Going Bananas - Again

The last week in August saw St. Bart's Church being taken over by a group of wildly excited children, teenagers and adults as the Quorn Churches Holiday Club happened again.

This year, we decided that we would redo the Holiday Club 'Going Bananas' (which we did 5 years ago) as it worked well then. The idea that each day we meet someone who has 'Gone Bananas' (that is, done something out of the ordinary) for God. We changed from the Scripture Union set of notes as we decided to concentrate this time on 5 people who met Jesus while he was here on earth. These 5 were Zacchaeus, the boy with the 5 loaves and 2 fish, the leper who returned to thank Jesus for healing him, the Soldier at the cross and Mary Magdalene.

As in recent years we ran the club from Wednesday through to Sunday and were again pleased to see a lot of parents, friends and family come along for the final session. They must realise by now that there is a chance that they are going to get wet - and they still come!

We had four age-groups running from 5 up to 13 and it was good to see quite a good balance in the number of children in each group. Following the success of last year we decided to run it again at St. Barts because there are better rooms to meet in, and because the church is more central to the village, and therefore more visible. We even managed to move the Holiday Club out of the Church into the Church Rooms on the Saturday to accommodate a wedding that had the prior booking. I wonder if they were a little confused when they saw some very strange people dressed up in clothes of Jesus time around the village, and even loitering at the back entrance to the Church.

After three years of working together like this, it seems that the people from the two churches are really working together as a team - it really is great to be part of this.

The barbecue on Saturday evening at Stafford Orchard was also very enjoyable - good food, good weather and again a good number of children and families coming along.

We praise God that during the week there were no serious accidents and that we were able to tell 70+ children and their parents something about the wonder of the love that was shown to each one of us by Jesus coming to be our Saviour. Please pray that the words that they heard during that time will be fed and watered by the Holy Spirit and come to fruition in His time.

During the week, there was some video coverage made and it is hoped that we will be able to show this one evening fairly soon. I guess this will be of most interest to those who were involved, but if you would like to come and get a better insight into what goes on (in relative safety!) do please feel free to come along. Who knows, you may even want to get involved next year.

Colin Shipway

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