Happy New Year Everyone! A little late I know but it's still January!
We have already been to the park 3 times this year and it has already been extremely busy, it's great to be back!
Last week I was unable to be there as I was at SWYM conference but I had some great feedback; the weather was bright and the team gave out over 90 hot chocolates including many to primary school children. Yesterday the weather was dull and we gave out over 100 hot chocolates, and I think only 1 primary school child (parents are a bit more reluctant to take their children to the park after school when the weather isn't looking so bright and understandably so!), so when we thought it wouldn't grow anymore, when we thought it had capped at about 80 hot chocolate, it grows again and again! So prayers for our name memory, relationship building and growing our team would be amazing! It would be great to have at least 5 people on the rota each week, currently we work on a fortnightly rota with a fantastic core team of 7 and a few other great volunteers who come and help when needed. So it would be great to have 3 more people who can commit to every other week.
Yesterday we introduced a new idea of having a discussion board. Our reason being to encourage more conversations about God. The first week went really well with many of the young people contributing to the board, see picture below...
Just in case the picture isn't very clear we wrote in the middle: "Christianity... boring, untrue and irrelevant? followed by: Jesus Said..."I am the way, the truth and the life..." (John 14:6 - The Bible).
The idea of the statements came from the Youth Alpha material and it did encourage some good conversations and helped us gain a better understanding of the thoughts of many young people in the park with regards to God and Christianity. Here are a few examples of their comments below:
"If someone explained it I might understand"
"People have different views"
"I think it is an interesting religion"
"I don't believe but I respect it"
"Don't know what to believe"
"I don't know but I pray to something or someone"
"Untrue - not realistic"
"Definitely true however hard to understand"
"It's hard to follow God's rules"
Please pray that God would inspire us as to what to put on the board and that God would guide our conversations, that the young people would continue to be open to talking and again that we would have enough people on the team each week to have people manning the board ready to engage the young people in conversations as well as people serving hot chocolate, giving out biscuits, litter patrolling, playing football, building healthy relationships etc....!!!
So our key prayer points are:
- Thanks for the team we currently have
- Thanks for the conversations and relationships already starting to build
- Thanks for all the young people, children and parents we have met so far
- Name memory
- Relationship building
- Team Building... at least 3 more members who can commit to every other week
- God's guidance with the discussion board and conversations
- Continued openness in the young people to chat
Thank you once again for your prayers.
God bless
Karly
