Stories of the Summer: 50 days and 218 kids later…

Since my last blog post, life has been pretty busy – we’ve hosted 218 kids! Read on to see all the fun things we’ve been up to and all we’ve learnt about God! My role at Gaines Manor working for Camp XL is self-funded, so if you feel able, you can financially support me here.

Verse for July

Psalm 73v26: “My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.”

This verse really helped me through the business of camps: reminding me that when I am weak – tired/impatient etc. God is still strong, He’s still at work in my weakness.

Verse for August

Nehemiah 9v33: “In all that has happened to us, you have remained righteous; you have acted faithfully, while we have acted wickedly.”

We were looking at Nehemiah on Escape, and this verse really hit home: God has always been faithful and has always been righteous in how He’s acted towards us, and will continue to be – even when we act wickedly towards Him.

Day 531

We had a new group – a local church from Hereford – come with a group of 8 to 11 year olds. This group was the result of the Minister’s lunches we held last year, so it was really great to have them with us! For the teaching we looked at some of the first chapter of Colossians, seeing Jesus as the greatest ever King. Other highlights included: bacon butties, kayaking, getting crafty up in the Art Room, making fires and building shelters down in the woods, and we finished it all off with a BBQ with the parents.

Day 537

On our last weekend before summer camps we welcomed another new youth group, this time from London. For the Bible teaching aspect of the weekend, we looked at ‘Running The Race’ from Hebrews 12 – there’s so much that challenged and encouraged us in just the first few verses! I also did one of the talks. Other highlights included: combat archery, a prayer walk, toasting marshmallows round the bonfire, going rafting and an extremely competitive game of Articulate! And it was great to have several volunteers from church come out to help us for the weekend.

Day 542

And our final group before summer camps was another new group, also from London! Again, the teaching was from Hebrews 12 – I was really encouraged hearing the older teenagers who were in my group talk about their experiences of being a Christian at school and college. Other highlights from their time with us were: rafting (a.k.a. falling in), team games in the sun, yummy cakes and combat archery!

Day 546

Our first summer camp ‘Escape’ was finally here! It was secret agent themed, so spy-dentity, physical training, ‘master of disguise’ and of course a giant game of cluedo round the grounds were a real hit! It was great to be able to spend a good length of time with the kids: getting to know them, doing activities with them, and learning from the Bible together. We were looking at Nehemiah: how he understood the importance of God’s Word for God’s people. We also had some great weather, so we really enjoyed water games, kayaking and a walk up the Malverns to see the sunset – all in all, it was a fab week!

Day 553

Breakout was also secret agent themed, so there was lots of training for the recruits: from sniper training (air rifles) to water training (kayaking & rafting), and even baking academy! The teaching was from 1 and 2 Samuel: the search for a King. It was really encouraging to see the young people getting stuck into God’s Word. A few other highlights (from so many) were: a great day out at Drayton Manor theme park, followed by ‘free the leader’ and a hilarious evening of karaoke on the last night! Looking forward to next year already!

Day 560

You might remember way back in February we went down to St George’s House to start preparations for ‘The Beach’ (check out this post for a reminder), one of Camp XL’s camps that runs by the sea and not at Gaines Manor. Well the time had finally come to head back down to Devon for the start of camp. We did lots of surfing, had lots of fun, made lots of friends and learned lots about Jesus!

For those who didn’t want to surf all the time, there was rock climbing, kayaking, quad biking, cycling and much more! But we all came together to go coasteering, play combat archery in the sand dunes, play games on the beach, and evenings were filled with a lot of laughter as we chatted and played games together back at the house.

It was a really great week: we looked at some of Jesus’ simply outrageous claims He makes about himself in the mornings, and some ‘Big Buts of the Bible’ in the evenings. Both of these times allowed for discussion which sparked lots of questions from the young people as they thought about these things for themselves.

Meanwhile at Gaines… our two 8s-11s camps were running: ‘Ignition’ and then ‘Lift Off’. There were lots of kids on both camps, and from what I’ve heard they both went really well! There were lots of secret agent themed activities, time spent looking at the Bible, and they even built a wall on Lift Off – as the teaching was on Nehemiah.

Day 576

Since the end of summer camps you’ll be glad to know I’ve had a bit of a rest, but we’ve also been busy getting ready for the new gap team who move in a week today! There’s still quite a bit of flat pack furniture to make before then…

Coming up…

Our new gap team of five girls arrives in one week! We’re then going away as a whole team before our first group in just over 2 week’s time.

Please Pray!

• Thanks that we made it through a busy summer!
• Praise God that we have FIVE girls starting on gap team next week
• Pray for these girls as they’re preparing to come to Gaines and serve God here for the year, and that they’d settle quickly into life here
• That we’d always be remembering to keep the gospel at the centre of everything we do
• Thanks that we have lots of groups coming to us in the Autumn