We’ve just spent the weekend at Abbott Hall, a Christian Guild hotel, in Grange Over Sands, and what a wonderful weekend it was! We were blessed by good weather, good food and good fellowship.
In order to make this happen and so as not to make costs prohibitive, we agreed as a church to raise the funds to cover the children’s accommodation. The young people also played their part in fund-raising. We’ve had a bacon butties and coffee morning, and a beetle drive with pie and pea supper. We’ve baked and bought cakes and we were treated to a wonderful 3-course dinner when the young people turned the church hall into a restaurant; they provided pre-dinner entertainment, waited on us in a most professional manner and the food was sensational. As a result we covered the cost of all 18 children and what a delight it was to have them with us!
The weekend was led by Nick Blundell, one of our Circuit ministers, with the overall theme of “Are you sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin”. We looked at the art of story telling; we shared our own stories and stories within stories; we listened to others’ stories; we explored a couple of Jesus’s stories, and related our stories to those, and we all came back with our own stories of what we’d done over the weekend. There was swimming, walking, crafts, puppets, dancing, quizzes, silly hat games, fun, laughter, silence, tears, prayer, worship and lots more. We had a fantastic time and came back with a clearer vision of where God is leading us.
Thank you to everyone who contributed to making the weekend so successful.