We have had a busy few days, helping out with the team of student ministers from Bristol Baptist College. We were especially busy on Saturday as we ran our first children's event! The church hired a concrete football pitch near the church and we ran children's games for a couple of hours in the morning. Me and Neil organised a lot of the activities, and we were nervous in the run-up, as our language is still limited and we were also helping out with other things that the team was involved with.
We also had a lesson in the importance of flexibility, as the event was originally going to be a children's event, and then aimed more at young people, and then changed back to a children's event! I did some planning for a youth event on the theme of choice, which I would love to run at some point, but was probably over ambitious for this stage and it would also be great to plan it more with other people from the church, as I am hoping that it will be a good foundation for youth work in the future.
We ran a number of activities and games, ranging from football skills, face painting, relay games, parachute games, making juggling balls and plate spinning! The event didn't go exactly as we had planned, but the children appeared to be having lots of fun and there were lots of smiling faces. Over the course of the morning, we saw around 40 people, and we were able to give them all a goody bag, which included info about our church. This was all possible because of the skills and enthusiasm of the Bristol team, who got stuck in with the universal language of play and were all prepared to go with the flow a little bit. I was also encouraged that one of the families from the church also came along and joined in with the fun.
One of the other encouragements for us was how well we feel we got on with a number of the children. I feel we connected well with them, and they were very patient with our bad Spanish! I pray that this will be a good springboard for relationships and groups in the future.
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