Ministry to Newly Married’s    
Marriage education cannot end with the wedding. It is a lifelong task.      We continue to train and update our skills for most things in life: jobs, hobbies, sports.

Well, why not continue to update our skills for marriage too?

Your Marriage

The Church community cares about your marriage. It wants your marriage not just to last, but to flourish, to be a lifelong source of enrichment and joy for you and your family and friends.

Ministry to Newly Married’s is a mentoring program available to couples in their early years of marriage who have been married in the Catholic Church. The ministry covers a five year program .

   Who are we?

We are Catholic and inter-faith couples in the parish who have a special place in our hearts for newly marrieds. We have gathered together in order to help ourselves and others to have the best marriages possible.

   What can we offer you?

We offer to interested newly married couples, our friendship and resources for marriage and family life. Many newly married’s have expressed their enjoyment of getting together with other couples to socialise and share common concerns and interests. It is refreshing to meet with others who are caring, loving and happy in their marriages, despite the stresses and anxieties we all face from time to time.

   A picture of our starting couples and mentors.

How Does Ministry to Newly Married’s Operate?

Each newly married couple is matched with an 'adoptive/mentoring' couple, with whom they meet three times during the year at three-monthly intervals. These gatherings are usually held as a dinner or as a chat over coffee, whatever is decided on by the two couples. The fourth meeting for the year brings everyone together for the final talk and closing celebration.

Each year there's a change of adoptive couples; so over the five years you discuss twenty different topics and get an insight into five different marriages.

The year begins in February with a social gathering - a 'fun' night when everyone meets and mixes over a social drink . Towards the end of the evening, newly married’s and adoptive couples are matched; they then get together to set the date for their first meeting.

Ministry for Newly Marrieds- Report on 2009   

This Ministry in the Parish is a wonderful opportunity on many levels for married couples, both new and experienced. While forming a connectedness within the Parish, “adoptive” mentor couples offer newly married couples their friendship and resources for marriage and family life.

Ministry for Newlyweds is a mentoring program which covers aspects of marriage that arise throughout the early years of married life. Through guided discussions and sharing of experiences the couples, new and experienced, explore the realities of living in a mutually growing relationship and develop skills for their marriage relationship to grow and flourish. This is a great opportunity to discover and evaluate important aspects of marriage while growing in relationship with each other.

The biggest value of the program is the open and genuine sharing of the adoptive couples as real people. The sharing of their highs and lows, successes, failures and struggles, and how they have worked through them, is what helps the newly married couples the most.

On Saturday, 21^st Nov, our first group (7 newly marrieds and 7 mentoring couples) had their final gathering for 2009. After a beautiful sharing of the Vocation of Marriage by two of our mentor couples and Fr Michael, each newly married couple was presented with a candle by their mentor couple who then introduced them to the adoptive couple they will journey with through Year Two of the programme.

 The group also took time to reflect on their experiences throughout this first year. The honest, supportive sharings were a wonderful testament to the programme.

Our day concluded with a few social drinks and the atmosphere in the room was testament to the community spirit that has grown within this group.

As we graduate to ‘Year Two’, there is a little sadness as the couples move on but there is also the excitement and anticipation of fostering a new friendship.

We would like to issue an invitation for couples to join this ministry in 2011 – both Newlywed and Mentor – couples who want to share the experience of helping themselves and others to have the best marriage possible.

Debbie & Paul Strudwick

Please contact Debbie and Paul Strudwick (9520 7493) strudwicks@iprimus.com.au,
Bernadette and Tony Winn (9548 0321),

Kathleen and Adrian LeGras (9520 9767 

Although the program has started - we can be flexible and find mentoring couples to help.  At worse we have you on the list as starters for 2012.

A Wedding is a day. A Marriage is a lifetime.

Testimonies

'We gained a lot of insight into each other.'

'Gave us tools to face problems.'

'Hits the button on where we are at the moment.'

'Gave us practical ideas that helped our communication.'

'Relevant to what we're going through.'

'All the talks have been good and have come at appropriate times in our marriage - they have helped us talk issues through.'

'All the talks were useful because they prompted us to reflect on what we do and why we do it. It's also nice to know that others go through similar difficulties to us.'

'All the talks reinforced that our experience was normal - we found that reassuring.'

'Very appropriate time in our relationship. All talks have been wonderful!'

 'We had a great time with all our couples.'

'We have been really impressed with the openness/honesty of adoptive couples. Thank you.'

'All were very helpful, open, and willing to share ALL their life experiences with us.'

'Fantastic. As this time was new to us with our first baby they were extremely helpful.'

'Were very open and receptive; we had a very enjoyable and special year.'

'. . . this ministry is the extended family that we don't have.'

'Really cool, got on with well, very inspiring and great fun to be with! Excellent sense of humour which we all need. Good mix of all things.'

'Each was different and special in their own way. This helped us learn both the topics and the realities of how these marriages work and how we want our marriage to grow.'

'Our couple was fabulous. They were open and shared many details of their marriage that helped us understand our difficult times. They were also receptive to our feelings.'