Our time in Islington has drawn to a close. Today Ezequiel and I returned to the house on Station Road whilst Amy went back to the Dartmouth Road house. We've had an incredible time here. I wrote a little in an earlier post about what we've been doing here. We spent the entirety of last week working with a local kids camp, called Dover Soul after the estate it's annually held in, which ran for a few hours every afternoon. It was very different from the camp in Scotland but still a lot of fun.
The five of us from YWAM were separated into one of four groups (red, green, blue and yellow) as team leaders. We had to wear clothing that represents our team. I was one of the adults in the green team, and thankfully I had remembered to pick up a shirt in Glasgow (the shirt was being given away by the WildFire staff). We spent five afternoons, with the teams, and competing against each other in a series of games and other activities. There were a number of people who were leading the whole event and they were keeping a tally of the scores and also ran Dover Soul according to the schedule. This year's theme had been space so all the talks were about space. We had short dramatized stories everyday and small group times. We encouraged the kids to think and talk about what they thought of the story and about God. Whilst the 5-12 year olds were with us, the pastor's wife was running a crèche for the under 5's.
On Sunday morning, we had the community service of thanksgiving at the Green Space, where we had Dover Soul. The camp has had increasing support from the local community over the years (this was the eleventh camp that's been run) so we had a few people from the community come to the service and stay for the barbecue afterwards. After we'd taken the equipment down and brought back to the church, the four YWAMers left at the church (one of the girls who'd joined us had weekend duties so had to go back to Dartmouth Road) had been invited to s meal with a family from the church. We've spent the last few days helping the church where they've needed help. So we've been sorting things out, washing the toys that had been used by the crèche and going on follow up visits. It's been nice being able to see what we were advertising when Ezequiel and I were here at the beginning of July with the DTS.I'll post again soon... As I'm not too sure what the next few days are looking like. Next week we've got another kids camp, which I'm looking forwards to (even though it's my third kids camp in a row).
Photographs: a squirrel outside the church we've been staying in and the Dover Soul sign that the DTS made. I took this photo on Friday, at the end of the week, so that's why it's falling apart a little.