Going for Gold!

After our marathon journey to Caerleon, we had the weekend to settle in and catch up on some much needed sleep. We both started work on Monday 6th August. Lizzie set off for Cardiff and I set off for Lodge Farm Church. It's helpful that the Olympics are every four years as it gives churches a pretty good idea of a theme for a children's holiday club.

Having the Olympics in London this year seemed to make it extra special and even some of the younger children were talking about the events. It made watching the Olympics that night a must! From the excitement of Chris Hoy becoming the most celebrated Team GB Olympian to the surprise packages in judo and dressage. Caerleon is not too far from London about 120 miles (given that some events were in Glasgow 400 miles from London) and the British cycling team used the velodrome in Wales for their training and people could watch the likes of Chris Hoy and Jessica Pendleton. At the moment the whole place has gone cycling mad! Lizzie and I couldn't get moving on our bikes last week due to the number of kids and parents out on their bikes! I got caught up in the patriotic fervour and now have a Union Flag on the back of my car. Actually there is another reason for that but I digress. For the next 5 days there was an Olympic themed holiday club - 'Going for Gold'. Thankfully I wasn't leading so it gave me a good chance to meet the kids, leaders, and see how Lodge Farm did holiday clubs.

For those of you who have done kids holiday clubs this was a reboot of Going for Gold, not the original and just as Chris Nolan's Batman reboot was better than the Joel Schumacher's series so this reboot was better. Steve Harris was the person who gave it an update and it worked really well. Steve is a street evangelist with several gifts up his sleeve; most notably communicating a Biblical message extremely well, painting, and magic! It's quite clear that he has a real calling to this type of work, evidence by this being his third holiday club in a row.

For those of you who have never done one before, a kid’s holiday club is generally run over 5 days, with a theme that ties into the Biblical story or stories. Kids are split into teams according to their ages and then 2 big teams. There are songs, games. crafts, and quizzes. The stories this week were loosely tied into an Olympic event for example:

Monday's event was swimming which had the account of Jesus meeting the disciples on their boat as he walks out across the water to them. Peter decides to go to Jesus and initially walks on the water but he takes his eyes of Jesus and starts to sink, hence the swimming, before Jesus saves him. Other events were walking (the Israelites marching round Jericho), equestrian (Saul on his way to Damascus), the marathon (Philip running alongside the Ethiopian), and diving which had the well-known Bible story of Archie the Caterpillar.

I enjoyed meeting the kids and spent the most time with a working with the primary 6 guys which was a great group to be a part of. It was a relatively small group and they all loved football and video games so it meant we had something in common, other than the Olympics. When I get involved with school’s work this is the age group I’ll probably be doing the most amount of work with so at least some of them will know who I am.

The week finished off with a barbeque and family Olympics on the Friday night and they thought it would be a good idea for me to be on the barbeque, not literally of course! We were blessed with a warm sunny evening and I was really surprised by how well it was attended by parents and family members who were well fed. There were different games for families to compete in like the long jump, (straw) javelin throwing, and basketball amongst others. No Olympics would be complete without a prize ceremony in which the team from that week won their prize. Steve kept telling the kids that the team that wins gets a prize but he never told them that the other team’s participants would also get a prize, the same prize.




My Union Flag


As it was the holiday club this week there was no youth club on, that’s a story for another time.

It's one small move for youth work and it's one giant drive for the youth worker

How I imagined our journey starting.

At 03:00 on the 4th of August 2012 two YWEV (Youth work expeditionary vehicles (yes these are funny names for my car and the wife's car)) arrived atop on Trinity View on the southwestern corner of Wales. It ended a massive 10+ hour drive that was fraught with difficulties, a delayed departure coupled with YWEV 2's navigational problems - after one and a half miles, the next 370 miles were going to be interesting. To put that into context the last time we travelled down it took a little over 7 hours but arrived safe and sound, if a little tired and coffee dependant, although some say I'm that anyway.

Ok it was more like this, once you get rid of the rockets.

Since it is getting late I'm tempted to dwell upon the title of this post and come up with all sorts of silly and contrived lunar landing parallels which would be stretching things a bit but I'm going to anyway.



So it was more like this. The real YWEV 2 (above) aka a Vauxhall Corsa
and YWEV 1 also a Vauxhall Corsa.

 

1) A different view. We quite literally have a different view of things here. Back in Glasgow we woke up to see a well positioned brick wall, now we look down on England when we wake up. Any fellow Scots read what you will into that statement. For any offended English folks we literally look down on the Bristol Channel and the top of one of the English counties.



The view from our bedroom overlooking Caerleon.

2) Life is different. Even if Welsh village life isn't as drastically different from Scottish city living compared to spending time on the moon, there are some quite noticeable differences. The area we're living in is considerably more affluent than where we were living in Glasgow for a start. There is also a slower pace of life for us non-commuters with crazy rushing around. It's quite pleasant here if you ignore the the fact they enjoy building houses up ridiculously large and steep hills, when that's coming from a Glaswegian you know it's bad.

3) There's more life in Glasgow than on the moon and there is more life in Glasgow than down here.  Glasgow has a bigger population than Cardiff, Newport (including Caerleon), and Cwmbran put together. Besides that village life is closer than living in a big city, which is good as a lot of my role involves building relationships.

4) We're here for a purpose. Despite the fact that everyone remembers the iconic shots of astronauts playing golf on the moon there was a scientific and political purpose in putting then on the moon. Lizzie and I also have a work to do here. Lizzie's started work as a nurse in Cardiff and I've started to be involved with the youth work program. It's quite quiet at the moment as the schools are still off but it gives me a good chance to settle in and do planning and form filling.

5) We intend on coming home! I know we've only been here two weeks but we will come back to visit friends and family.

There and back again, a youthworker's tale.

As you've guessed I do like Lord of the Rings and the shameless rip off in the title was there to suck you in. In all fairness the place is like Middle-Earth, Caerleon is like The Shire, Cardiff could be Osgiliath and Newport is Mordor - which leaves England across the Bristol Channel akin to the Grey Havens. Last week I was writing about going to Wales and visiting the church where I hope to be doing youth work soon. I would also like to point out that in my last post about the first thing we'd do in Wales was get lost, I wasn't joking. My excuse is I could see where were going but they had closed the road since the map had been made.

Having never been to Wales I have to say I look forward to returning as Lizzie and I had a great time, despite the last local leisure facility closing about 1700 years ago, a big thanks to Owen and his wife Ruth for their superb hospitality over the weekend. It was really, really good seeing the Caerleon (pronounced Kill Ian! - poor Ian!) and it's an incredible place with a very rich history dating back to the Iron age. If you like Roman history this place is a dream land with an amphitheatre and Roman baths amongst other things. back then it was home to the 2nd Augustan legion a force of 3000 foot soldiers and doesn't include cavalry or the likes. At present there are around 8000 people so there were probably more people there 2000 years ago!

<---- Our Welsh accommodation.

The traditional Welsh youth workers' uniform ------>


In many ways it's quite different from life in Glasgow which has a greater population than Caerleon, Newport and Cardiff combined but the Celtic heritage of Wales also gives it many similar traits that you find in Scotland. The church where I'd be working is totally different from any of the churches I've been to in Glasgow or anywhere for that matter, mostly due to its location and shape. It's at the very top of a hill and is an old farm, so the church as the grounds of a farm which include an iron age fort. Despite the church hall being in the cow shed there are no cow although someone may have told my mum they still had cows to provide the milk for the tea and coffee! There's a good community feel to the church and despite it not being the biggest church I've been in it's probably the loudest with good Welsh singing! The local area is quite middle class which has the upside of less serious trouble but the downside of people not seeing the need for a church or God in their lives. 
In terms of the work I'd be doing there there is a good range on ministries to be involved with and develop. At present there is a Sunday morning youth group, about 7 or so go; a Sunday Club for primary school with 12 kids and a midweek youth outreach group with 20 or so going. There is also a midweek youth Bible study which is doing the youth version of Christianity Explored. It was hard to try and imagine what I'd be doing until I'd seen what was going on and I can now start to flesh out so basic ideas having met the kids and youth. They're a great bunch and it was good to chat with them over the afternoon tea in the church. I've never felt so stuffed outwith Christmas. These are the things I'd be getting involved with but in addition we want to get involved with the local schools and I'd like to get involved with the local university campus too. We'd like to develop lunch clubs with the schools and eventually an after school club but that's a long way off. Hopefully I'd be able to help out in RE or the equivalent in Wales and assemblies. Both of these would be a great way of getting more involved with the community and hopefully making the assemblies and RE more interesting. I remember them being a bit boring and the Christian modules in RE had very little to do with being a Christian.
There are a few things that are still to be done before I can start in Wales, although I am now officially accepted as an OMS ministry candidate! That means I'm officially ratified after my interview which happened in Wales last week. I've still got the orientation to do and start my fundraising. Hopefully this won't take too long and I'll be down in Wales by the summer!
It's a scary thought in a way going all that way (well ~7 hours by car) from our families although it will be good too. I thought I'd also say that this job is a calling not just a mere job. There is a clear difference. A job is done to just get money where as a calling is done regardless of the finances. However, I use the terms 'job' and 'calling' interchangeably in this regard and I often use the term job more often as that's what most people understand.
So prayer points for those on the blower with God:

• Lizzie would get a job down there in one of the local hospitals. There is a vacancy within an ICU ward but it's only bank at the moment.

• The fundraising and orientation would go well and that the fundraising wouldn't take too long either.

• Our move would go well and we would settle into Welsh life.

Thanks to everyone who prayed for us before. We've seen God do good things and it's a testimony that he still cares for the small details in people's lives as well as the big things too.

<----- No prizes for guessing what this is for. Let's just say I won't be making use of this traditional Welsh method.