It was late 2011 when Ruth and Phil (Center Coordinators) started encouraging people to go on mission trips. Due to the fact that we were small, they encouraged us to tag along when other centers went on mission trips. There were several opportunities to go overseas on mission trips but we decided not to be over-ambitious and stay within Australia. We were invited by Daniel Long from Hope Melbourne City Center to embark on a trip to Hobart.
We were told that Pastor Mark was the overseer of Hope Hobart and that he would regularly send teams to Hobart to support, train and encourage the church. Hannah and I stepped up to go on a adventure and what would be our first ever mission trip. The problem we faced was that Hannah would not know if she could get leave until a week or two before the actual trip! We waited and trusted that if God wanted us to go He would provide leave and at the eleventh hour, God came through. I (the author) felt bad that we left Daniel hanging till the last minute but he was gracious and was happy to have us on board, especially when more than half his team had to pull out for personal reasons. We hurriedly hunted down some flight tickets and thankfully, they were not overly expensive. The team was going to be in Hobart for a week but we did not have sufficient leave so we decided to go for four days.
We decided to go for the second half of the trip and before our arrival, Daniel, Ben and Leon had already gone to work. They had done campus evangelism at Hobart University and street evangelism at Salamanca market. They had also gone on prayer walks to pray for breakthrough on the city as well as visiting the Hobart Gaol (that's jail in old English for those of you who might be confused). According to Daniel, he felt that as a city, Hobart was anti-religion and felt that the church back in the day had forced convicts to attend service against their will which made them rebel even more against the church. Daniel and his boys also blessed the church by cleaning the Ministry House and cooking for our hosts.
To be continued...
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