Youth Alpha Weekend Away. SO TIRED!

I've been a lazy blogger again. Sorry.

Actually, it's not so much laziness as extreme tiredness! The weekend just gone was the Youth Alpha Active Weekend Away, which meant a weekend spent entirely with 20-something 11-14 year olds. I have to say, it was tremendous fun and went really well ... but I've never been so tired as I was on Monday morning. It physically hurt to move. I managed to get out of bed for staff meeting, but only just!

As I said, the weekend was great. We had three sessions on the Holy Spirit, went sno-tubing on the Saturday, had a water-fight, ate food, played football and frisbie, and I preached at Measham Baptist Church - my home church and the venue for our weekend - on the Sunday morning. Inexplicably, I almost burst into tears halfway through my talk ... not something I normally do. I was chatting to Clare about that, and we thought that it was a combination of tiredness, emotion at being "home" and EITHER tears left to come about the fairly emotional story I was telling, or that the story tapped into something I am currently upset about. Not sure which, not sure what ... I'll let you know when I've processed it.

One more indication of how tired I was... on the way home from Derby to Bristol, a journey that I have done with no problem, quite literally hundreds of times... I GOT LOST! I took the wrong lane and ended up on the M5 North! Laura still can't quite believe I did it!

A quick word too, once again, for Emma, Ruth and James (pictured). They came along as young leaders and worked really hard. They really got stuck in and made the whole weekend far more enjoyable for me (even if James did keep me awake on Saturday night because he thought "there was a ghost downstairs. Wimp!). Also, Ruth and Emma kept me awake, too, but this time when they were supposed to ... while I was driving the bus! So cheers, guys!

It's the first time that Trevor has organised a weekend away on his own, and I have to say, it was almost flawless. Still, if you learn from the best...

And Cath was great too. She was very worried about her talk, but it went really well, and she was actually in her element on residential, as I suspected she might be!

There's stuff to update you on that's not about the weekend away ... quite a lot, actually ... but I'm going to save that for tomorrow (when I promise I will post it!). More to follow... see you then.