In May this year I attended the Elim Leaders Conference in Harrogate. It was a privilege to be invited by my pastor and it was such a blessed time of networking with many people in the Elim Network that I already know from 12 years attending an Elim church in Hereford. At one point in the conference Tim Alford spoke – the Director of Limitless Youth. He asked all the leaders in attendance how many of them had become Christians in a youth camp and 75% of people raised their hands including me! I was struck by how important it is to continue to give our young people a space to learn about God with their own generation. As a result of this I felt convicted that I should volunteer my time to assist with youth camps this summer, especially as my mission trip to Vietnam had been postponed.
The first camp was MCYC—Merseyside Christian Youth Camps. I worked with two other female leaders to lead 11 young people in my group aged 15-18. They all come from deprived areas in Liverpool, so we dealt with all kinds of interesting challenges that young people have. The programme was quite full, and we were responsible for getting them to their various activities throughout the day. Many of the campers come from non-Christian backgrounds and are not interested in the spiritual programme, but it is a condition of the camp that they attend the evening meetings with worship and teaching. They also must attend the group sessions where they discuss what happened at the teaching the night before. I was very impressed with how much thought and preparation goes into the camp from the camp directors and the padres (spiritual directors) who put together a comprehensive programme. In total there were 88 young people and 41 staff. Having said for many years that ‘I don’t do youth’ I came away realising that this is in fact not the case, and that I had a good time as I interacted with them.
A week after my return I went to Limitless Christian Youth Festival. There were 5,000 young people & volunteers all under canvas at Staffordshire showground. I camped with the youth from my church, but I didn’t have as much time to spend with them as I expected, due to serving on the stewarding team which looks after all the arrivals to the site. But it was a privilege to enable the young people to learn about God in a safe environment and we were blessed that 676 people made a first-time commitment to become Christians.
Cultural Orientation Course
As well as this, I have also been working on a new cultural orientation course for students that come to Liverpool. I will be working in collaboration with my pastor – James Earnshaw of City Church and Michael Chesterman of YWAM Liverpool to run this course. I first had this direction in autumn last year, so after running it past my pastor he was very keen to get involved. City Church is right in the heart of the student area and James has been keen to draw university students into the church. There will be four sessions about English culture, getting settled & finding their way around, discovering Liverpool and a Q&A session. We will be promoting this at Fresher’s week, and we hope that we will have a core group of students that attend. Please pray for this new venture!