St Andrew’s has a very active Anglican Mothers’ Union Australia (AMUA) branch, with new members joining regularly. Everyone is welcome to join. For more information, contact Helen Zappala on 0400 951 945.
Meetings
On the second Friday of each month, we gather for a Eucharist or Morning Prayer at 9:30 am. We then have morning tea before our meeting at about 10:30 am. Most months, we have a guest speaker choosing from a huge variety of subjects that interest our group. Non-members are welcome to attend when a guest speaker is addressing the meeting.
Events and Guest Speakers in 2024
- 8 March: Cutting and wrapping Simnel cake for Mothering Sunday. Members are bringing their favourite prayer to read out and we will discuss the Aims and Objectives of MU.
- 10 March: We hold a Diocesan Retiring Collection at the morning services for Islands in the Pacific disaster relief – specifically for the Solomon Islands this year.
- 12 April: Rev’d Canon Dr Marian Free will give her third presentation on St Paul discussing a particular letter.
- 10 May: Canon Libby Crossman will address the meeting on her trip to Vietnam and Western Australia.
- 14 June: We will have a guest speaker from Diabetes Queensland.
- 12 July: We have our Annual Outing: this time going to Hunter and Scout in Honour Avenue.
- 9 August: Is Mary Sumner Day. She began Mothers’ Union in England in 1876. MU came to Australia in the early 1900s. We will have a Mary Sumner Quiz on that day.
- 11 August: We hold a retiring collection for Anglicare Southern Qld Rapid Response Project at the morning services.
- 13 September: We have a guest speaker from Anglicare talking about how to prevent falls.
- 11 October: The AGM plus some fun quizzes.
- 8 November: Our Christmas break up lunch at Forages Café at Taringa Fiveways.
Activities
Our branch supplies a monthly laundry basket of cleaning goods to women who leave the Women’s Shelter going to their new safe home. Some members knit beanies, scarves and mittens for the Mission to Seafarers. We have an annual social outing for lunch in the winter months. Our branch makes the palm crosses for the parish every year for use on Palm Sunday. We give Baptismal cards and teddies to those young people getting baptised and we visit our sick and hospitalised members. We usually have one Deanery Day a year when the six branches of the North West Deanery get together. This is also a time to present badges and scrolls for period of membership. There are two Diocesan Council meetings held each year: one at St John’s Cathedral and the other at one of the nearby county branches. Our meetings are lots of fun when we do quizzes or have a games morning. Two publications are produced each season of the year to keep us up to date on other branches in the Brisbane Diocese. They are called Mia Mia and Poinsettia magazines.
Annual Appeals
Each year on Mothering Sunday (the 4th Sunday in Lent – 3 weeks before Easter), we join with other MU branches in the Brisbane Diocese to raise funds for an Overseas and Northern Outreach project selected by Sumner House in London.
On the Sunday closest to Mary Sumner Day (9 August), the AMUA Brisbane diocesan branches hold another appeal. The proceeds enable the Anglicare Mission Department to provide training and professional development for the chaplaincy team and pastoral care volunteers. A cheque is handed to the Director of Mission Canon Linda McWilliam on Lady Day each year.
Anglican Mothers’ Union Australia
From helping people to read in Ethiopia to knitting tiny garments for premature babies: from running parenting programs to providing home-maker parcels to refugees; from supporting parish Family Workers to running family-related seminars in the community – these are just a few of the many projects of AMUA. For more information, see https://www.muaustralia.org.au/.
Mothers’ Union Worldwide
The Mothers’ Union is an international Christian charity that seeks to support families worldwide. Its members are not all mothers or even all women, as there are many parents, men, widows, singles and grandparents involved in its work. Its main aim is to support monogamous marriage and family life, especially through times of adversity. Globally, Mothers’ Union has over 4,000.000 members in 84 countries. For more information, see https://www.mothersunion.org/.
The Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby once said:
The Mothers’ Union in so many places is an organisation that listens to the voices of weeping. Whether it’s in Burundi, the Congo or South Sudan; whether it’s in homes in cities where when the local football team loses there is a 50 percent increase in domestic violence; whether it is in the loneliness of weeping by people who are not suffering physically but are spiritually empty and lost; it is the Mothers’ Union that exists in the vision of Mary Sumner to speak of those things that God has provided that bring hope, help and a future”…[Mothers’ Union is] an extraordinary movement to support the family… But there is also such a need for global women’s groups. And you are among the most embedded, the most effective, the most widespread. There are few that can rival you – if any.
Reflecting on United Nations research showing that no major civil conflict since 1945 has ended without the involvement of women’s groups, the Archbishop said the Mothers’ Union holds in its hands two aspects of:
…the most extraordinary treasure that God has brought together. You are one of the greatest of women’s groups in the world, and you have the treasure of the gospel of reconciliation. What more could be needed to be transforming of the world in which we live? …Nine-tenths of your work is hidden in the parishes and the dioceses, in the hills and the villages – doing the work of bringing hope and strengthening families, of supporting churches, of transforming communities.