Wednesday 24 August 2011

Soul Survivor

Another week at Shepton Mallet has passed. Soul Survivor was a really good experience. Unfortunately, I'm rubbish at remembering to take photos. So here's the one usable photo I managed to get.

One of the main meetings

Here are a few things to sum up my experience:

The Group
They were all just lovely. The atmosphere was really friendly and everyone felt welcome and included. One of the leaders of the group next to us commented on how nice they all seemed. They were just awesome.

Worship
One of the main reasons for going to Soul Survivor is the worship. It's on a scale that can't really be replicated in a local church. (If you're an American reader, we don't do the massive campus churches over here. Our largest churches are probably medium sized churches to you guys.) So it was really nice to worship with about eight thousand other Christians. The nicest thing was seeing the teens connect with God in an amazing way. There were some tears. Even one of the non-Christians in the group was getting into it.

Ninjas
Ninjas is a game that you play in a group. The aim is to hit someone's arm and get that arm out. Once both arms are out, you're out. I was really rubbish at it.

Porridge
There's a Brothers Grimm tale about a magic porridge pot. This pot keep cooking porridge and it overflowed and almost engulfed a whole town. We had a similar experience. We were cooking porridge for about ten people, and nearly filled the pot up. The thing was, whilst we were serving it the porridge would get dry and so we'd add more water. The porridge would absorb the water and swell. This meant we always ended up with the same amount of porridge we started with. It just wouldn't empty. We ended up throwing a whole pot of porridge away (where it's probably continuing to swell and will soon engulf the local rubbish dump).

Wind and rain
It was windy and wet and our gazebo nearly took off. What was most interesting was the reaction of people. While I was clinging onto the leg of the gazebo I was shouting orders to the teens. Stuart instantly jumped into action whilst most of the others were just like rabbits in headlights. Grumpy Thomas did appear and I did shout, "Don't just stand there clutching your coats! Do something!"

Food
After the disaster with food beforehand, it went really well during the week. All the meals seemed quite popular, the curry with naan bread seemed the most successful. As I ordered the food online the bananas were really ripe when the came to me, so I cooked them up on the first night with sugar and cinnamon. That seemed to go down really well, so I will keep that trick up my sleeve for future dates.

I feel really blessed after this week, and actually came back feeling recharged and raring to go. I thought I'd be feeling dead and miserable, but God definitely sought to energise me throughout the week.

Quick Questions
  1. What camping disaster stories do you have?
  2. Have you ever been to a festival (Christian or not)? What was it like?

1 comment:

  1. love that the porridge pot got a mention,,, but why did you think you'd come back feeling dead and miserable?!
    The teens were brilliant; God is awesome.

    ReplyDelete

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