When I reflect on my early church memories I consider myself
most fortunate. As a five year old, amongst smiling faces
singing Kum ba yah, I remember the unveiling of the new
uniting church symbol as I sat with my family in what became Murray Bridge Uniting.

Maybe like a beacon, a call on my life was already being announced. We moved to Aldgate Uniting the year following, and here food, community and the full involvement of kids in the life of the church were to become formative experiences for me. With a love developing for science, I remember deciding as a teen that the role of a minister was not one I could do, for I could not fathom how you could possibly have something to say each and every week…plus it seemed in the mid eighties that brown suits were the fashion. Graciously, God was underterred.. 

It is now over twenty years since the Rev. Ian Tanner, former Moderator of the Synod of
South Australia, 1977-79 and President of the Uniting Church in Australia, 1985-88,
suggested that God may be calling me to ordained ministry. Ian was visiting West Lakes United Parish to run a course on Kennon Callahan’s book, Twelve Keys for an Effective Church. I was 14 years of age. I had just been baptised into the Church of God.

 I was privileged to be born into a Christian home. My father, Graham, and grandfather, Harold (1922-2011), were ordained in the Methodist and Uniting Churches respectively. On my mother’s side were accountants, teachers and lay leaders in the Churches of Christ and Baptist Churches. I am grateful for the nurture of Christian communities in Jamestown, Streaky Bay, West Lakes United Parish, Pilgrim, Wesley Church, Canberra and St Andrew’s by the Sea, Glenelg. 

I grew up in Scotland outside the church and only started drifting to church with a
nagging sense of “this is what you’re meant to do” as a teenager. Despite such
beginnings I thank God for excellent preaching/teaching of Church of Scotland ministers that sparked an interest in the Divine. My interest was not sufficiently strong to sway me from studying law at University and beginning a career there. 

After 14 years as a lawyer both defending and prosecuting in the criminal courts I gave in to the nagging sense that I was meant to be doing something else. A sermon on Romans sticks in my mind as a call to discern your gifts and use them for God. I began investigating a call to ministry with the Church of Scotland however the immigration department of the Australian Government intervened at this stage and granted us a visa to come to Australia. Rather than let my interest slip I pursued it here after landing in the Uniting Church. 

I was born in South Sudan into a Christian family of Episcopal Church of Sudan and
grew up attending Sunday school. When I was a teen the war started in Sudan which
separated me from my parents, and then was taken by my elder sister.  

When I finished my high school in 1983 I did some training and started my first job as a Typist.  In 1986 I married James Tear.  From that day on my journey has been filled with both joy and challenge, as God faithfully guided me through many diverse experiences and helped me understand His presence in everything. 

In 1990 I finished my Diploma in Secretarial and office management, and was employed in 1992 as Secretary for Nile Theological College, Khartoum North – Sudan, where my call to ministry continued to develop.