Exciting Day

Thursday 08th October
The Transforming Friendship series finished today. Shame really, I was enjoying it and there are loads more encounters Rob could have done. Mind you, I suppose there’s lots of series that could go on for the whole year. Two sessions before the coffee break, both on the woman of Samaria who was pretty well the complete opposite of Nicodemus but they were both looking for the same things. On the surface, the encounter Jesus has with her appears to be very natural, but because He was working to a divine timetable, it was actually a divine appointment. God wanted her to meet Jesus, even though it seemed like He was just having a breather.

After the break, we had our first visit by ‘missionaries’. Actually, this group came first because they fall into evangelism/outreach/missionary categories so they’d potentially have been a bit confusing in amongst a bunch of missionaries. They were from SWYM – South-West Youth Mission. They do camps, youth work, schools work, all sorts of stuff working with young people in the south west of England and they do training courses to help people get into youth ministry – sort of like Capernwray but with an extra, more specific goal at the end. (Mum, you’d better sit down.) It actually sounded so good and got me so excited, I’ve asked them for more information and I’ve got a lot to pray about now!

The last session of the Transforming Friendship was about the pool of Bethsaida which Rob used to look at healthy and unhealthy Christians – those whose spiritual condition is significantly less than God’s plan for them at their age and stage of Christian life. When Jesus healed the man at the pool of Bethsaida, it was with what seemed like a crazy command: he told a paralysed man to pick up his mat and walk. It wasn’t crazy though because “Whenever the Lord tells you to do something that you cannot do, at that moment He creates the ability to respond.” – which frankly is not just thought-provoking but very challenging.

After this we had announcements – where Charity announced that we’re having a CEILIDH ON SATURDAY!!!! – and Sue announced that we needed to find out who our secret sisters were. At this point, the boys were all very confused – until she kicked them out because it was a girl thing. We had to go and collect a name from one of the RA’s as we left the hall. Wouldn’t you know it? I managed to get my own name. Gave it back and I now have a proper secret sister to pray for & encourage anonymously. My secret sister (the one who’s doing it for me) seems to be pretty keen – I had a note in my pigeon hole this afternoon! I don’t have a clue who she is but I’m liking her already.

Oh, curry, naan and rice today followed by jam sponge and custard at lunch; then fish fingers and curly chips for tea. I don’t know what everyone was on about when they said the food here was alright but it wasn’t brilliant. IT’S FAN-FLIPPIN’-TASTIC!!!

This evening was the moment everyone had been dreading: giving testimonies (duh-de-duh!!) Although apparently, it wasn’t everyone who’d been dreading it because three people had volunteered beforehand to give theirs. Then after that, people kept shooting their hands up, so the time disappeared before we knew it and Carolyn (outreach person) didn’t have to put her hand in the bucket once.

Of course, the first thing she did in the next lecture was put her hand in the bucket with great ceremony. She soon pulled it out and everyone groaned at what a rotten joke that was! We were supposed to have our worship/Old Testament reading session, but instead Carolyn gave us a few bits of information about giving testimonies about outreach in general. I think that’s because a team was going on a three-day outreach and they’d given us a demonstration of the drama they were going to use in a school assembly. It was a fun portrayal of Jesus calming the storm with quite an effective trick for getting children to learn how to be quiet on cue – hey, if it worked on us, it’s probably going to work on them!