Sam is the Youth Ministry Worker at Kirkplace Presbyterian Church. He loves tapping into the local community and reaching the high-school youth in the local area of Kogarah. He is at Presbyterian Theological Centre in his 2nd Year. He loves West Wing, 24, Macs, coffee, basketball and going snowboarding! He is recently a new uncle of an adorable niece called Lauryn and loves his 2 supportive sisters.He is also the Director of RICE Youth Australia and oversees all of the RICE Youth Sydney events: RICEfever, RICErally, RICErevolution & also oversees RICE Youth Brisbane.He believes God is working & blessing this movement of RICE Youth. He is convicted that RICE is a platform where youth are strengthened and encouraged to be bold about Jesus, where we depend on the Scriptures, and pray in absolute faith to God our Father, and where we rely entirely on the Spirit's power to bring this city into repentance.Sam has a desire to see the youth all across Sydney to know Jesus and to continue to make Him famous! May RICE Youth continue be a blessing to the high-school youth in Australia!

Elaine is your standard occupational therapist who lives in the South. A long serving member of SCAC Rockdale, Elaine has been a strong part of the leadership of the English congregation.

 Elaine enjoys yelling, catching up with the youth at SCAC, as well as, meeting up with old friends and new strangers. With a strong passion to share the word of God with others, she faithfully serves with her gifts to organise and plan awesome outreach events at her church and of course in teaming up with Boris, Micah, Faith, and Esther to co-ordinate RICErally.  

Hiroshi is the youngest member of the Rice Team for this year, fresh out of the HSC. Now he is in first year Uni, studying Bachelor of Music at Wesley institute consecutive with a Bachelor of Theology.

Don’t ask Hiro to explain what his nationality is because the explanation is confusing. He is fluent in English Japanese and Cantonese. Hiro graduated from the best youth group in Sydney: CY! And has been doing music ministry since he was in year 7.

He has a burden, passion and calling for apologetics, discernment and eschatology and really yearns to see the youth of the world really passionate and delight in the word of God and truly anticipate the Lord’s return.

He is also an Apple fan and has iPhone iMac and Macbook.

Yes, I’m another Korean girl named Esther. I serve at Shalom Community Church and love the awesome youth there! If you get to know me, you’ll find that I’m quite lame and love all things pun-ny, reading poetry, and writing songs about God’s love. At uni, I study how to torment highschool English students; it's fun. Above all, I have a passion to be a vessel for God to work miracles in many people’s lives! I can't wait to work with the youth choir for RICE 2009! It’s gonna be amazing!

All about Ines J

    * Aka Ness

    * Absolutely hearts sappy luvy duddy songs by artists such as Backstreet Boys, Boyz II Men, Mariah Carey, Westlife, Brian Mc Knight.

    * Is a member of NSCCCS where I’m a youth leader at CLAY (the awesomest youth group around!)

    * Lives in a typical house with an average backyard but owns such an array of animals that it would almost classify as a farm.

    * I choose to be involved in youth ministry because I enjoy serving alongside energetic high schoolers who have so much ZING for life and who I feel are an important age group that NEED to hear the Gospel of Jesus! Faced with so many pressures and influences at that age, having a real understanding and relationship with Jesus can radically change and positively shape their lives as they move on into their next stages in life!

Meet Faith - during the week, she takes the alias of an IT geek, however in her free time, you'll find her doing what she loves: jamming on the piano and singing, watching T-dramas and TVBJ, cheering on Roger Federer (15th Grand Slam baby!! Wooohooo!!), snowboarding and K with her mates (and of course, meetings with the very cool RICE09 Core Team!). But Jesus is who Faith loves the most - and that's in whom she finds her real identity. Knowing what Jesus did in her place has really made an impact on Faith's life and she loves living under God's amazing grace (it totally rocks!). Currently attending Central Baptist Church, Faith is the Music Director for her congregation.

Faith's passion for RICE is to see the youth of Sydney come to know the Lord Jesus whom she loves and has "faith" in (no pun intended). This year, Faith has the awesome privilege of serving alongside some very talented musos and dancers as she oversees the creative production for RICE Rally - she simply can't wait to be part of God's work through RICE09!!

Micah is a twenty-year old communications student: copious amounts of head-knowledge, but no wherewithal to use it. He’ll be using his keen eye for proper sentence structures and ability to make up random, far-out scenarios for the RICE cause this year as the RICE Creative Writer. More than anything though, Micah is just thankful for the opportunity to serve a God who he loves and a people who he wants to see changed for the better. He hopes to one day write the greatest piece of literature known to man, but somehow doubts it.

Ahoy! I’m Jono and I lead at the TeenSS youth group of CCC! I love playing basketball+soccer, and am a self confessed geek who spends a large chunk of his time playing NBA Live and fantasy basketball when I’m not creating kitchen nightmares or at UNSW. But my deepest passion is to see high schoolers fired up for Jesus!

Basically if you give Vee some scrap cardboard she would manage to come back with something that is worth buying. She has a wacky sense of humour, enjoys using her creative skills to benefit others in ministry and thinks that Beverly Hills Baptist is one awesome church to be part of. 

 Vee is thankful for everyone’s prayers and support for RICE and is looking forward to working alongside the ever-amazing RICE leaders and youth to see many come to know our Lord Jesus Christ.

Joe is our awesome RICE Youth Sydney logistics ninja! He and his ninja team have been working around the clock stealthily to co-ordinate a seamless movement of chairs, tables, vans and all sorts of other crazy stuff to and from the RICE events. When not falling asleep in engineering lectures Joe dreams of getting into automotive design, serving with the young guns at SYNC...and eating noodles.

Caz when not enjoying free passes to cool gigs from her job, she loves to hang out, twitter, and rock out on bass with the music team at Beverly Hills Baptist. In the RICE core team Caz is our project consultant - using her skills from the workplace to help the team run as smooth as possible.

Right now, Ben spends 28.57% of his week at uni attempting to   understand accounting. In his spare time though, he enjoys fathoming ways to survive a zombie apocalypse, swinging a katana around, reading, playing games and hanging with friends.

Ben's been a Christian for 7 years (his best decision ever) and currently goes to West Side Sydney Chinese Christian Church and is in his 5th year of leading the youth group there. He thinks RICE is worth being part of because Jesus is proclaimed as Lord and young hearts and minds are being won for the glory of God.

If Ben has one piece of advice to give it’s this: ‘Be a Christian. Because as the saying goes, “if you can’t beat them, join them.” And sorry to break it to you, you can’t beat God.’ ;)

Millie is working as a metro trainee (or intern) at Kirkplace in Kogarah. Her role there is to help out practically who ever and where ever she can. For RICE this year her role is to co-ordinate evangelism across both events.  Millie also loves reading, watching movies and listening to good live music.

You only need to know Tj for few days to realise that she really likes to eat! Tj prefers to stay at home over going to a party and Tj reckons that her mum makes the BEST Nasi Goreng (fried rice). As much as Tj loves being at home, Tj is looking forward to her real home in Heaven. Tj is thankful to have had Jesus come into her life in her high school years. She went to youth group where she learnt that by only trusting in Jesus' death and resurrection that she can be saved from sin.

Because now Tj has found Jesus and her new home in heaven, Tj wants all youth to know Jesus as well and that's why she's doing RICE this year!  Tj has been attending Randwick Indonesian Presbyterian Church for a few years, currently serving at the youth group called ONE WAY and loving it! TJ works full time as an accountant and is doing a bit of RICE admin and number crunching.