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Carol
New Hope
Carol was brought up in Brisbane in the Methodist and Uniting Church. She stopped attending in her late teens and spent some years in the world. She has worked in management positions in a large multi-national company and one of Australia’s two telecommunications companies. After wandering away from the Lord Carol returned to church at the age of 26. She returned to the Lord and worked through areas of her past that needed healing. She spent ten years at a new church plant and served in areas of child care, greeting and babysitting. She ran several Alpha courses and led many to the Lord through the Alpha course.

When Carol came to Christ she wrote a list to God of what she wanted in a man. She was very picky, and for ten years stayed single waiting for the right man. When she started selling websites with me she didn’t ever see me as a potential boyfriend. I was a divorcee, with a child, who was seven years younger than her. We had become best of friends, and until I took her on that first date she had no idea that I was the one that God had prepared for her. After we were engaged, she found the list, and I was everything she had asked the Lord for. Fourteen months after our first date we were married.

I preached regularly at our church, helped run Sunday school, and joined the church board as treasurer. I also was invited to preach the gospel to high school kids and speak at business and church functions quite regularly. I am a passionate evangelist. Carol and I also ran very successful Alpha courses at the radio station and saw a few come to the Lord.

I would ring Pastor Phil at New Hope Brisbane regularly and say, “I’m sending some people to your church on Sunday. They live too far away from my church, can you look after them?” I also referred a lot of my friends and clients to New Hope. We had been to the launch of New Hope Brisbane and loved it, but felt God wanted us to keep serving at our home church. We would pray and ask the Lord regularly about joining New Hope Brisbane. In October 2006, on the birth of our first son Joshua James we felt God was leading us in a season of new birth. We left the Vineyard Church with the blessing of the pastor, who had the church lay hands on us and bless us to do a new work for the Lord in Brisbane.