I have no breath to shout, I have no breath to sing, I have no breath to dance, but I will praise you

LONG POST ALERT!!!! (well it was a long weekend!)

Fresh wind is the youth conference that TACF puts on every year. It is aimed at teenagers and is always on the Thursday, Friday and Saturday of Easter weekend. This year there were about 2 or 3 thousand people there at the peek, and it was… intense.

Each of the school of ministry students had a work duty assigned to them where they had a job for 4 hours each day. Some people were on security, some were car park attendants, some where serving the speakers in ‘Speaker’s lounge’ and some where on maintenance. I got kitchen duty!! I have to say that I was not particularly thrilled about this to start with, but Francis who runs the kitchen here is so lovely that you can’t help but enjoy yourself when you are with him.
So my shift started at 8 in the morning and we were supposed to work until 12 each day, but for the first two days we had a really light load. The kitchens were running a meal plan for delegates at the conference and it was to be served in one of the overflow rooms in the back of the church. So the first day we cut a few peppers, and arranged some pieces of chicken on trays (OK so over 400 pieces of chicken). Then we loaded up the trolleys with all the equipment we would need for the overflow room, set that up and that was about it. The second day we needed to check the overflow room, take over a few extra drinks, and that was about it for day two. Day three was more eventful as we had to take lots of new stuff over to the overflow room (crisp, bread rolls, a huge bucket of mayonnaise), then we had to pre-mayo about 300 of these bread rolls. It was disgusting! I am not a fan of mayonnaise in anything but tuna mayo, so having to dollop out this jelly like white gloop and then splatter it over some poor person’s lunch, was just not nice. However in all of that I learnt a lot about what is needed when catering for 500 people, and gained a new respect for the kitchen staff.
Apart from work duty all of the students were expected to be somewhere at all times. We had to be in the worship sessions (not that many of us would want to miss them) and attend on of the workshops, and in the evening we were part of the ministry team. Meal times were our only free time at all. I made full advantage of my first batch of free time by catching up with my beautiful friends, Becky and Lauren Ede. It was so nice to see more familiar faces and to be able to chat and catch up. We went out with Maretha to Boston Pizza,



where we had a lovely time and the other girls decided to stretch their prophetic wings and left messages on the napkins for our waitress, hee hee. After that though I spent each meal time in my room getting a bit of quiet and recovering a bit.

So the timetable for the day was as follows:
10:00 – 10:45 = Worship
10:45 – 12:30 = Workshop
12:30 – 14:00 = Lunch
14:00 – 14:45 = Worship
14:45 – 16:30 = Workshop
16:30 – 19:00 = Dinner
19:00 – 10:30 = Evening meeting

There were 4 streams in the workshops – Intersession, worship, prophecy & lifestyle. I went along to the worship ones (when I wasn’t working). They were so cool! One of the sessions was about using dance and art as a form of worship. The church for so long has taken sung worship as being the only type of worship that we have in church that the other creative arts are often overlooked. In the Freshwind band, who played for some of the worship sets, the group consists of about 15-20 people (all on stage at one time) and they include three dancers and two painters. It is so inspiring to see people giving their all in more than just their voice. This session gave us all the chance to stretch those dance and artistic muscles. So the room in which we were meeting (and it was filled to capacity) was dancing and stamping and marching around as they worshiped God and interceded for our generation. It was exhilarating, but so exhausting. At the end I just collapsed into a heap and wrote on my pad “I have no breath to shout, I have no breath to sing, I have no breath to dance, but I will praise you”. That is so how I felt. God was so real and so close and even though I had used up every ounce of my physical self I could to praise him, my whole being was still praising him. When I gathered enough breath and the meeting had finished I ran across to grab some lunch and headed back to have a shower. Worshiping God with all you are can turn into a rather hot and sweaty affair. Actually I discovered this many times over during Freshwind. Each day was at least two outfits, because in each time of worship I was jumping and dancing and shouting and just generally having fun, but when there are a couple of thousand people doing that in a confined space- well it gets a little hot.
The worship was great though. It was very much a concert where everyone was worshiping with the band, with house lights down, concert coloured lights going and speakers loud enough to make your ears ring (I had ear plugs in a couple of times :S what an old lady! But at least I can still hear!).

I know a photo doesn’t give it justice, but maybe it gives you an idea.

We had Starfield playing for some of the time, and the in house Freshwind band for some. The energy of all the youth was incredible and God’s presence was so tangible. It was so obvious to those who didn’t already know God, that many of them decided to give their life to him there and then (I know it was at least 200, because they did an alter call, where people are asked to come forward if they want to respond to a word spoken).

In the evenings we were on the ministry team which was very exciting. Each night at 6:15 we had a time of soaking and prayer- such a good idea for a ministry team!! It was very cool that on the first night we also got to pray for the speaker and the band, which for that night were Starfield. So yeah we all got to pray for Starfield, which was really strange because at the back of your mind you were thinking “These guys are internationally famous, and I get to pray for them!! AAAHHHHH” but they were just regular worship leaders who needed prayer for the work they were about to do. I actually felt that it was a huge privilege to be given the opportunity to minister to them.
Then we were on call for any of the alter calls that I mentioned earlier. And if people were called to go forwards then one of the teams would go to the front and pray for them, or if they were just asked to stand then the other teams would pray for those in their sections. The speakers were all really good and talked about the revival generation that we have called to be. It’s so exciting. It was really nice, and again a great privilege to be able to pray for people during those meetings.
The last night was a special one though. At the end we did fire tunnels for everyone! For those of you who can’t remember what that is (or are new to this blog and don’t know), a fire tunnel is when the ministry team stands in two long lines and prays for everyone as they walk through between the lines. They are so much fun and most people end up being really drunk on the Holy Spirit at the end. They went on for ages and ages, but we were all having such a good time, praying and being prayed for as well, that no one cared!
Eventually the conference was over, the tunnels had dissolved and it was time to start the clean up. The task of encouraging people to leave was given, in part, to me. So I wandered round firmly telling the groups of people lazing around that they really did need to go home. It was nice doing it in a Christian environment where everyone was so understanding and agreed at once to move. Like any other crowd though they promptly forgot and had to be re-reminded in Sarah’s “I am going to impress this thing on you so strongly but kindly that you are just going to be compelled to do it right now” attitude (those from LINKS will know the one I mean). Eventually the room was pretty much clear and we could hoover, pick up litter, put away the rope barriers and put out the 1500 chairs that were needed for Sunday church. By the end of clean up it was about 2 in the morning and I was tired enough that I literally had difficulty staying on my feet, so despite the promise of pizza in 10 mins for those who had helped with clean up, I headed back to my room. I had a quick shower before bed. Though my shower was a little strange, it started off fine- like any normal shower, but after a bit the who room went rather foggy. No people, don’t worry I was not passing out, I was so tired that I had forgotten to take off my glasses before getting in the shower! So I was giggling at myself as I crashed into bed, where I slept long and deep, well until I had to get up for the Easter morning service at church of course!!!