Early last year we decided to make Hope Presbyterian in Rolleston (Canterbury) our church home. It wasn’t long before we became involved in Hope Worldwide (HWW), the missions arm of church. At the end of last year, we were asked to lead the HWW Rolleston team. Throughout this year, we have been mentored into this role as we have become more familiar with Hope Rolleston and its people. Alan and I have enjoyed our pastoral role communicating with the overseas workers linked with our church. We have loved participating in the organisation of regular events such as the annual Hope Worldwide Fortnight, where the church centres two weeks on what God is doing around the world.

When we started going to Hope, we soon learned that this church had been on a very long journey towards a new building, and now was the time to fulfill this vision of a permanent church home. From the pulpit, we would receive regular updates on the progress of the build and how the congregation could participate in this.

In the middle of all this, we thought giving to missions would get lost. However, we prayed and left it with God. We continued to work hard to build a relationship between our congregation and overseas workers.

One of the church ministries where we have seen this relationship flourish is our Sunday School programme called Spark. Korina, the Spark Pastor, says, “Fiona and Alan have brought a new level of awareness about mission work into our children’s programme this past year. They have used simple but effective ways of introducing the church missions to the kids which has allowed us to engage more with the kids about missionary work.”

Hope Presbyterian supports the Collins family serving in Cambodia, who have four children similar in age to the Spark kids. We soon put into action ways in which we could connect the children in New Zealand and Cambodia. Spark raised money to send gifts overseas. They also spent time creating cards for each of the four children.

After the arrival of the packages, the family sent videos to play in the Spark programme. The children were glued to the TV screen — seeing their cards and gifts in the hands of the family in Cambodia was simply exciting!  Spark also wanted to know more about these missionary kids. What was their favourite food? What did they like doing? What was their favourite bible story? Then came back a profile of each child, and our kids church learned so much about their lives in a different country.

Since receiving the profiles, they have been used often to ‘include’ this missionary family in Spark – praying for them, including them in the attendance roll, and even quizzing Spark kids on what they remember about this family. Lots of fun! “It has been great seeing the kids getting to know the children of our missionary families and seeing them starting to build relationships together,” shares Korina.

The generosity of our congregation has been astounding, despite the times we are living in. Our team has been overjoyed by watching them become more engaged with families serving cross-culturally. We have been grateful that whole families in our church, including the children, have had the opportunity to engage more in overseas mission.

—Fiona Murray