So, I'm back from the most AMAZING 2 weeks at Spring Harvest, Minehead. I worked on the 5-7's team; Paint Factory. It was SO good. God was good, He moved in the Paint Factory so much and it was such a privilege to be able to serve him in this way and see so many children responding to him. We looked at Peter's life with the children and included the stories of when Jesus first called him, when he denied Jesus and then had breakfast with him on the beach when he'd risen, the transfiguration, Peter's vision and Peter's escape from prison. And through those stories we were able to teach the children some fundamental truths from the gospel; Jesus wants us to follow him, Jesus wants us to listen to him, Jesus wants us to love everyone as he loves us, Jesus wants us to trust him when times are hard and Jesus wants us to keep on following him even when we make mistakes. What amazing messages for both the children and us leaders to take away with us from the week. Each day we had a clue which helped us to remember the message and in the first week the children learnt sign language actions to help them remember the messages :-)
We had a creative prayer day where there were 8 stations around the venue and children were free to roam around and respond to God at as many of the stations as they wanted. That was amazing and seeing the children spending time with God and writing prayers was pretty cool. One particularly cute prayer which made me and another leader laugh read "Dear God, Please help the paint on my trousers. Amen." How cute is that?! Then on a couple of occassions the leader who had told the story said that children were free to go to the prayer tent if they wanted to and about 30 children went over to it and wrote prayers to God or sat with their eyes shut praying. It was amazing.
In week 1 I led the Green Ladders with a guy called Tom. He was great and we worked so well together and got on really well. We had 15 7yr olds. Amusingly we had Eleanor Stockley's granddaughter in our group - Eleanor ran my GCU group. There was another girl in our group who was home-schooled and had difficulty in coping with loud noise. Unfortunately both Tom, myself and the special needs leader thought that this was a parentally imposed condition, as the girl seemed to be absolutely fine and joined in singing, shouting and screaming until her Mum came when suddenly her ears would hurt. I really felt for her. At the end of the week about 4 of the children bought Tom and I chocolates and Tasha gave us a card.
In week 2 I led the Light Blue Ladders with a guy called Mike and a lady called Liz. Liz was doing one to one support with Joseph who has asperges. On the last day Joseph wrote the most amazing song to the effect of "How great is the Lord, he is the best and I love him, He is the best, He is the best". Those weren't his exact words, I can't remember them, but that was the essence of the song and it just melted my heart. One of the Dad's was so grateful for the work we'd done and he was sharing how each night in the big top his son would remember the story was the same as what we'd done in the morning and he'd tell his parents what we'd learnt about Jesus that day. Another parent told us that Miles had asked Jesus to become his special friend during the week. How awesome is that?
We sang some awesome songs. It really hit me how kids songs are often the songs that really declare how great and important and mighty our God is. The chorus of one song simply declared "You are the Lord God Almighty". My 2 new found favourite kids songs are "Jesus Superhero" - it's a Hillsongs kids song and I love it for many reasons; firstly coz boys can relate to it really well coz its all about superheroes, but how God is better than any of them and the chorus declares that Jesus is my superhero, my star and my best friend. The other song is "Singing with the angels" and the chorus speaks to me so much... "You are Jesus, the best thing in my life, You are Jesus, You are the One, You are Jesus, the one who is my friend, you beat the rest coz you are it, you are the One." What wonderful truths are those?
The first week I went to the big top each night with my family. That was cool. There were some amazing dramatisations of the Bible readings and some really inspirational talks and we learnt some awesome new songs. My faves have to be "Oh Happy Day" by Tim Hughes and "Strength will rise" by Brenton Brown and Ken Riley (lead singer in YFriday). Martyn Layzell lead the worship and it was absolutely quality. Then the second week I went to the big top 3 nights with various members of my team. Geraldine Latty lead the worship. She is an amazing worship leader and has such a tight band. They did a couple of worship songs with the riffs from 'Lovely Day' and 'Walking on Sunshine' and then interspersed the lyrics to those into the worship songs. That was pretty neat. On Easter Sunday Steve Chalke spoke and he was very inspirational and uplifting. The last night was awesome and after the talk Chalkey did this thing where all the lights went down and we lit up the big top simply by the light of our mobile phones. And he commissioned us all to go out and be lights to the world. That was so cool.
In week 2 I went to an All Age Worship one night and manned the multi sensory area. That was cool. Jon Bonner led it and he was cool. It was full of energy and praise. The stories were down to earth and easy to follow. It was cool. At the end everyone got a glow stick and we sang a song about Jesus being the light of the world - that as cool.
In week 2 I also went to iscape. That's the stream aimed for 15-25's. I've never been before, so thought I'd give it a try. I didn't enjoy it that much, although it managed to really challenge me (more of that later). A Salvation Army guy was speaking and he was really good. Andy Flannagan led the worship with some random DJ, so that was a bit weird. We did this cool thing though (which we also did in the big top on week 1) where we wrote something we wanted to let go of on a piece of paper, screwed it up and threw it across the room. Then someone picked it up and prayed for you. Then threw it on and we did this for a while, so prayed for a number of people. That was awesome.
I went to a few big nights out. I went with the family to Andy Flannagan and Paul Oakley. They were both awesome. I love Andy Flannagan; his music is great and he is just so down to earth, so open, so humble and such a godly example. He read some extracts from his new book called 12 disciples, which I later bought and he signed, which was cool. Paul Oakley was good - it was like a huge worship session - always good :-) And I went with Matt to YFriday. They were great. They did some songs from Revolution and some from Universal; it was cool. No-one does 'strength will rise' like YFriday do :-)
I love the way how I go to serve God, yet he speaks to me and challenges me so much too. One night in the big top there was a response to a talk about having our hands dirty and clean for God. As a sign that we were prepared to get our hands dirty for God no matter what we had to go and get our hands clean in water and then get them dirty in mud as a symbol we were prepared to do anything for God. I didn't respond coz in my heart of hearts, I don't feel I'm in a place where I am prepared to do absolutely anything for God. I know I've grown and am prepared to do more for him now than perhaps I would have done in the past, but I don't think I'm yet in a place where I would be prepared to do anything for him. The night I was in iscape we were challenged to surrender everything to God and write on the paper what we needed to let go of in order to surrender to God. I know for me, I need to let go of fear - I need to be prepared to come out of my comfort zone and take risks for God. I know that's what I need to do and my heart wants to, yet my head is trying to reason with it. So when we'd written our things and thrown paper around the room and prayed for each other we sang "I'm giving you my heart" except I couldn't sing it - I couldn't sing those words "And I surrender all to you, all to you". I couldn't do it, coz I know its not true and I didn't want to sing empty words.On one night I was feeling a bit lonely, so I met up with Julie, who was my team leader and I've known her through Paint Factory for 2 years (I've worked under her 3 times now). We got chatting about what I'm doing at the moment. As she's known me for a while, she knows I've kinda floated between doing one thing and another. So we got really under the surface of what went on and what's going on... we talked about why I left Roehampton and my experience there, we talked about my year for the church, we talked about my application to study music and theology at uni, we talked about my decision to do an OU degree, we talked about my change of OU degree, we talked about my thoughts about nursing and we talked about my constant desire to do children's ministry. Not only that but we talked about what had challenged me at Spring Harvest - totally surrendering my life to him and getting to a place where I can say 'God, I'll go wherever you send me, I'll do whatever you want me to do'. And we talked about fear. Julie is such a wise woman. She said some blunt things in love and hoped I wouldn't be offended, which I wasn't coz I know I needed to hear it and it was so helpful to hear. I know I'm in danger of wasting my life if I don't choose a path and go for it. I now feel I'm in a place where I can sort things out with God and work out exactly what I need to be doing. Julie was (and still is!) such an inspiration to me and gave some practical tips, not about what I should be doing, but about how the reach that decision. And she prayed for me and it was amazing.
I met some amazing people who I hope I'll stay in touch with. I met up with some old friends who I'll continue to keep in contact with. I learnt some cool new worship songs and some great new kids worship songs. I went to some fab seminars and got some practical tips. But most importantly I took time out and had many encounters with the mighty God who created me and the entire universe.
I've probably forgotten some stuff and I'll probably keep going on about this experience for weeks to come, but it was amazing and I just feel some blessed by it...
So I've had a totally awesome weekend of birthday-ness....
Saturday morning I woke up bright and early! You'd have thought that by your 21st the birthday excitement would have worn off, but apparently not!! 7:15am I woke up! I received some lovely gifts from my family and other folk; most excitingly - a digital camera, and then some CDs, DVDs, a necklace and candle. We then went horse riding in Woldingham which was VERY exciting. On the way we heard on the news about an earthquake that had happened at 8:15am in Folkstone, Kent. I was blown away from hearing this. Only recently someone had said to me that a child prayed that we would have an earthquake, so for this to actually happen totally astounded me. I can't remember who said about this child praying, I only wish I could remember!! It is from one of 3 sources - someone at Spring Harvest, Pippa from church or Clare the childrens worker at Emmanuel. But wow, how random is that?! So we got to Beechwood Riding School. Initially I was kinda scared - there was me sat on this horse with only what seemed like a piece of string to hold onto, but after a while I got used to it and it was SO fun :-) 
Then we had some time at home before going out with ALL the family to TGI Fridays on th Purley Way. That was such a great night. It was SO good to have my immediate family, Dad's side of the family and Mum's side of the family all together in one place to celebrate my birthday together. It was such a lovely night. I had battered shrimps with a Jack Daniels dip, wheich was SO good. It reminded me of the Bubba Gumps restaurant we visited in New York. Oh my, it was delish. And I had the most amazing New York cheesecake for dessert. It's weird coz I used to hate cheesecake, but now I'm a complete convert!! And then I had a birthday cake, but fortunately I wasn't made to stand up on my chair!!
