This week we farewell a long serving staff member, Mrs Michele Drover, who retires on Thursday. Michele has been the Registrar at GPCC for the past 13 years and prior to that served for 10 years in a number of different roles in general administration.

Almost all of our current students will have been through Michele’s hands as they entered our school. I have learnt that she knows so many of them by name, as I often watch her at the pick-up zone after school and see her interacting with students and parents.

Michele and I have talked a bit about what retirement might mean for her (and for me eventually). We agreed that it is not like being on holiday – hopefully she will still take holidays from time to time. It is about developing a new set of daily, weekly and monthly routines to replace the ones she has developed over 23 years of work at GPCC.

Retirement in the sense of stopping paid work and just taking leisure time is not a Biblical concept. Moses worked until he was 120 years old and then was taken up into heaven as were many other of the old saints. Some in the New Testament era had their life taken from them prematurely in the persecution of Christians by the Roman Empire. Others, like Abraham, lived to a ripe age but still maintained their businesses to the end.

Stopping regular paid work is simply an opportunity to do other things which the paid work may have prevented you from doing. Our Board Chair, Dr Kevin Sproats, a retired University Pro-Vice Chancellor, claims he is too busy now to go back to work – and we are glad he fits the College Board work into his schedule. He and Eira his wife, took the first few years of their retirement to volunteer six months of every year for Mobile Mission Maintenance, helping do work for Christian Churches and organisations around Australia.

Michele is still working out what she will engage in, but I know she will find plenty to do that will utilise her skills and interests. It will be a change of direction for her in routines, in relationships and activities and that can be both daunting and exciting.

At GPCC, we are working to equip students for life and that must encompass retirement, even though it seems an infinity away to our students. How they are prepared for life sets them up to make good use of all the years they will be here, including the post, paid work years.

I wonder if this is in your mind as you train up your child. Are you thinking of equipping them to live a complete life of useful service? We can do so much when they are young to encourage them to develop early, good habits and attitudes towards work and service that will stay with them to the end.

We want to say thank you to Michele for her very faithful service to our school community. We will miss her a lot because we enjoy her sense of humour, her desire to serve our families and her commitment to do her work diligently. We wish her all the best as she enters a new phase of life and pray God’s blessing on her as she explores what that will look like.

Phillip Nash

Principal