When the global pandemic meant instant lockdown for those in retirement villages and aged care facilities across Australia, Doreen Rose hardly noticed.
The 87-year old resident of Carinity Brownesholme (some 16 kilometres outside of Toowoomba in Queensland) had moved to her single unit there in 2005, having already travelled the world, and has been busy writing, editing and playing the organ for her Baptist church ever since.
Doreen Rose and her two books. PICTURE: Courtesy of Carinity
“I’m the kind of person who doesn’t need to be entertained or go out. I can entertain myself,” she said. “So COVID-19 had absolutely no effect on my lifestyle. I’ve always been busy.”
The eldest girl in a family of five boys, Rose grew up on a dairy farm in Queensland and has always lived a “full and varied life”. She began writing (business, nutritional and Christian) books when she started selling NeoLife nutritional products in 1984, carting them in the car as she drove “from the top to the bottom of Australia and then some”. With nine books under her belt, she’d all but forgotten about one she’d written, but never published. Now Heaven to Gain, and Hell to Shun is about to be released next month, and Rose is just as surprised as anyone.
“Twenty-two-years-ago our pastor did a sermon series called ‘There is a Heaven to Gain and a Hell to Shun’ and I thought it was so good it deserved a wider audience,” she said.
When she approached her minister then about the idea, he agreed – but since he wasn’t a writer, he encouraged Rose to write it. She went back to her “copious notes”, studied the corresponding biblical references, saved it on a computer disc and presented it to her pastor. He thought it was too long – Rose had tried to include all of the Bible in it because “people just don’t know the Bible anymore”.
Instead of publishing it, she took her pastor’s advice, cut, revised and saved it again on the disc. And then that busy life came up again and Rose tossed the disc in a box, moved a few times, and eventually settled at the Carinity Brownesholme retirement village where she became “semi-retired”.
“I do believe the Lord moved me here to do some more writing,” she said. “When the lockdown came, I was already going through old files and cleaning out my desk. Then I opened this old disc and suddenly remembered I’d written this thing.”
So in between visits to record hymns for her online church services and trips to the post office, Rose went to work again. She printed out the manuscript, showed it to her minister (the same one on whose sermon series it was based) and they agreed it still deserved a wider audience.
She re-edited it, and sent it to print-on-demand publisher Pageturner who has published some of her other Christian books. These include Come with Us to the Promised Land: A Pictorial Biblical Encounter, which was released last year and details ancient Biblical history based on Rose’s trips to Israel and Jordan in 2012 and 2014. And because she knew how to use InDesign software, the author was able to send the Heaven manuscript ready for printing.
“I’ve always loved writing, though I didn’t know I did. I love learning and doing this kind of writing because I love the Lord and believe this is what He wants me to do,” she said. “Once Heaven to Gain and Hell to Shun is out, well, I hope it helps people get right with the Lord if they need to. That’s all.”
The book – which Rose says “is unlike anything else but a bit of a bible study and a devotional in one” – will be available in ebook, audio and hardback formats.
