Leaving the comfort of Australia, I arrived in the unfamiliar, foreign land of Fiji… a different place, climate, and people, but the same God.

Along with the 75 other students in the Youthworks Year 13 Gap Year program, we were given opportunities to learn how the Fijians live, eat, work and function as a society. We then learnt to apply this to our teaching, ministry, and relationships. 

From organised ministry at youth groups, churches and schools, to unplanned opportunities with workers, and shopkeepers, we shared the gospel with many people.

I quickly learnt that the mission was God’s, not ours, which meant that things often did not go as planned. Sometimes we were disappointed or confused, like when our homestay visit with a family was suddenly cancelled.

Other times we were overjoyed with surprise opportunities, like when we turned up to a local primary school in Suva, prepared for a single 15-minute assembly, only to leave having done 17, simultaneous classes.

My highlight was the ten days spent in the small village of Nakavu, where I was welcomed into the home of a beautiful family from the Methodist Church. We were totally immersed into the village life, living with the people and learning from them.

So much of the mission was unstructured, playing with the children at the stunning Navua River, forming friendships which provided many amazing chats. This has made me realise the importance of investing in children outside set hours of ministry events.

Most of all, I was challenged to be totally reliant on prayer, not only when things go wrong, or as a backup, but as the most important thing for effective ministry. 

I am so thankful for each and every one of you, for your generosity in prayer and financial support. Lives were changed in Fiji, and my life was certainly one of them.

Jemimah McNeill – Year 13 student

Whilst it is true and powerful that children are our future, the problem is that society doesn’t quite know what to do.

We look at the current problems of our world and then look to the next generation to solve them… problems like violence, alcohol, crime, poverty and the environment.

The cause of each of these problems, so the reasoning goes, is a lack of information about the impacts that each of these problems may result in.

So to help our children overcome the issues we introduce educational programs at the earliest appropriate age to arm the next generation with the knowledge and skills to overcome them.

Now all this is well intentioned and not without benefit, but this strategy has always and will aways ultimately fail.

This is obvious when you realise that some of these programs have been going on for generations.

Issues to do with alcohol are a tragic example: we are now trying to teach our kids the very same things that we were taught but have ignored.

And the reason why these educational reforms have failed is that the problem is misdiagnosed.

The problem is not lack of information: the problem is sin, and so our children carry within them the problem itself.

Our children need saving.

While this is profoundly politically incorrect to say unless we understand the problem we will never be able to offer children the answer.

Jesus said “Let the children come to me; do not hinder them,  or the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.”  And he took the children in his arms, placed his hands on them and blessed them. Mark 10:14,16

Jesus is the answer because Jesus came to save us from our sins: he came to save children from their sins.

Simon Chaplin