Excerpt from my journal August 27, 2006

Yesterday was quite the introduction to the heart and actions of Hillsong Church. I woke up at 2:30AM after 9 ½ hours of sleep (went to bed at 5PM on Friday after the long travel time and getting started in Sydney. Once the rest of the world was awake I found out one of my room mates had arrived and then found out there was a youth event, Big Exo day, happening that was supposed to be big. Boy was it ever!

We met at the church then took a bus to the biggest indoor facility in Sydney (The Acer Arena, formerly called the Superdome, and incredible structure built for the Olympics). They had rented the entire place for the day. There were tons of things to do and see. There was a neat wakeboarding machine so people would start at one end of a long portable pool and get pulled by a machine just like a boat would do on the lake. They had brought in a professional BMX demo team. There was also a motocross demo team and a pro skateboarder putting on demos and interacting with teens at a skate park. Then there were the carnival rides, face painting and temporary tattoos, numerous makeup booths for the ladies, a dace troupe, a dozen or more bands, car display, pro basketball demo and free for all, an x-box competition, and more. In the week leading up to this event, the people, including many of the pros brought in from oversees spent time at many of the schools in the city talking with people, inviting them out, and presenting God’s message to them. It was all wrapped up with a session in the evening. In the session were a number of bands, a rapper, and Darrel Scott, who’s daughter was the first one killed in the Columbine Massacre. There were over 10,000 people there and when it was finished, there were 1,331 new citizens of Heaven. Now that’s quite a youth event. I got back from Exo day after 11PM so I was exhausted.

I still got up at 6:30 this morning to catch the shuttle bus to church. I took in both services in the morning then went back in the evening for number 3. They were so good. There were a couple thousand people at each service. The music was great; the messages were great; and the people are passionate. The topic was forgiveness and I was so glad to hear a message on that topic because I’ve had to go through some very hard things on that front and am glad to see other people learning about it.