Friday Jan 25th

3AM My alarm went off, I hit snooze
3:05AM My alarm went off, I hit snooze again
3:10AM I get up I did not want to get out of bed and I had inkling that I wouldn’t be the only one.

3:25AM I’m knocking on doors
3:45AM My knuckles are sore.
4AM Departure time arrived; we weren’t waiting around for anybody, THANK YOU TYC!

The bus that they sent for us to go back to the airport was bigger than the one we arrived in, so packing it was a little easier. The mood on the coach was low key as folks tried to get in that precious extra sleep time. Check in went well and we all made the plane on time.

On arriving in Melbourne we were greeted by our host from THQ, Captain Mark Bearcroft. We loaded up the bus and waiting for a couple to make it through customs. James Allen got searched “randomly”, and the air line didn’t get Meredith’s case loaded at Auckland. Meredith is looking forward to buying some new stuff at the airlines expense, James is still wondering; “Why me?”

We unloaded our stuff at the 614 corps in Melbourne and then we had free time to explore the city with our various groups, the weather could not have been better and the atmosphere around this beautiful city is great with today being the semi -finals at the Australian open (which is held in the Ron Laver stadium in Melbourne) and Australia Day being tomorrow (Saturday). Many people came back to 614 with souvenirs and some with slightly pink faces.

Dinner was great a real feast, they cooked us a great roast dinner and we were joined by members of the corps and General Eva Burrows (retired). During diner Susie handed our card for each of the TYC members from Martin Hunt, thanks Martin, we really appreciated your kind words. We finished dinner and we got changed into our new Salvo (that’s what they call the SA out here) t-shirts, and we looked “the bomb”.

When we were all ready we went back into the hall and sang ‘My Life is in Your hands’ for the General. She loved it and was really thankful we did it, as she shared some encouraging words with us all. Then it was off to our concert venue for the evening, Southbank on the Yarrow River in Melbourne.

We arrived at the Southbank for our ‘Open Air’ concert; this was to be quite a different experience for the Youth Chorus. This is quite a popular venue for people to come and hang out after a day at the office and for the many people getting ready to celebrate Australia Day. We ministered to approximately 800 people that night. The singing was of a high quality but what I was pleased with the most is how we interacted with Joe Public after we finished singing. Many of the group went and spoke to people hanging around, some prayed with a man who needed prayer, one little girl wanted to join the group.

That night, it was great to see the Youth Chorus not just sing about God’s love, but show and share it with those who were listening to us.