Mission Rescue

As I try to start back blogging after the best part of a month away from it, time to catch up on what I should of blogged about.

First up is one of my favourite weeks of the year, kid's Holiday Club.

This is the club the church runs for 5-11 year olds on five mornings and then cap off with a related service on the Sunday. This year we ran through the last week in August (which was a cool way to celebrate a birthday) and the theme was spies - Mission Rescue being the title.

Through the songs, messy games (taking jelly babies out of bowls of custard, rice pudding, cold baked beans, mushy peas and cold porridge - without using hands) craft, drama, dvd and general mayhem we tried to communicate something of the story of Moses and the way that God helped him rescue the people of Israel out of Egypt.

It was a great week! We had between 62 and 67 kids each day which is a little down on previous years but actually makes for a better week in many ways; you get to interact with them rather than spend all your time trying to get them to listen / calm down / stop hitting.

Part of what I love about the week is working together with a large team - 26 volunteers aged between 13 and 78 (I think - it would be rude to ask). So much of my work is pretty solitary and so this is something I particularly appreciate. I also like the fact that I am not leading the team. Someone much more capable does that! My role this year was to co-host the session when we were all together and to lead the 9 year olds. They were a terrific group of girls - we had one boy but for some reason he didn't come back on the Tuesday.

The week was really good. If I had one criticism of it (or of myself) it was that having learned so much about Moses as a rescuer from Monday to Thursday, it was a big leap for them to learn about Jesus as an even better rescuer on the final morning. With hindsight I would have sowed in little bits and pieces throughout the week.

Tomorrow I want to blog about the Mission Rescue Sunday service that we followed up the week with.