Mission Trip to Manila: Before the Trip

My name is Shaun Rimos. I am from Hope Christian Church Waverley Centre. Recently I went for a mission trip in Manila, Philippines.

One day, I was reviewing the Clayton student group’s Evangelism Ministry Development’s activities for 2011. I remembered how several of us expressed a desire to go on a mission trip this year. The closest we got was expressing interest for the mission trips Pastor T. T. Quah planned for 2011 and 2012. We had not gotten any updates from these mission trips.

I remembered Hope International Ministries itself had a missions blog, so I checked it out. I came across the first post on the blog.

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 2, 2011

LIBERIA & CONGO, AFRICA MISSION REPORT

Praise God. The missions momentum in Oceania is going strong. There are several mission trips conducted by various churches over this coming summer. Do pray for the teams and believe for great things.

Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.” Matthew 9:38

Sending Church Mission Location

Hope Melbourne City Centre - Hope WA (Dandaragen, Busselton and Esperance) Oct 5-18
Hope Auckland - Lautoka, Fiji, Oct 10-18
Hope Brisbane - Suva, Fiji, Oct 12-17
Hope Adelaide - Chennai, India Oct 25 – Nov 2
Hope Hobart - Hope Newcastle, Nov 23-28
Hope Brisbane - Perth & Katanning Nov 23-30
Hope Brisbane - Chiangmai, Thailand, Jan 2-8
Hope Brisbane - Manila, Philippines, Dec 8-15
Hope Brisbane - Liberia, Jan 2012 & Mar 2012

(The rest of the blog are not included)
May Cheung
Oceania Mission Coordinator
www.oceaniamissions.blogspot.com

There were two mission trips organised by Hope Brisbane that caught my attention. I planned to return to Malaysia by 17 December 2011 and stay on while the university was on Christmas holidays until 2 January 2012. These two mission trips were a perfect fit for my holiday plan: Either I could go to Chiangmai, Thailand on 2 January 2012 after my visit to Malaysia, or I could go to Manila, Philippines and come back in time to Malaysia on 15 December 2011.

Seeing this as a perfect opportunity to finally go for a mission trip (had desire to go since undergrad), I decided to write to May Cheung to express my interest. For days, I did not receive a reply. I had a chat with Uncle Peng Leong, missions coordinator for Hope Waverley, and he recommended me to go through the proper channels. That basically meant he can write to May Cheung himself and recommend me. I gave him my name and details, including what ministries I was involved in and the mission trips I was interested in. He sent May an email on 15 October. On 22 October, I got a message from the leader of the mission trip headed for Manila, Philippines. The message actually went through May and Peng to get to me. It goes something like this:

I am happy for Shaun to be involved in the Manila mission trip.

However I will need him to confirm with us as soon as possible, since most of the matters have been settled and arranged for the trip, including accommodation. We have also assigned roles to team members and all of us have been preparing for the trip.

I will need to know the following information first:

Full name

Church ministries involved

Full travelling details (including his trip back to Malaysia)

Once confirmed I will send out forms with more details him to fill out.

I will try my best to work out something for Shaun. However he may need to be flexible, since we have done quite a bit of planning and preparation without him.

Please ask him to contact me directly if he wants to know more details of the trip. Please feel free to keep all the relevant people in the loop. Thanks a lot:)

Nilla

I was fortunate to hear that they were willing to accept me even when they had prepared much earlier on in the year and I became a last minute addition to their team and plans. Nevertheless, I was still keen to find out about the Chiangmai trip, because I had some graduations I wanted to attend. Note: At that time, I still had not booked my flights tickets yet, save for my flights within Malaysia. So, Peng once again corresponded with May, but this time, I got a message that the Chiang Mai mission team is NOT able to accommodate me as the team already has maxed out the team size (capital letters retained). So, I decided to go on the Manila mission trip. I finally booked all the necessary flights, making the total of 8 flights (planes I sat on) for my entire trip.