Road Trippin’ August 13, 2009

Over the past two weeks, I’ve had the real privilege to travel to a number of places around the country as part of the ALOVE UK Summer Schools Road Trip Tour.

ALOVE is the SA’s youthwork department, and this summer they, and us at 24-7/SA Prayer – along with representatives from the International Development department –  have been visiting every single one of the 16 Summer Schools taking place the length and breadth of the UK & Ireland.

We have been doing an afternoon of seminars (two each, one with the juniors and one with the seniors), and then an evening ‘gig’, with sung worship, games, testimonies and a speak.

So far I have been to Stourbridge in the West Midlands, Chingford in Essex, Milton Abbas in Dorset:

As well as the Wirral and Uppingham in the West Midlands.

I had mixed feelings at the beginning of the tour. I wasn’t sure how I’d feel about being away from home all that time, and I was nervous about all the speaking, but as we got started I soon found my flow, and even when it’s felt exhausting, I’ve still loved being out on the road.

It’s such a privilege to be able to spend time with young people, to hear their stories and to be able to get across that their prayer lives can be something they don’t need to feel guilty about – that their individual personalities will shape the kind of prayer they find most enjoyable and engaging. I have loved them coming up to me at tea and saying, ‘I’ve found out that I am a snorkeller’, much to the bemusement of other staff members. It has been fab to be at the evening gigs night after night too, to see young people responding to God – some of them for the first time.

It’s also been great to visit schools we’ve had some engagement with before, to see how some of the kids have grown and to hear some of their journeys.

Apart from all the spiritual stuff, some of my other favourite Road Trip moments have to be:

• Trying to lead a seminar whilst being attacked by wasps, managing to pause and time what I was saying around loud thumps as people attempted to squish them.
• Being given free-reign to plan a prayer room at one of the schools.
• Getting stuck in the most humungous traffic jam on the way home from Chingford and singing Westlife songs to pass the time.
• The luxury of staying in a Premier Inn for one of the evenings… sounds like a little thing but after lots of travelling and very little sleep it really did feel palatial. (It was also very amusing that they’d managed to book me in as Mr Ricky Adams…)
• My taxi journey to Milton Abbas with the most cheeriest and friendly taxi driver in the world.
• Getting to know the other team members better, chatting about our lives and experiences and dreaming about the future of the church.
• Realising the value of community even more as I communicated with my friends and Wandsworth-family by text whilst away. It can feel like a bit of a parralel universe being away for so long, but I think the friendly texts and emails kept me connected and sane.

I’ll probably think of some more and have some other tales to tell after the other tour dates:  Hastings tomorrow, Scarborough on Monday, Wokingham on Wednesday & then Belfast on Thursday.