Hundreds of Seventh-day Adventist books were sold across the South Pacific, with the first-ever Youth Rush programs recently taking place in Vanuatu, Fiji, and the Solomon Islands.

Youth Rush leaders traveled to the Pacific in May to disciple young people and undertake outreach in local communities.

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’,” 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 5–15, a Youth Rush team of volunteers returned to Fiji to train seven local students and the newly appointed literature ministry leader in running 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 $A11,123 ($US7,741) in donations.

The Youth Rush team completed four programs in the Pacific, and Southwell said all were successful.

“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," Southwell said.

“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, Southwell hopes to further expand Youth Rush in the Islands next year.

The original article was published on the South Pacific Division news site.