Bishop Richard Ellena will tell stories that touch hearts when he gives the Anzac Day address at Westminster Abbey.
Bishop Ellena, bishop of the Nelson-Marlborough Anglican diocese and a former vicar of the Church of the Nativity in Blenheim, will fly to London this Saturday.
He says he is honoured to be asked to give the address.
He already had the trip booked to attend a week-long conference of the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans, and contacted New Zealand High Commissioner Derek Leask offering to assist at the Anzac Day dawn service in London.
When Mr Leask suggested the bishop give the address at the Anzac service in Westminster Abbey, the initial reaction was that he could not.
"I've only been there as a tourist. There's the whole mana of the place.
"Then I thought, this is a privilege, a once-in-a-lifetime experience."
Bishop Ellena will attend the dawn service at Whitehall, then a private Gallipoli Association commemoration, then the abbey service.
He will wear the medals of his grandfather, who at 19 served on the Western Front in France, and tell some of the human stories of young New Zealanders and Australians who went to war.
He will talk of Australia's youngest Anzac, 14-year-old James Martin, who told his parents if they wouldn't let him enlist he would do so under a false name and never write to them.
They never received his letters and he died of typhoid in the Gallipoli trenches.
And he will tell of Leslie Shaw, who at 13 signed up with the British Section of the New Zealand Expeditionary Force and at 14 found himself taking part in the desperate attempt to stabilise the line on Walker's Ridge at Gallipoli.
Bishop Ellena says the average soldier's age was 28, and although some signed up for duty and others for adventure, those who came back were all changed.
The bishop is interested to see what the mood will be at the Anzac Day commemorations in London.
He says that in Australia it seems to be a celebration of involvement, while in New Zealand it is more sombre.