Hello Faith Pals,
I hope you have been able to enjoy some sun-it won’t last!
I have attached Sunday’s sermon and prayers.
Tomorrow is Anzac Day. A solemn day. Do you know about Rev Leonard Kentish? If we had been gathering for church this Sunday I may have told his story. Here it is:
One of the most extraordinary events of World War II was the forced abduction of this Australian clergyman at gunpoint, and his subsequent flight and execution at a Japanese base in 1943. This became known as the “Kentish Affair”. Reverend Leonard Kentish was the Chairman of the Chairman of the Methodist Northern Australian Mission District in Darwin, and head of the volunteer coastwatchers. The Mission had several buildings on islands in the Arafura Sea, and at regular intervals boats would leave Darwin for these outposts, loaded with supplies and personnel. On 13 January 1943, HMAS Patricia Cam left Darwin with stores for a number of outlying missions and stations. At Goulburn Island, it picked up the Reverend Leonard Kentish. He was taking new code books to his missionary staff.
A danger facing the ship was the Japanese reconnaissance floatplanes which operated out of Dobo in the Aru Islands of eastern Indonesian. The floatplanes were armed with two 60-kg bombs and regularly harassed coastal shipping. At 1.00 pm on 22 January, one of the three-seater floatplanes of the 734th Kokatai dived out of the sun and flew low over the ship from stern to stem. It dropped a bomb amidships which went through the cargo hatch and exploded low in the ship. The Patricia Cam sank so quickly the men had no opportunity to fight back. In a surprising move, the floatplane landed, threatened the survivors and, at gunpoint, forced Rev. Kentish to board their aircraft. It took off, leaving the survivors to their fate. Mrs. Violet Kentish remained entirely in the dark as to the fate of her husband. “I know that Len is not beyond God’s love and care wherever he may be,” she vainly pleaded to the Minister of the Navy. “But you will understand because we are only weak humans, the heartache and longing for one we loved so much.” After World War II, she desperately resorted to sending letters to newspaper editors, until an intelligence officer chanced to read one published in the Argus and made the necessary inquiries via U.S. Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s staff in Tokyo to unravel the mystery. Investigations in 1946 by the Allied Occupation Force in Japan ascertained Rev Kentish had been kept prisoner on Dobo until 4 May 1943, when he was executed. Sub-Lieutenant Sagejima Mangan was arrested as a war criminal and subsequently hanged in 1948, because he had ordered Kentish’s execution in retaliation for an Allied air raid. Rev Kentish is believed to be the only Australian ever taken prisoner-of-war in home waters.
To close with something uplifting:
“Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass. It’s about learning how to dance in the rain.”
and
‘A 24 year old boy, looking out the train’s window shouted…
Dad smiled and a young couple sitting nearby, looked at the 24 year old’s childish behavior with pity, suddenly he again exclaimed…
“Dad, look the clouds are running with us!”
The couple couldn’t resist and said to the old man…
“Why don’t you take your son to a good doctor?” The old man smiled and said…“I did and we are just coming from the hospital, my son was blind from birth, he just got his eyes today.”
Be careful before we judge! Everyone has his/her own story. Actually, let’s not judge!
‘…and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.’
Blessings and love
Barbara
