That was the summer

One week to go before schools kick off again, so grabbed the chance to catch up with the Head at Plockton yesterday. Amidst a building site at the school as the two buildings are joined together (over the next several months, though the new entrance looks great already) it was good to get some breathing space to plan out the year ahead with assemblies and the S6 day.




JUNE
So a feature this year was the arrival of a small team of US students to support the Free Church ministries in the area, and I got to make use of them for holiday club planning. It was great to have Rachel and Kaylan sit very patiently throughout our second day of filming having mucked up the first day with the wrong camera settings! Still, the results were worth it and happy that this year's teaching videos were the best we've done. Still lots of room for improvemnet but we're moving in the right direction.
Amidst all the club writing I still managed to fit in a few assemblies, including two in Applecross. All the P7 visits were finally completed with Sleat althoihg reclaiming three days when I wasn't required for activities week in Plockton was really useful! Wrapped up the season of SoundWaves with a BBQ for the team and a family service in Broadford which was well attended by kids and parents. I also did some video work for the churches during the John Blanchard meeting, and the year end concert for the Music School. So, a bit more editing still to do...

JULY

Week 1: Strath & Lochalsh holiday club in Kyleakin Village Hall. I don't think we've had a club as big as this for years, with around 60 children attending everyday, and having to split the P6/7 group girls and boys as they were so many of them. This pattern was repeated for the afternoon teen club. Some days, including leaders, we were feeding almost 40 people and it was great to renew friendships with some of our, now older, holiday club children. Really hope and pray that we can find a place to include them in our weekly provision. So, five mornings of club, then a mini gala sports, wide games, paintballing and a Loch Coruisk trip rounded off a very meaningful time in Kyleakin, and especialy good to see the churches coming together so strongly to provide a packed and fun filled program.
Somehow managed to find space for a summer holiday ths year, which despite heavy colds, gave us a good time camping in the Lake District. Meanwhile, Sleat Free Church made good use of our props and teaching material for their holiday club in Sabhal Mòr.
Week 4: Glenelg & Kintail holiday club in Glenelg (where?!) Village Hall. Ok, it was meant o be in Inverinate but circumstances forced us to change halls the day before we started! Well done to all the folk who managed to get the hall ready in time despite the inconvenience. I took the Sunday off! All turned out well and we had a number of children from Arnisdale who no doubt wouldn't have travlled to Inverinate. Another large club with a consistent 40 every day, followed by a crowd of over 20 teens in the afternoons for Colin MacDonald's week of crazy activities, always wanting to go that extra mile! The Medieval Mayhem teaching material which we had written together, based on the story of the whole Bible, just seemed to work this year and despite a huge amount of effort to prep ot all, the week seemed to run itself once we got going. It was good to get Thursday afternoon off for Joshua's birthday, before heading off to Corran on Friday for the camp over with the teen club. This however facilitated the most exciting part of the week as we opened the teaching time up for the young people to share brief testimonies if they desired. 40 minutes later I had heard something of the spiritual journeys of a number of young people whom I had never heard from about faith before.

AUGUST
Almost up to date, but after the Glenelg club we wer focussed in final prep for Imagine, the Christian festival in Inverurie. It was great to be taking 10 young people from Lochcarron, Kyle and Glenelg this year, along with the whole family and also Angus and Jackie MacLennan. Great teaching and inspiration from Mike Pilavachi and Ants Watts from New Zealand allowing space for God to work amongst all of us. Encouraging to see our young people work things through and recieve and give prayer during the main meetings. The inly surprise for me was not that Kenny laft his bags behind when he had to go for the train, but that his bags left him behind! Still, there was another train 2 hours later and I think all were eventually reunited.
I also got the chance to catch up with Pete Gilbert in adavance of our Discipleship Conference in September, which was really helpful.

And this week is a mixture of making plans for the coming term, High School and SoundWaves already done, catching up on some admin work (such as this!) and also recouperating a bit of energy for the term ahead. Think I managed to pull together all the summers expenses for COOL this monring and onloy took 3 hours (what have I missed!). Training course in London next week, riots permitting...