Enjoying the Church Weekend Away...

View from the centre we were staying in

For those who follow these regularly, I'm sorry that I'm a bit late with this one. Last Friday I was still on the Church Weekend Away and it's taken until now to be able to recover enough to sit down and write about what happened.

We were staying in the same place as last year in the Soča region of Slovenia (near a town called Bavšica). For those who need a reminder of their Slovene geography, that's in the north west of the country in the middle of the Julian Alps which are part of the foothills of the Alps. We were very close to the borders of both Italy and Austria and it truly is a beautiful part of the world.

Playing Viking Chess

I may have mentioned a time or two that I was responsible for preparing all the the material for the children and younger youth. The topic of the camp was the Image of God. Over three sessions we looked at humanity being created in God's image, the distortion of the image of God in humanity and the future restoration. For each session I prepared a game, a memory verse, a craft as well as the study itself for young people aged from 10 to 14. It was a lot of work but I really enjoyed it and the feedback has been pretty positive. We split the young people into 2 groups and I took the older group for two of the three sessions. We had some good discussions but the teenage boys did draw some interesting conclusions including the fact that in heaven we'll be better off than superman... As both of them are sons of the pastor and assistant pastor, I decided to let them talk to their parents about that one...

Altogether it was a great time getting to know my church family better. It was also a time of sadness as we have finally (sort of) said goodbye to the Australian missionary family. They left for Ireland on Monday and so the Weekend Away was the last time they saw many people from the church. That being said, the group of us who are travelling to England on Saturday will meet up with them in Beccles, Suffolk where we will help out with a Holiday Bible Club. They will depart for Australia a few days before we go back to Slovenia and so I'm sure many more tears will be shed as we say goodbye finally.

That leads me into my final point. We are setting off for England on Saturday at about lunch time and will return the following Saturday, the 31st. Please pray for our journeys and the Bible Club itself. It will be a great opportunity for many of these young people to see what the church in England looks like. Some of them have never flown before and so it is a big exciting adventure for them. Please pray that the sadness of saying goodbye won't overshadow the joy and excitement of serving in another country.