Hundreds of Adventist books were sold across the Pacific, with the first-ever Youth Rush programs recently taking place in Vanuatu, Fiji and the Solomon Islands.
Youth Rush leaders travelled to the Pacific in May to disciple young people and undertake outreach in local communities.
Pastor Harley Southwell, Youth Rush leader for Australia and New Zealand, said expanding the program into the Pacific had been a long-time vision.
“Last year, at our Literature Evangelism (LE) Summit, we had a lot of LE leaders from the islands . . . and when they heard about the testimonies from the Youth Rush guys and saw what this was, they said, ‘we want this, we need this for our young people as well’,” Pastor Southwell said.
“We have young people over in the Pacific Islands and the mission programs over there have great potential.
“There is a great, untapped potential for young people to get trained up, and so it was our vision to get it up and running here in Australia, and then expand it into the islands, to see how it was going to go over there.”
From July 5 to 15, a Youth Rush team of volunteers returned to Fiji, training seven local students and the newly appointed literature ministry leader in how to run a Youth Rush program.
Across the three countries, 40 local participants were involved, which resulted in the sale of 946 Adventist books, the distribution of 827 pieces of free literature, 659 prayers, 76 contacts for Trans Pacific for Christ and $A11,123 in donations.
The Youth Rush team completed a total of four programs in the Pacific, and Pastor Southwell said all the programs completed were successful.
“The main things we wanted to find out were whether the [Youth Rush] model works over there,” Pastor Southwell added.
“In Fiji, we were able to do certain things that the other groups weren’t able to do because Fiji has better infrastructure . . . so we were able to use the same methods of team leading as we do here in Australia, going door-to-door and business-to-business, whereas other groups spent a bit more time in villages.
“Training young people, giving them the general principles that they need to be successful and other training worked well there.
“At the end of the program, a few applied to become Literature Evangelists as well.”
Following the success of the pilot program in the Pacific, next year the hope is to expand the Youth Rush further in the Islands.
