eq:mission March 2011

Our eq:missions continue to impact communities across the UK as well as young people from Nottingham in their faith. Our latest adventure took a team of young people to Orford in Warrington. Working with Warrington YfC and Bethel Free Church in Orford the team stepped out of their comfort zones throughout the weekend.

Once again the young people turned up at the NYfC office not knowing where they were going to end up. This time it was slightly longer mission as we started on the Friday night rather than the Saturday morning. The reason for that? the team were involved in speaking at UNITE Warrington YfC's youth worship event. This was a great time of worship and then the young people all shared what it meant to them to 'step out of the boat.' We then went to our accommodation where we were going to spend the weekend. Bethel Church were especially generous with the overnight heating. For the Saturday we were joined by a team from Sheffield as we went out door knocking asking people to help with a questionnaire that was put together by Bethel Church and inviting them to the fun day in the afternoon.

The fun day consisted of a football cage, face painting, free bbq, table tennis, volleyball and karaoke. Over 150 people turned up for the fun day where the young people helped lead the various activities. The Church were really please as there were 4 or 5 new families that they hadn't come into contact with before. We had some really good conversations, with one woman saying she had used to go to church but had only gone 2 or 3 times but after this day she was going to start going again.

The team then went and had a good feed at Pizza Hut before planning for the next mornings service. The young people led worship, ran a drama, shared what they had done the day before and what it meant to them to be ambassadors in their schools and colleges. Each of the young people saw God use them in an amazing way throughout the weekend from: 'I was really worried about whether people would like me, but God has shown me that i am to be more confident.' to 'it was really good to see that God used us to make a difference in peoples lives and make them feel good about the Church.'

The fact that the Church wouldn't have done the whole event if we hadn't turned up meant that we really had made a difference in that community. Keep checking out facebook and twitter for information of our November eq:mission later in the year.