This is the bandwagon podcast with Marty Solman. I'm his co-host Brent Billings. Today we are joined by special guest Mandy Smith, pastor, author and speaker.

She is a regular contributor to Christianity today and Missio Alliance and a part of the Ecclesian Network. She and her husband Jamie, a new testament professor, have two kids.

Mandy, welcome to the show. Yeah, it's so good to be with you. Thanks for having me. We are in like such different worlds right now where I'm at its 4.21 PM as we record for you, Mandy, at a 6.21 AM.

That's right. And it's winter time too. So I'm a little rugged up here. Okay. So yeah, I was so I did a quick little like I asked good old Siri, like what the weather was like there, because we're, you know, having major heat waves over here in the states and many of our corners of the world over here.

So we're 55 degrees. Yes. So which is really not so bad and by lunchtime it'll be it'll be 70 or so, but the houses are not centrally heated. So when you get out of bed in the morning, it's 55 and when you get out of the shower, it's 55.

So that's probably that's actually why people had our boots here originally just to have some slippers in the house.

Well, that sounds like heaven to me. So it is really nice actually. Well, why don't you maybe introduce yourself a little bit.

Tell us about your family, your ministry, whatever you want to talk about beyond, you know, the brief introduction I gave.

Yeah. So I grew up here in Brisbane, Australia and we left in 1989 actually to study thinking we'd be gone for about 10 years in the US and the UK.

And then the thing that we had hoped to do here kind of closed around the time we were ready to come back and doors were opening up in the US.

So we ended up staying for what we thought would be about two years and it turned into more like 20 years.

So just a year or two ago decided that it was time to head back to Australia and partly because our parents were aging and wanted to be with them.

I would not suggest an international move in the middle of a pandemic though. So it's been, it's not been a smooth landing just because of so many extra dynamics going on.

But we are, I'm just today starting my new role. I stepped down from my role in Cincinnati in November. I was at University, Christian Church, which is where Marty is now.

And I'm so sad that right when he was coming, we were getting ready to go. But yeah, I stepped down from that role in November.

And today I am starting officially with St. Lucie United Church, which is by the University of Queensland.

So it's a very similar context to the one I was in by the University of Cincinnati back in the US.

So and tomorrow we move into what they call the man's here, which is the rectory or the pass and edge. And so really excited to be getting back into somewhat of a ministry and a rhythm again.

Yeah, and my my book just came out in the middle of all that too. So it's been an interesting season, but really excited to talk to you about that today.

Yeah, of course. So you had a few months of overlap in Cincinnati with Marty. Is that how you to met or did you know about Marty or Baymar or anything that beforehand or what was the connection there?

I wish I could tell you I had known all about Baymar, but I didn't. He and some other folks from the campus ministry organization were praying about doing some work in Cincinnati and came and visited a couple of times.

And we just really connected from the very beginning and they prayed with me several times and prayed for our church and there was just a really natural connection there.

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