a brief conversation about family and how hard it is sometimes when a family is separated. I found out that she spends one Christmas in Perth with her mother and the alternate Christmas with her father. My hope is that our brief conversation was an acknowledgment that for some Christmas is a hard time. My hope is that our brief conversation may have helped. You never know.

My feeling is there are more stories to come……..

Thanks for reading.
Don