Cheryl Woods: November 1948 at Collingwood, Liverpool part of the hospital..

Cheryl Woods: Collinwood is Liverpool now isn't it?

Cheryl Woods: Stting in a front seat, listening to old, old men preaching the same sermon a few times each month - to visit the church and thinking 'I am not interested', realizing years later, I heard everything they said, that God wanted me to hear it. All listening to the same things every Sunday and you think you don't love them anymore, you are sick of them. But again the words are going in.

Cheryl Woods: Mt Pritchard Village Church.

Cheryl Woods: My father. So I was a P.K.

Beverley Donald: So for the tape please say What does P.K. stand for?

Cheryl Woods: Preachers Kid.

Cheryl Woods: Best of the five.

Cheryl Woods: I vowed when I grew up to be a teenager, I would write a book about it. But it's hard. I think it's hard because people expect you to be perfect and when you get home from church you can't wait to be naughty. But - there is always something telling you it's not accepted behaviour. You don't really want to be bad, you just don't want to be different. You don't want to be different from everyone else. You want to be the same as all the other kids. But you spend every day in church or every Sunday in church, and sometimes you'd like to branch out and do other things. At the same time there was some really good things about it, because you always felt secure. 'Cos you never doubted it. I never doubted it because God was there with me, even when you weren't listening to Him. You would always believe that he was there. He wouldn't let you to get into too much trouble. Probably that was false in a way because sometimes you do things you shouldn't and you think God is going to protect you, but you knew that you always had a God conscientious. I never ever doubted for one minute that God was there.

Cheryl Woods: Did I go to Sunday school?! I used to win the prize every Sunday, or every year, for being in Sunday School the most during the year, for going the most times, for doing the most verses - everything. But in the end my mother, who was the Sunday School Superintendent, had to stop that. Had to stop some of the prizes because her daughters would win them every year. Now wasn’t that we were favourites, but we were there every day, we never missed so she thought that was a bit unfair to the other kids. So she dropped some of the prizes because I got them all.

3:01 minutes

Cheryl Woods: Oh, I felt wonderful. I enjoyed it and then there were things you did do to earn some of the prizes.

Cheryl Woods: Well, I understood but at times I didn't. I know I'd win 'em anyway and it made me feel important and I think I realised what is was for them to do it. It didn't worry me too much, I don't think.

Cheryl Woods: Yes. That's right. It was so much a part of life, you didn’t think of it. It was just the done thing, it was the done thing. And if anyone suggested you do otherwise on a Sunday you wouldn’t do it. And I used to frown at children who went to picnics on Sundays. I would have liked to go probably. But, you know, it just wasn't the done thing.

Cheryl Woods: The morning service, um and if the men were early for prayer meeting or whatever and Sunday School in the afternoon and then the night service and later on when we were teenagers we also had things like Christian Endeavour and youth Bible Studies and all sorts of things, and there was a time we were going to church five times on a Sunday. Even after I got married we were doing it and taking our own two kids along with us, three kids along with us.

Cheryl Woods: I liked Sunday School, I liked learning a lot of Bible verses - I enjoyed it. Um I liked winning quizzes. I loved the choruses and when I got I to be a teenager and learned to play the organ I enjoyed that. I used to make the music go a bit faster and plus we had a guitar and banjo and other instruments and that brightened the singing up. And I had a lot of friends at Sunday school, because all my school friends came to church with me. In those days a lot more kids went to church. And I was able to make friends at school and got them to go church and that made me feel good that they went.

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In fact I could say both those girls are Christians now, they do different works - one runs a campsite. So, no - I enjoyed Sunday school.

5:34 mins

Cheryl Woods: Definitely, every year for - I don’t how many years and even apparently - even before I was born during the Depression they even kept them going in and God gave them the money to keep them going every year. They never had to stop. They were probably the best things we ever done. The cake shops produced the best cakes. We got up five o’ clock on Saturday morning made hundreds of sandwiches for the kids and they always had lots of races and plenty of presents and everyone got to, you know, all the parents would come. There would be a hundred kids and all their parents and the older kids were allowed to hide the presents, you know when they had a treasure hunt and we always hid them under the cow manure and it was the best place - great fun. Wet cow manure out in this paddock at St Johns Park.

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Cheryl Woods: Most years, yes. There was a few other places but St Johns Park was a good place. For a start, the church was connected so we had the so we had extra hall for use. The old people that owned the paddock were happy for us to use it. We went in two buses - the Calabro Bus company and they always took us over every year and -

Cheryl Woods: I don’t remember when it closed, I remember going to it a when I was really little and I remember going over there occasionally later when it was given to other lay preachers to run, and occasionally we'd go over because dad would have a projector yeah. I think he had the only good projector in the area that worked well and so he would go out and, not exactly rent it out, but let them use it . So he'd take my sisters and I over when we had no service on. So we'd sit in on their service. Yes, I remember going over when I was about twelve, I think. It was still - occasionally not all the time, but they would rent it out .to other people who were running similar work. By then it was being changed into a different area. St John Park church had to close because there was no parking around.

Cheryl Woods: It was left there empty for a long time and then we needed more rooms at Mt. Pritchard, so we arranged to have it brought over to Mt Pritchard and it became one of the extra Sunday school rooms.