In July, Sublime did Walk the Walls! This was a 100 mile prayer walk around the greater London area. It was 6 days of sleeping on church floors, lots of walking, and for me, accompanying our wonderful van driver to pick up food for lunches and coffees (mostly just to take a break from the walking). We stopped at various places along the walk each day to pray for the area, and the issues going on in that place. Each night we stayed at a new church on the way. The churches provided our team of about 15 people with dinner each night, and then we would have a worship prayer event for the community. Each night looked a little different, simply because each church we went to was different. Some had about 20 people attending, others had closer to 40. It was really interesting seeing the different church cultures in such short distance!
After walk the walls (and a few days of recovery) I served at a Holiday club that one of my local churches was putting on in Bromley. This is similar to a Vacation Bible School we would do in the States. I spent two mornings passing out fliers on the high street. Then 3 days serving at the actual event which was manic! It was Minion themed, and there were SO MANY KIDS! To my knowledge, most of the families were not involved with church. We had many craft options for kids to choose between, loud music, a bible story time, and drinks and snacks afterwards. There were many people from the church involved who were engaging with parents throughout the week. My main job was supervising a craft table, and assisting kids who needed help with the difficult tasks of gluing and sticking!
In the beginning of August, my fellow intern and myself were sent into one of the secondary schools in our area. Secondary school is for young people between the ages of 11 and 16. So it is similar to middle school and high school. This was a Church of England school, which means Christian affiliation is okay, but not mandatory. They were running a transition week for the incoming 11 year old students, giving them a chance to get used to the school and to new classmates before school starts in Autumn. We were asked to run morning worship at the beginning of each day for two weeks. So we were given slide shows and themes for each day. We prepared a short talk for each days theme, such as letting things go, being kind, and facing challenges. We subtly related these themes to the Bible and the teachings of Jesus. After our talk, we had an art/discussion activity that related to our topic. It was a lot of fun! There was about 100 students in total. It was new for me to lead so many students in that type of context, and I really enjoyed it!
At the end of August was the legendary SOUL SURVIVOR. This is a well known camp out that I have been hearing about since BEFORE I arrived in January! Our youth group joined with another youth group from one of the local churches. All together there was about 30 of us on our campsite, and about 9,000 in total on the camp ground. It was huge! There was a GIANT tent set up that fit over 10,000 people in it, plus a stage. It was incredibly impressive. We were there a total of 6 days. On the first night, three of our youth became Christians for the first time, which was a very exciting way to start out the week! Each day was filled with seminars, worship and prayer sessions, and many events to keep the youth going. I was able to get to know the youth a lot more, and have some really good conversations with them about things they were stressing about, about their faith, and about being a Christian. By the end of the week we were all exhausted, but it was a really great time!
As we returned to Bromley, the last two German interns were flying home. It was very sad saying goodbye! So I am officially the sole intern left. But, Sublime will be receiving six new German interns in the beginning of September, one of which I will be working very closely with. I am officially "the old intern", but it will be nice being able to show the new guys how everything works, and help them get adjusted to England.
A photo of most of our group at Soul Survivor, saying goodbye to Yee-Sol!
