Harrington SUFM 2006/2007

Jan 9, 20:11

A very crazy few weeks it’s been…

The Lead-Up


As many will have known, around the middle of last year I got approached to leave my beach mission at Halliday’s Point and join a start-up team at Harrington. After some thought I decided to give it a crack and joined. I must admit I felt quite uneasy going on the actual mission itself, having missed all but two of the meetings, barely knowing those members of the team I hadn’t recruited, and having only a half dozen or so team members who’d been on a mission before.

How wrong I was!!

The Mission


I was greatly humbled over the course of the ten days at Harrington by the incredibly gifts God buried us in to restart the annual mission there. To begin with, our site was great. Despite being a little out of the way at the far end of the park, we had stacks of room to play games with the kids, a permanent kitchen, hot running water, and an attached carpark (in which to house another great blessing – a bus!).
This took a lot of hassles out of being so far from the beach (about 10 minutes walk to one, or a 5 minute drive to another) so many thanks to the kind folk at Taree Christian School!

I was in charge of the teen section of the mission which involved afternoon and night programmes right from the first day of mission. We began with only five or so JT’s on the first night and peaked at twenty-three at our Battle of the Sexes night. Overall I think we averaged around a dozen or so for most activities… A large part of what we envisaged doing was building some credibility in the park for subsequent missions to use and so were quite surprised and thankful to God for the number of teens who came.
One thing that Jimi and I wanted to ensure we did was to not get stuck only targeting the non-Christian teens. While evangelism is at the heart of beach mission, we know from our experience that there are often Christian or at least churched teens at the parks as well – so we tried to ensure our programme was sufficiently meaty to challenge them, particularly in the area of maturity. We were enormously encouraged when one girl we spent a great deal of late night/early morning discussions with wrote us a little note before she left the park to tell us how grateful she was for our help and how much she had been challenged to think harder about matters of faith to make sure she understood God on His terms. This also came out on our largely-impromptu Q&A panel on the night of the camp-out when the majority of the questions came from kids of Christian families.
My section proved to be some of the most willing and able bunch I’ve worked with in ministry; I take it as a good sign when you have to tell people to take a rest rather than having to motivate them to do things – really guys: thank you!!

The Stranger Side…


Aside from the strangely-popular ‘Pancreas’ and ‘Flexor Digitorum’ games (of which Gareth and I are so fond), we had some other experiences worthy of note:
  • The first card game needing risk management (Ultimate Uno gained it’s first casualty in the form of a broken finger!)
  • The discovery (and subsequent projectile-isation) of an unknown marine species at Crowdy Head beach
  • An apparent sign over my head calling all drunkards to gather to me. I spoke to around seven for more than half an hour over the course of mission with two of note. Drunk 1 returned to our site a few times in one night growing increasingly agro each time. At one point he simply said the word ‘resurrection’ and was intent on taking Naphe’s head off until I distracted him by rattling off everything I knew about the doctrine. Drunk 2 surprised us on the JT’s campout. Fearing it was Drunk 1 back for a second round I sealed the kids in the tent and Jimi and I went to investigate to find a biker who’d been to the site 23 years before as a child. This big, bearded, tattooed man then spent the next two hours pouring his heart out to us and literally crying on my shoulder. Certainly didn’t see that one coming…
  • Boys winning a ‘Battle of the Sexes’ quiz for the first time to my knowledge. I am a bit perturbed by their knowledge of chick flicks though…

The Aftermath


Immediately after mission, with nary a breath taken, a few of us from Credo embarked on the long-awaited ‘Surf-venture.’ Kimi, Kat DC, Aki, Zu, and I spent a sleepless night travelling to Newcastle with the aim of relaxing for a few days and teaching the aforementioned the joys of riding waves. Unfortunately, we picked the three most overcast days in history, with water temps somewhere in the Artic region (I have never had my legs lose feeling in the surf before). As such, we didn’t get all that much surfing done, but did get to catch up with our friends at Belmont Baps from Harro. I’ve decided the vagrant lifestyle suits me…itinerant ministry here I come! :-p

Prayer Points


Please be praying for all the people we contacted, that we would have shone like lights in the park.
Pray particularly for the 30 or so teens we made contact with, and the half dozen or so who we spent a lot of time talking with.
Thank God for one MM who spent a whole night reading a book of Bible stories and pray for him as he was too afraid to take the book home.
Thank God for the amazing blessings He poured out on us, and pray that in everything we did He might have been glorified!

-J


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