Brentwood gives Bradys freedom to fly
Lorraine and Les Brady would have to be two of the busiest residents at Brentwood.
Not that you’d know it, because they’re hardly ever there!
Lorraine and Les spend months and even years at a time away on some remarkable odysseys doing volunteer work in Australia and overseas.
“We had two years in China in a place called Zhuhai, which is in the southern part of China,” Lorraine explained.
“We were working in the university there teaching English as a second language and working with the underground churches.
In China, of course, when we first started there and even today, Christianity is not allowed.
They have a Christian church within the Chinese Government, but it’s very regulated and not quite what we would see as a Christian Church.
So we were working with the students there (the adult students) and we did that for two years.
It was absolutely wonderful. We went as volunteers, of course, and the living conditions were, shall we say, basic.
But the teaching was absolutely phenomenal.”
Church bells come ringing
The Bradys also recently returned from a church minding trip to Western Australia, minding a church in Newman, a mining town in the centre of Western Australia, and another church in Shark Bay.
“We were looking after the churches while the ministers were gone,” Lorraine said.
“At Newman, the minister’s wife had to go away to have a baby and in Shark Bay we were there between two permanent ministers – one had left and the other hadn’t arrived.
So we were caring for their churches and their congregations as pastors.
My husband is what they call a lay preacher in the Church of England – or Anglican Church as it is now – but he’s not ordained. We’re just friends of the bishop over there and it’s all volunteer work.
It’s just hard for the bishop to find people to do this sort of thing.”
It may have been voluntary work, but the Bradys clearly thrived on it and were rewarded with some memorable experiences.
“Newman was particularly interesting,” said Lorraine. “I would say probably 90% were from overseas and you’d look down into the congregation and it would be a case of spot the Aussie!
They come in for work at the mines, and it’s a big turnover population and all young people.
They desperately needed grandmas out there! They’re all so young; they’re all having babies and are so far divorced from their own families.”
Brentwood cleans up
Of course, none of this work in China or Western Australia would have been possible without some major support from everyone at Brentwood as Lorraine was quick to point out: “We simply couldn’t have done this sort of work without being in Brentwood.
Just having the support of all the people around us, knowing that the house was being looked after, the lawns were being cared for, all that sort of thing; it just made it so much easier.”
And never was this more apparent than on their recent return to the village.
“It was incredible! Someone had swept all the back pavements, someone else had been looking after the front gardens, all this sort of thing. Under normal circumstances if you go away for a holiday, you can ask a neighbour to look after the mail or pick up the papers for you, but when you go away for 12 months you wouldn’t ask a normal neighbour to do that! But in the close family sort of thing you have in Brentwood, then yeah, it can be done and everyone’s quite happy to help out.
It makes a big difference. We’ve been here nine years and we’re still very active outside the village.
But after coming back from China the second time, I decided to give something back to the village and I’ve gone in as treasurer.
We’ve just got so much out of Brentwood that I decided I’d better do something in return!
“And the village has an eight seat buggy which I drive sometimes on a roster basis and I go around and pick people up and take them to the centre if they want to go.
And each time I’m on the buggy, you can see people walking around the new boardwalk, sitting there or feeding the geese and it’s incredible! It really is. They’ve had a couple of barbecues out on the boardwalk and it’s just a nice place to be!”
Brentwood gives Bradys freedom to fly
Lorraine and Les Brady would have to be two of the busiest residents at Brentwood.
Not that you’d know it, because they’re hardly ever there!
Lorraine and Les spend months and even years at a time away on some remarkable odysseys doing volunteer work in Australia and overseas.
“We had two years in China in a place called Zhuhai, which is in the southern part of China,” Lorraine explained.
“We were working in the university there teaching English as a second language and working with the underground churches.
In China, of course, when we first started there and even today, Christianity is not allowed.
They have a Christian church within the Chinese Government, but it’s very regulated and not quite what we would see as a Christian Church.
So we were working with the students there (the adult students) and we did that for two years.
It was absolutely wonderful. We went as volunteers, of course, and the living conditions were, shall we say, basic.
But the teaching was absolutely phenomenal.”
Church bells come ringing
The Bradys also recently returned from a church minding trip to Western Australia, minding a church in Newman, a mining town in the centre of Western Australia, and another church in Shark Bay.
“We were looking after the churches while the ministers were gone,” Lorraine said.
“At Newman, the minister’s wife had to go away to have a baby and in Shark Bay we were there between two permanent ministers – one had left and the other hadn’t arrived.
So we were caring for their churches and their congregations as pastors.
My husband is what they call a lay preacher in the Church of England – or Anglican Church as it is now – but he’s not ordained. We’re just friends of the bishop over there and it’s all volunteer work.
It’s just hard for the bishop to find people to do this sort of thing.”
It may have been voluntary work, but the Bradys clearly thrived on it and were rewarded with some memorable experiences.
“Newman was particularly interesting,” said Lorraine. “I would say probably 90% were from overseas and you’d look down into the congregation and it would be a case of spot the Aussie!
They come in for work at the mines, and it’s a big turnover population and all young people.
They desperately needed grandmas out there! They’re all so young; they’re all having babies and are so far divorced from their own families.”
Brentwood cleans up
Of course, none of this work in China or Western Australia would have been possible without some major support from everyone at Brentwood as Lorraine was quick to point out: “We simply couldn’t have done this sort of work without being in Brentwood.
Just having the support of all the people around us, knowing that the house was being looked after, the lawns were being cared for, all that sort of thing; it just made it so much easier.”
And never was this more apparent than on their recent return to the village.
“It was incredible! Someone had swept all the back pavements, someone else had been looking after the front gardens, all this sort of thing. Under normal circumstances if you go away for a holiday, you can ask a neighbour to look after the mail or pick up the papers for you, but when you go away for 12 months you wouldn’t ask a normal neighbour to do that! But in the close family sort of thing you have in Brentwood, then yeah, it can be done and everyone’s quite happy to help out.
It makes a big difference. We’ve been here nine years and we’re still very active outside the village.
But after coming back from China the second time, I decided to give something back to the village and I’ve gone in as treasurer.
We’ve just got so much out of Brentwood that I decided I’d better do something in return!
“And the village has an eight seat buggy which I drive sometimes on a roster basis and I go around and pick people up and take them to the centre if they want to go.
And each time I’m on the buggy, you can see people walking around the new boardwalk, sitting there or feeding the geese and it’s incredible! It really is. They’ve had a couple of barbecues out on the boardwalk and it’s just a nice place to be!”