Australia Trip

By David “Coz” Crosscombe, Common Grace Director (who is originally from Australia)

In August Common Grace sponsored a team of four to travel to Australia to connect and serve some friends over there. Nes, Carlos Borges (a teacher and church planter from Chicago) and Casey Dunn (Young Life’s Regional Director for the Mid-Atlantic) all joined me on the trip. These three men brought an amazing balance of expertise and humility as we visited various ministries to encourage and support their work.

Carlos had the opportunity to share his powerful testimony in a number of school classrooms. Casey was a great encouragement and teacher to a number of people serving youth in 2 different cities, and Nes facilitated a gathering of youth workers in my home city of Armidale as they discussed ways they could work together to reach every young person with the Gospel.

We were also able to be a part of a meeting where an Indigenous (Aboriginal) pastor came together with 2 white pastors. I think that having Nes and Carlos there opened the opportunity for the conversation to become real, as the indigenous pastor shared that this was the first time he had ever been asked for his input on something. Young Life has been reaching into the Indigenous community in Armidale for a number of years and so this meeting was a great opportunity for developing a real and lasting partnership, something that I have been praying about for a very long time.