The
Catholic Weekly
Online
Sydney
11 January 2004
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Parish honours ‘linchpin’ of
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Maria finds family link in UK college
The day Br Nicholas dropped the pin
Graham Andrews learns by teaching
GRATEFUL: The PALMS orientation course makes a difference, says Graham Andrews
Graham Andrews was an industrial chemist with BHP in Newcastle when he felt “called” to Papua New Guinea in 1992. “My discernment was a ‘calling’ to mission work,” he says.
He stayed in Papua New Guinea until 1995, working at the Kefamo Mission Conference Centre in Goroka, which he managed jointly with a Papuan New Guinean sister.
Then he spent three months volunteering in Jerusalem with the Sisters of Sion.
Graham returned to Australia in 1996.
After much soul-searching, the former Branxton boy determined to study theology and enrolled at the Centre for Christian Spirituality, under the umbrella of the Sydney College of Divinity.
Marist Missionary Sr Mary Keegan encouraged him in his studies. Indeed, her encouragement and assistance continue in many ways for him today.
The opportunity arrived for Graham to return to Papua New Guinea as a PALMS lay missionary, teaching at the Good Shepherd College Seminary in Fatima, in the Western Highlands, with the support of Catholic Mission.
He jumped at the chance.
Columban Fr Noel Connolly, the PALMS chaplain, told him: “You will
learn more theology by teaching it than by studying it.”
Graham agrees. “How true I have found that insight,” he says.
“ I always wanted to be involved in teaching in some way, and here I am.”
His tasks range from teaching and preparing lessons to prayer meetings, bursar duties at the seminary and going to town for shopping, mail and banking.
He has also been involved in writing his course for the following term.
Graham teaches his classes in English, but he can also speak Tok Pisin (aka Melanesian Pidgin English), the most widely used language in Papua New Guinea.
Graham is keen to recommend missionary work to others.
“ But, of course, each has to discern for themselves, they really have to want to do it,” he says.
“ I am very grateful to PALMS for the preparation they provide through the orientation course.
“ Believe me, it makes a difference.
“ And people do not necessarily have to go outside their own country to be missionaries.
“ Wherever we are, in whatever country, in whatever field of work, and here in education training of seminarians for the priesthood, I think missionaries are all one, a unity, reaching out to others.
“ I believe we all receive and we all give, receiving more than we give.”
His main goal when he left Australia for Papua New Guinea again last year was to continue to learn and to enjoy.
“ And that is what is happening,” says Graham. “I am receiving more than I am giving.
“ That is rewarding.”
He says he has encountered no problems living in a foreign land and he loves the culture of Papua New Guinea.
But he really misses his footy, his rugby league – “my beloved Parramatta Eels and my beloved Cessnock Goannas”.
Graham is in regular contact with people back home, enjoying great support from his family, his parish priest and the parishioners at St Columba’s in Adamstown in the Maitland-Newcastle diocese.
To find out more about how you can help Catholic Mission support missionaries like Graham in their important work, visit www.catholicmission.org.au or phone 1800 257 296.