United Youth Fellowship Weekend Away

On the second weekend of April, West Kirby United Youth Fellowship filled a small convoy of cars to embark on their ‘WEEKEND AWAY’ in Rufford near Ormskirk. The party included twelve of the young members accompanied by five youth leaders including Dan Sach, West Kirby Churches’ youth worker, Anne Myers from the URC, two student youth workers from Chester College and yours truly.

The venue was to be the Rufford Centre, a Methodist Church that has been converted into an activity centre with sleeping and cooking facilities whilst retaining a small chapel for regular Sunday services. It is situated on the edge of open farmland and has a large, wooded nature reserve about five minutes walk away that is ideal for games, activities and walks.

The student leaders under Dan’s supervision worked hard to put together a weekend with activities centred on the theme of poverty; what it is and what we might do to try and fight it.

One of the regular features throughout the weekend was to be the ‘wide’ games in the woods. (No, I don’t know why they were wide). These were used to help get some aspect of the theme across. For instance in one game, a team was allowed to cheat, giving them an advantage over the others. At the end the non-cheaters were asked how they felt eg excluded, disadvantaged. This helped later when exploring what poverty actually is and that it does not always entail monetary poverty or hunger.

Typical of the weekend’s activities was Saturday morning that saw us split into groups to plan and cost a week’s meals for a family of four for less than £20. The young people actually did achieve this although the menus were not hugely wholesome or healthy. Following that, for Saturday lunch, we all went to the local Supermarket and were given £1 with which to buy enough for a ‘proper’ meal (ie not sweets and crisps.) Everyone actually did achieve this but again, the results were not particularly inspiring. The aim was to show that we are actually very fortunate compared to many who struggle to cope on little money and that they may actually be near to us in West Kirby, and not confined to say, inner city areas.

A praise and worship session was held in the Chapel on Saturday evening before going out into the woods for another ‘wide’ game. Then everyone stayed up late (again).

A brain storming session was held on Sunday morning to try and come up with some ideas the group could use to help alleviate poverty. These ranged from purely keeping abreast of needs and causes in the area so that these could be promoted at any available opportunity to schemes to regularly collect money from schools and arrange food discarded from supermarkets but still wholesome to be distributed to those in need. After this the group attended the Morning Service in the Chapel, participating by doing some of the Bible readings and prayers.

Amongst all this, the young members did all the cooking and clearing up by rota, played games, chilled out and generally had a good time. I don’t know why they weren’t as tired at the end of it as I was though.

Dave Cashen

May 2008