Compassion, Wisdom and Love.

These masses in spite of all that had happened to them had become very able people. At my first chapel in the metropolis of the first Thursday in February in 1979 I met a really remarkable blind lady by the name of Sue Newman. Sue was in her 20s. She was entirely blind and walked with a long white cane. She too suffered very ill from epileptic seizures. However with my experience of epilepsy this was not going to be a problem.

Soon we became close friends and she attended every church service each week. I remember inviting Sue to read office in services and to learn from her Braille bible and then one night in July 1979 I was doing a particular "Church in a House" which was passing to be telecast at the ABC network. I was release to question her near her living and faith.Sue was born blind. Her eyes which depicted the white piece of the eye when her eyelids were open had never been working at all. She never blamed God for her blindness, nor did she believed she had lost out, being born blind. She said to me in that television interview I would instead be born blind than to get missed my view because I find I would get missed out so much more if I had gone blind later.Sue had not missed out on lots of the 20 years or so of life. She was very alive in bushcraft and had worked for the Duke of Edinburgh award. She was likewise very dynamic in athletics particularly running. She used to go mountain climbing in the Blue Mountains and other places and enjoyed surfing both in the pond and in the surf. She went on an outing on one occasion through the Blue Mountains without a great deal of help. There were times when climbing a steep rock face she needed people to shout out to her where to put her feet but with that help she was capable to successfully scale a very forbidding cliff face. During her time she also spent a week nursing small children in a children`s home. She set herself the labor of taking the Duke of Edinburgh top prize and complete a flow of years completed all that was essential to win her bronze award and so her silver award and eventually the Governor General of Australia presented her with a gold Duke of Edinburgh award.Eventually she went to Buckingham Palace and standard a gold award from the Duke of Edinburgh himself. The Duke was greatly impressed with Sue`s courage and personal loyalty to overcoming.It was while she was with us at Wesley Mission that she joined helping some new people struggling with drug addiction in the interior city of Sydney. She worked with some of my staff in reaching young people who constantly pitied themselves and gave themselves every excuse for their insult of drugs. She did a training course with us and was in a division that I taught every week through our Lifeline.After that she was involved in helping latchkey children in the inner suburban areas. At the same time she did a bible college course to fit herself. Never once did sue complain about the fact that she was entirely blind. In 1980 Rev Fred Nile appointed Sue as an office worker and administrator for the International year for handicapped people. This was division of the splendid exercise that he was doing through his new organisation, "Festival of Light". Sue used a Braille typewriter and former special equipment. She wrote the International Year for Disabled Peoples Beatitudes which were found by many to be a material blessing.There was a heavy loss to us all when Sue took an epileptic seizure and died on Tuesday the fourteenth of July in 1981 at just 27 years of age. We held a serving of memorial for her at the chapel in the city which crowded out Wesley Chapel. A second service of Praise and Grace was held at St Andrews Cathedral where Rev Fred Nile gave the eulogy. The Festival of Lights subsequently named an award in honour of Sue, the Sue Newman Award-for services to humanity. The first winner of that received it hither in Sydney. And that success was Mother Teresa of Calcutta. Sue Newman was one of those remarkable overcomers.