Lena grew up in Gippsland and trained to be a nurse. When her husband bought their new family home in Echuca, she started a new life there. Lena soon found herself with five daughters under the age of five, but when she approached her Catholic Priest for dispensation to use a contraceptive, he said no. This led Lena to walk into the local Anglican church to see if perhaps she could find the support she needed there.

Her whole life Lena has heeded the call to show compassion and care to those in need. Her lifelong devotion to visiting and caring for those in hospitals and residential aged care saw her awarded an Order of Australia. She continues this ministry to this day, sustained by the belief that God is with her in every moment, no matter where she is.

John was born in Colchester in Essex, England in 1934. After an administrative mix up his father was posted to Singapore in the second world war, and the family went to live in the now infamous Changi prison. This very unorthodox childhood didn’t stop John from getting up to some typical mischief; making the most of the regular downpours to slide down the city’s storm water drains with the centipedes and out into the sea.

But in 1942 when the bombing started they had to be evacuated, and John together with his five siblings and mother were stowed in the hold of a ship as they made the perilous ten-day journey to Freemantle in Western Australia. The family finally settled in Sailors Falls, near Daylesford, where John met his wife to be. They were married at Christ Church, Daylesford on the18th of April 1953, and their family has been an integral part of the church for the 73 years since.

When Jess moved from Melbourne to Bendigo she didn’t realise it would be the beginning of such an isolating period of her life. Becoming a mum at the same time as she had moved away from community and a job, not knowing anyone in her new home. For two years she felt hugely isolated, and lonely. But all it took was an invitation from a stranger at a playgroup to change things. While it took six months for Jess to accept that invitation, it eventually led to her going to church and attending an Alpha course. Through these years Jess was brought to the difficult realisation that her will power and strength of character were not enough to absorb all the hits she kept taking. On her own she was inadequate to handle the chaos waters that had come. How was she to carry it all? And how could Christianity possibly help her?