Mara farewells Helen Hoskins

After 40 years of service to the Lord and the people of Tanzania, the Rev Canon Helen Hoskins officially resigned all her responsibilities in the Diocese of Mara late last year and was farewelled at a packed service in St John’s Cathedral, Musoma on December 11.

Twenty clergy participated in the service, including the Bishop of Mara, George Okoth, and the sermon was given by the Rev Noadia from the Girls’ Brigade Centre where Canon Hoskins was principal.

Bishop Okoth said the diocese would celebrate Helen’s Day on May 12 every year in her honour, to remember and celebrate “God’s blessing and gift to Mara Diocese”.

“Helen is a woman of humble spirit who taught me at Bible school, and she shaped me in who I am,” he said. “I stand on her shoulders to see far.

“She has left a great mark on women’s ministry... [and] she has remained involved through promoting scholarships for marginalised students to attend the three educational centres and remains a great friend of the diocese... It was very hard for me to say goodbye to her.”

Canon Hoskins grew up in northern Sydney, studied music and mathematics at university and then worked as a computer programmer.

She gave her life to Jesus in 1975 and theological study followed not long afterwards. She became a parish sister at St Clement’s, Mosman in 1981, and was accepted as a missionary by the Church Missionary Society the following year. While she had a strong desire to go to Tanzania, she made an open offer to CMS to be sent wherever God wanted her – and he sent her to Tanzania. some of them got pregnant at secondary school and they had to leave school,” she told Jenny Salt. “Some of them have been forced into very early marriages and have maybe escaped them. So, we’re giving these girls an education to learn a skill which will help them, but also for them to know Jesus.

Miss Hoskins arrived in the country in January 1983, and taught at Nyakato Bible College in Mwanza for more than a decade, followed by four years of pastoral, teaching and outreach ministry in the town of Magu.

“I really loved being in Tanzania – I loved the ministry and the people I was working with,” she told Jenny Salt in an interview for her Salt podcast.

In 1999, she moved further north to Bunda, in the Diocese of Mara, where – among other things – she taught pastors and evangelists, led a fellowship of pastors’ wives and was deeply involved with the Girls’ Brigade, eventually at a national level. She founded the vocational Girls Brigade Centre in Bunda and became its principal, as well as taking an active part in the Tamar Campaign against sexual assault, harassment, domestic violence and child labour.

“At our vocational training and sewing centre we have young women there aged 15 to 27...

“I have such a strong love for these girls to get all the support that we can give them, and for them to know that they can do it with Jesus – even in a most intolerable situation.”

Priested in Mara in 2011 and made a canon of St John’s Cathedral two years later, Canon Hoskins became chaplain to the new Bunda Girls’ Secondary School in 2014, as well as director of the Shalom Hall kindergarten, while remaining principal of the GB Centre. When the kindergarten’s success led to the creation of the Shalom Pre and Primary School, she also became its founding chaplain.

Canon Hoskins “retired” from CMS in 2017, building a house in Bunda where she expected to remain, and where she continued to serve the diocese and its people. However, on her annual visit to Australia in 2020, she was diagnosed with cancer – and while able to have surgery without subsequent chemotherapy, her diagnosis, coupled with the pandemic, meant she was unable to return full-time to Tanzania. She made the difficult decision to retire to Australia, making a gift of her house to the Mara Diocese.

“I had hoped to have several more years active in Tanzania and to finally move back to Australia for a quiet retirement,” she told SC. “Instead, I am back [now], rather than tottering in on a walking stick! I am discovering that I can actually do ministry in Sydney and enjoy volunteering as part of the ministry team at Mona Vale Anglican Church, and also as chaplain to an aged care facility with my adorable therapy dog Maude.”

The Rev Roger Hokin became rector of Guildford with Villawood on January 29, after eight years as an assistant minister with Dural District.

In late February, after 21 years as rector of St Paul’s, Castle Hill, the Rev John Gray resigned due to ill health.

The Rev Mike Leite became rector of Leppington late last month, moving from an assistant minister’s role in the parish of St George North.

After seven years as an assistant minister in the parish of Northmead and Winston Hills, the Rev Mark Groombridge will become rector of Lithgow on May 29.

VALE taking up another curacy at Illogan in Cornwall. During this time he met his wife, Dr Mary Daines, and they were married in 1962. The following year Mr Lovell was made vicar to the village and church of St Keverne on the far southwestern tip of Cornwall, where he served for five years.

Vacant Parishes

List of parishes and provisional parishes, vacant or becoming vacant, as at April 20, 2023:

• Belmore with McCallums Hill and Clemton Park

Beverly Hills with Kingsgrove

• Castle Hill

• Concord and Burwood

Eagle Vale**

The Rev Laurence Lovell died on October 22, 2022, aged 91.

Born Laurence John Lovell on August 28, 1931 in England, he was brought up in Gravesend, Kent and grew up during the war years with a love of art and nature. He studied arts and literature at St David’s College, Lampeter, followed by theology at Tyndale Hall in Bristol.

In 1956, Mr Lovell was ordained in his home diocese of Rochester and spent four years as curate of St John the Evangelist in Penge before

Mr and Mrs Lovell then made the life-changing decision that he should accept an invitation to the Sydney parish of St Paul’s in Oatley – a decision Mr Lovell’s eldest son David described on the day of his father’s funeral as something done “with a torn heart but a strong sense of calling”. Mrs Lovell became a local GP, and Mr Lovell served as rector of Oatley from 1968 until his retirement in 1995 – the year of his wife’s death.

David Lovell said the years at Oatley “stretched” his father, “at times beyond reckoning, but at the same time built such a capacity of trust in God, a depth of forgiveness and a heart that never gave up on people,

• Freshwater

• Liverpool South**

• GreystanesMerrylands West

Mona Vale**

• Regents Park*

• Robertson Rosemeadow*

• Shoalhaven Heads

• South Hurstville Wentworth Falls

* denotes provisional parishes or Archbishop’s appointments **right of nomination suspended/on hold place and purpose – laying an indelible mark on the lives of those he loved, served and has now spent his life for”.

He added: “The chaplain of Goodhew Gardens where Dad resided once said to me, ‘Every time I visit [your father] I come away more blessed than when I arrived... Laurence has made a conscious decision to never take offence at what life has thrown at him... he loves unconditionally and is a living example of the gospel and all he believes’. This sums up Dad to a tee.”