This month has been full of exciting weekend activities - and this coming weekend is no exception!
On the first weekend, Renee, Yvonne and I did the youth work for a local church’s church weekend away. It took place at a Scout Camp just outside of York, and we had about 7 youth - 6 boys and one girl. The parents were happy for us to be as rough and tumble as we wanted, so between our teaching sessions, we played epic capture the flag in the woods, dodgeball in a clearing and gave them Nerf guns with which to shoot each other.
My favourite part was the teaching bit. In my New Testament module in theology school, we learned four steps to properly analyse NT texts. I promptly taught it to my team, and we taught it to the youth that weekend - using the real terms, like ‘hermeneutics.’ And they took the challenge! We looked at fire in the Bible - the burning bush, the pillar of fire, Pentecost and how we carry the fire. One of the mums texted that, the day after, her twelve year old led their family in using the steps for them to analyse Acts 3 and pray for each other!
Last weekend, I facilitated a parenting course called “Left to their Own Devices” with a Christian family charity. While I don’t have children, a lot of youth talk to me about their device use, and it was good to be able to talk with parents about addressing porn, healthy boundaries and how to engage with technology alongside their children. But even better was getting to connect with some of the (non-Christian) parents afterwards and tell them about God and church.
On Saturday this week, we are hosting all of the YWAM teams in north England for a picnic. There are four teams - Liverpool, Leeds, Newcastle and York - and eight children coming. It has been a while since we all got together, although the leaders saw each other last month, so it will be good to connect again.
Later on in the summer, I am going to camp! The churches in York all send their children and youth to the same camp in the a Scottish Borders, and the camp is staffed by people from our churches. I’m going in a pastoral role, so instead of looking after a lodge of 8-11 year old girls, I am doing devotional and lending a listening ear/prayer to support the adults who are staffing the camp. I need to raise the funds to go to camp, because we all pay our way, so if you’d like to contribute, please either send it to me via bank transfer or YWAM in Tyler Texas!
We are still in the process of selling the Barnabas Centre - it takes ages in this country for anything to happen with estate agents. We are also still praying into the move to Tang Hall and partnering with our church to do needs-based surveys of the neighbourhood. We want to know what the practical as well as spiritual needs are so that we can choose how to work with others to meet those needs.
We have a full-on summer coming up, with a missions team coming from a church in the States, camp, a youth festival, a citywide prayer event, one of our youth on work placement with us, and for me, another essay due for my theology course. We are part of the planning and/or are THE planning team for the events, so please pray for us to have the time to plan these things well, execute them well, and also to rest and have fun with our friends and family.
I’m also planning on heading to the States in July, so if you are in South Carolina, Georgia or Florida, I will see you then! I may even bring a special guest star - you will have to wait to find out who that is!
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