WEEKEND AWAY
I can barely believe it; WE'VE DONE IT! The Weekend Away went well. I'm absolutely staggered to be able to say that; by Friday, I honestly thought we were in trouble, but things worked out excellent. Me and Sarah did shopping for the weekend on Thursday, me getting excused from Sylvia's lecture (didn't miss much), but Friday was HECTIC. My first part of the dissertation was due in first, but I also had a 9.00-11.00 lecture. At twelve o'clock, an hour early, Sarah rang up asking if we could get on with some more shopping; I had to delay us while I just handed the dissertation stuff in. It was already getting hectic. Sarah's mum had given her an extended list of stuff we'd need, tho', so the shopping lasted overtime; then, when we needed to get back, the taxis told us they'd take up to twenty minutes, so we lugged the shopping back. My watch had stopped, we were later than we realised, and the hecticness only carried on. No sooner did we get things prepped than we realised the minibus was smaller than we'd reckoned...
Nightmare! But we had exactly the right amount of ppl, fitted everything in (JUST!) and set off. I'd not thought we'd be able to do it, but while the minibus was being packed, I had to head off and print off some final notes for the studies - I'd intended to do them between 12.00 and 1.00, but, with Sarah being early, hadn't been able to, and had then run out of printer credits... Aaaaargh...
But, we got there. We didn't have a Friday night meeting, but just settled in, watched a hilarious Peter Kay DVD, some of them went for a walk while Claire stayed behind; I did too, because I wanted to fine-tune the study for the morning. The idea with the studies was to have them much more interactive, but, contrary to what you'd expect, the more interaction, the more work is needed. So trying to prepare three interactive meetings was a severe strain. Me and Claire wound up having a VERY deep conversation about being born-again, in which God even gave Claire a vision (she was spooked as anything by that LOL but I was, like, Whoah!)
Saturday went really well. The first meeting went perfectly; I got across the idea of being a witness by having a sort of role-play-study, in which groups of twos and threes looked at a number of different Biblical witnesses and tried to work out what they'd say. Then talked for a few minutes about why be a witness. It went well.
We then went to Llangollen, chosen because we were nearly 50% American students so they deserved to see quality Wales, we figured! Again, it went really well, but everyone was tired out. Tea was belated because of problems cooking, by which point we were all far too shattered for the evening meeting. Cue nightmare number two; combine two meetings into one, when both parts of the talks were important to what the CU are going to be doing for the next semester, possibly the rest of this entire year. Aaaaagh!
Sunday morning went excellent. I was tired out and turned off my alarm in my sleep, but fortunately woke up at roughly the right time anyway, and everyone else was a bit late, so I was able to get things prepared again. Successfully merged the two meetings by cutting down a lot of details about prayer styles and basically making it an introduction to Intercession, while I also couldn't help but spontaneously adapt some stuff from the Vision Statement on Moses' reaction to his Commission as an example of how we can react to Christ's.
Dinner went excellent; I managed to get everyone to sign a card of thankyou to Sarah for her work in the cooking area without her even knowing it, which delighted me, and amused me a great deal. On the way back, we stopped off at Chester, for the usual photo-quiz. Got back at 7.00-ish, and are getting rid of the excess food later on today at the CU meetings!
So there you have it! WE DID IT, FOLKS! THE WEEKEND AWAY IS OVER AND WE DID IT!!!! At only half-power, 'cause Lyndsey and Andy were unable to help out at all, we successfully did the Weekend Away!!!!
YEEEEEEHAW!!! I still can barely believe it! I was like, "It's over! We've done it! YES!"
Nightmare! But we had exactly the right amount of ppl, fitted everything in (JUST!) and set off. I'd not thought we'd be able to do it, but while the minibus was being packed, I had to head off and print off some final notes for the studies - I'd intended to do them between 12.00 and 1.00, but, with Sarah being early, hadn't been able to, and had then run out of printer credits... Aaaaargh...
But, we got there. We didn't have a Friday night meeting, but just settled in, watched a hilarious Peter Kay DVD, some of them went for a walk while Claire stayed behind; I did too, because I wanted to fine-tune the study for the morning. The idea with the studies was to have them much more interactive, but, contrary to what you'd expect, the more interaction, the more work is needed. So trying to prepare three interactive meetings was a severe strain. Me and Claire wound up having a VERY deep conversation about being born-again, in which God even gave Claire a vision (she was spooked as anything by that LOL but I was, like, Whoah!)
Saturday went really well. The first meeting went perfectly; I got across the idea of being a witness by having a sort of role-play-study, in which groups of twos and threes looked at a number of different Biblical witnesses and tried to work out what they'd say. Then talked for a few minutes about why be a witness. It went well.
We then went to Llangollen, chosen because we were nearly 50% American students so they deserved to see quality Wales, we figured! Again, it went really well, but everyone was tired out. Tea was belated because of problems cooking, by which point we were all far too shattered for the evening meeting. Cue nightmare number two; combine two meetings into one, when both parts of the talks were important to what the CU are going to be doing for the next semester, possibly the rest of this entire year. Aaaaagh!
Sunday morning went excellent. I was tired out and turned off my alarm in my sleep, but fortunately woke up at roughly the right time anyway, and everyone else was a bit late, so I was able to get things prepared again. Successfully merged the two meetings by cutting down a lot of details about prayer styles and basically making it an introduction to Intercession, while I also couldn't help but spontaneously adapt some stuff from the Vision Statement on Moses' reaction to his Commission as an example of how we can react to Christ's.
Dinner went excellent; I managed to get everyone to sign a card of thankyou to Sarah for her work in the cooking area without her even knowing it, which delighted me, and amused me a great deal. On the way back, we stopped off at Chester, for the usual photo-quiz. Got back at 7.00-ish, and are getting rid of the excess food later on today at the CU meetings!
So there you have it! WE DID IT, FOLKS! THE WEEKEND AWAY IS OVER AND WE DID IT!!!! At only half-power, 'cause Lyndsey and Andy were unable to help out at all, we successfully did the Weekend Away!!!!
YEEEEEEHAW!!! I still can barely believe it! I was like, "It's over! We've done it! YES!"