Newday

So I'm currently still in pyjamas. I don't feel guilty about this, in fact I'm relishing the opportunity to laze about as the past week has been seriously hectic.

Last night I got back from Newday, a festival aimed at 11-18 year olds. The focus is worship, teaching and social action...and a whole lot of fun. This year, as I've stopped doing youth work since moving to London, I decided to go and join a cafe team. 

Along with about twenty others, mostly friends from London, we ran the Global Cafe. This essentially meant making 600 milkshakes every afternoon, dancing non-stop to ridiculous music and shouting insane things in a bit of competitive rivalry with the other cafes. Needless to say it was rather full on. Still, with it being the first time I'd seen a whole bunch of friends from London in over two months, it was a well needed bonding time. Nothing like a bit of family when you live in tents with one another for a week.

We got to meet with God, and one of our team got amazingly healed of a rugby injury, after six years of back pain and needing physio! So that was super exciting! 

We also saw loaaads of shooting stars which has to be one of my favourite things when you go camping. There were unfortunately LOTS of mosquitos and I am sufficiently bitten to wonder whether there is any blood actually left in my body.

Anyhow, I'm trying to sort some last minute things out before heading off to Italy on Wednesday for a week of glorious sunshine with the giiiiiirls. Enough tired rambling, I need to go by some shorts!

xxxxxxxxxxxx

Peace and Quiet

The Scots have descended, and my life is a chaotic blur of work, strange dates and a house full of people. I have about an hour (if I'm lucky) with no one in the house. I am blasting some of my favourite music and sorting things out before I need to be sociable once more.

I cannot wait to finish work this week. I don't know what it is, but I am just done. It's been such a blessing, so many summers, and the money is great, but my motivation has shrunk to nothing in the past few days. Perhaps this was due to a few too many days off last week, and some slight craziness whilst I am at work, but all in all I am seriously looking forward to the end of the week.

And then I am off camping. And I get to sing a lot, and dance a lot, and make a billion milkshakes, and a few friends, and catch up with some old faces that I've not seen in far too long. It sounds like bliss, despite the threat of mud, mud glorious mud, and therefore a soggy tent.

And then I'm off to Italy! Some friends and I are having what might be the last girls holiday for a while, and have booked a villa in the middle of Tuscany. I envision wine, pizza, old buildings, sun baked skin and laughter.

So, there is lots to look forward to if I can get to the end of the week. Fortunately tomorrow is interrupted by a family trip to Longleat. Lions and tigers and bears - Oh my!

Oh aaaand I got a final email confirming that I have a place on the programme that I desperately wanted to work with and never ever thought I would get. I am so, so excited about the opportunity, just because I know I could never have sorted it for myself and God is just so involved. So, serious hurrah for grace.

Time to go and make a cuppa, and make use of the peace and quiet.

That is, if the next door dogs would ever learn not to bark.

xxx

I know I've said it before.

But, I just can't get over the incredible truth of this song. That this is my life.

That I am free to live as a daughter in His house. Outrageous love and grace, oh how you transform a life of brokenness into one of hope!

x

English Summertime

I've recently returned from a week at a Christian youth camp, known as Newday. It's pretty cool. I went as a member of the youth for three years, but this year I got to go as a leader...or a RA as we were occasionally known. Means 'responsible adult'. I laughed hysterically at this title.

Anyhow this was Newday
http://news.bbc.co.uk/local/norfolk/hi/people_and_places/religion_and_ethics/newsid_8878000/8878336.stm

and
http://news.bbc.co.uk/local/norfolk/hi/people_and_places/religion_and_ethics/newsid_8921000/8921083.stm

or at least what the BBC decided to cover of it. (For some reason, it won't allow me to give the links any other way)

What they didn't mention was the amazing sense of family, the 371 people miraculously healed by God of all sorts of sicknesses and the 320 or so people who decided to become Christians for the very first time. You see, Newday is all about seeing a new generation emerging in the plans that God has for them, and deciding to be proactive in changing their world.

I was amazingly blessed to see lots of answer to prayer in the way the youth I took responded to God, were freed by his Holy Spirit from things that were holding them back and generally grew together both as friends and disciples. In some ways, Newday has been the highlight of my year for the past four years. It's incredibly exciting.

What wasn't so exciting was the English summertime weather. Now in August, it's generally assumed that in the Northern Hemisphere that the sun shines, the temperature raises itself above about 2 degrees and the clouds disappear... Assumptions are wrong. We spent a week camping in the pouring rain, under dark angry clouds that thundered above us every few days, and all of this was accompanied by a howling and violent wind!

My snazzy new Mountain Warehouse tent stood up pretty well to this abuse though and so I wasn't a drowned rat 24/7!

Since I've been back I have had lots of Vicki time...which includes indulging my adoration of the West Wing (into series 2 now! Woop!), cooking yummy food and reading the new books that I bought whilst I was away. In addition I have done the entire world's washing. Or at least that is what it feels like.

Enough of my slightly impassioned blog update. I am not quite as ranty as I appear, I promise. In general I am quite full of love and such. I am however listening to Noah and the Whale's second album which is quite eager...

I shall leave you with their wonderul music.



Peace and love.

"Give me the love of an ORCHESTRAAAAAAAAAAAA!"

xoxo