Most of the days are settling into a sort of routine, but only sort of because the first month is always a bit crazy. We’ve had teaching and small groups and soaking again. On Thursday we had something completely new and different though. We were introduced to our work duties for “Fresh Wind”. Fresh Wind is possibly the biggest conference that the church puts on. It is aimed at ‘youth’ but anyone is welcomed and tends to fill the church pretty much to capacity. Because there is so much to do the students from the school are all assigned to a job to help in the running on the conference. I am on kitchen duty, so we toddled off to talk to Francis the cook. He is lovely and was basically stressing that the main priority was us and that we weren’t to burn ourselves out with the work, and just basically being very nice. We will be preparing the lunch and dinner for the 800 odd people that are likely to want to take advantage of the meal plan offered. Should be interesting as I have never work in a kitchen before (well anything but a home kitchen). After that we were given a lesson in the guidelines that TACF has for its ministry team, because from now on we are all part of the church’s ministry team who will be praying for the people who come forward for prayer in church and at conferences. They have guidelines because obviously the people getting prayed for need to be able to have confidence that the person praying for them isn’t a complete nutter dragged off the street, and just to ensure that people don’t get carried away and do something inappropriate. So we had the small group leaders doing a hilarious demonstration as to why some of these things were not the best idea.
- Have something to freshen your breath so you don’t pray halitosis into someone’s face
- Making sure that the something you use to freshen your breath is NOT gum. Leaning over someone to pray and having it fall out your mouth onto them would be awful.
- Don’t wear skirts or baggy shorts, people lying down don’t want an eyeful of that if they open their eyes!
They also reminded us that as we were representing the church we had to be careful about our conduct and our appearance. We don’t want to be distracting to anyone or offend people with the way we dress or present ourselves, so we have to even more conservative when on ministry team than we would normally.
Thursday evening was the first evening that we hadn’t been completely exhausted, so Sophie and I decided to supplement our dinner with a good old pudding session. So we headed down the road to Montana’s to get some pudding (or desert as I had to remember to call it). Despite the fact that they are advertised as ‘to share’ we got one each! Hee hee. Hilariously Sophie’s apple cobbler came in a jug! Was good fun.
Friday was the day of the week I cried the least. I only shed a couple of tears when David Dalley was talking about the penultimate scene in the railway children- “Daddy, my daddy”. If you have never seen the railway children, I thoroughly recommend it. The rest of the time we learnt about being a child with God and not letting our fears of what people thought of us, or what we thought was right and proper get in the way. After the teaching the small group leaders and staff did a fire tunnel. This is basically where they all stand in two lines and people walk through the middle. Those in the lines then pray for each person as they go past, so you get prayer from about 20 people in the space of about 10 meters. We had on some loud bouncy music and everyone just completely let go. We were running and jumping, bouncing up and down, dancing, shouting, singing, laughing and just having a fantastic time. Everyone ended up making a circle and rotating through the tunnel several times. It was so cool. I haven’t used that much energy in a long time, nor have I had such fun. I was so hot by the end that I ran out, minus the shoes and coat I normally don, and went and jumped in an untouched patch of snow. Then I lay down! I could feel myself sinking as my body heat melted the snow beneath me. Some of the other girls thought this was such a good idea that they joined in and we had a snowball fight. I was just a little soggy by the time I went in for dinner, but surprisingly not too cold and still buzzing with excitement. It must be why people act so crazy when they are drunk from alcohol- they have no inhibitions and just don’t care. I guess we were all drunk too, just on God rather than alcohol. Hee hee score, drunk but no hangover!! Lol.
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