Weekend Away - The Full Story

Youth Weekend Away – Halls Green

On the 11th Feb 15 young people and leaders left for Halls Green Activity Centre in Kent. The mini bus journey was long and tiring as we discovered that somebody had decided to name 2 roads with the same name within a mile of each other. Eventually we arrived and moved all of our luggage into our 2 buildings.

Friday night was spent eating, watching a video and spending some more focused time discussing the subject of what is church? We talked about how church is about people and how if we are to model what true church is about we need to get to know each other better so that we can support and encourage each other.

Saturday morning began fairly early with breakfast. We soon discovered that the overly sensitive smoke alarm was going to be a feature of the weekend. After a deafening period of time that seemed like hours Jo came to the rescue by finding the reset code. This seemingly small find proved to be something that kept many of us sane after we managed to set the smoke alarm off I would guess no less than 10 times (none of which were actually due to anything more serious than a piece of burnt toast).

The rest of the day was spent doing lots of different activities. These included, going for a walk as we talked about creation, a photograph game where groups of people had to set up pictures to illustrate different scenario’s and then we spent some time doing team development tasks. One of these activities was to build a catapult out of things that we could find in the forest around us. One of the groups went with a simple idea with limited success (but we had fun building it), the other group however decided to build what can only be described as an amazing feat of engineering. If there were any houses near to where we were you would have seen people running for cover in fear of this hand made wooden weapon of mass destruction (the photos will be on display soon).

Saturday evening was spent swimming and then having a session spent talking about the Holy Spirit and going deeper with God. There was a real tangible sense of God being present during this time and it was a significant time for a number of the young people. It was great to see so many of the young people in prayer and meeting with God.

Sunday was really busy again; we started the day with our final session talking about prayer and bible reading. We then had use of the on-site sports field and we played football and rounders in the freezing cold (and it snowed a bit). The last activity we had was the low ropes course. This is what many of the young people had been waiting for, in the cold, rain and mud (and how much mud there was) we embarked on the 15 different tasks to be completed. There was much laughter and the girls showed us their ability to slip, fall off of and land in any body of water that was present (the photos of these are well worth viewing).

It was then time to clean up and head home, we piled into the mini bus and settled down before realising the battery was dead. The last team building activity was to push the bus up a slope so that we could get a jump start. Once on the road we had a smooth journey back to WHBC to be met be awaiting parents.

Lewis