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Week in fishguard

posted by: John on 18 October 2007 @ 10:57

Well we have just returned to our various corners of Wales with after a great week in Fishguard. The team for the week was: Mark Beacher, Abi Williams and myself. We took lessons on the theme of 'Prayer', 'Identity' and 'what is a Christian?'. I had a great week in school - the pupils were all really well behaved and very pleasant to talk to making it a pleasure to go into the school. I even had a couple of pupils come up to me and thank the team for the lessons we had done - that is a very rare thing in school.

Abi and Mark were both brilliant at communicating with the pupils in lessons and in an assembly we took on Friday lunchtime on the theme of peer pressure. Mark and I did a little skit, I did a talk and Abi played a song which explained how her faith helps her to be brave in the face of a crowd. A number of teachers and pupils thanked us again after the assembly.

That evening we took an event in the St Mary's church hall - it was a presentation called 'The God Story' Mark and I did a number of sketches and Abi played a number of songs - that reflected on the theme that we were following. Mark shared his testimony and I challenged people to consider the challenge of the gospel story - Abi rounded it up by singing the song 'God shaped Hole' and we gave the young people a chance to respond to the challeenge.

All in all a great week -at the moment we are planning some more weeks like this but opportunities will be limited so let us know as soon as possible if you'd like us to come and work with your church/ and school.

God bless

John

john's got married

posted by: Mark on 08 October 2007 @ 14:47

Hello guy's just a update on what we are up to at the moment. John has just got married to x team member racheal milner. there just got back from the hunniemoon in Rome. So now johns living in north wales in a big house, apprently with a games room. (my bedroom when i go to stay)
but yeah we got our first school mission this week in fishguard. we are in wednesday thursday and friday. we also finishing off the week with a small event in a local church. we got guest joining us to add her musical expertese. this guest take the form of Abi williams. We are teaching, Prayer, what is a chirstian? and Identity lessons its going to be an amazing few days and ill make sure all you guys know just how well it went

God bless

Mark

Insite @ Radyr

posted by: Mark on 14 September 2007 @ 09:30

hey, new school year, new school Cymru team. my names mark, I'm 19 years old and this my second year with Ignite. Last year i did an admin based year as Ignite's graphic designer. However i did take some time out from behind my desk to go into school with last years team. After every time i went into school i came out buzz-in and so i decided to do this year.

Work started straight away as we started a new C.U. in Radyr high school. As Christian union isn't the coolest of names. we decided to call it Insite. this scheme is being run by not only the Cymru team but by a team of local pastors and other volunteers. Insite is running over tuesday lunch times. and for the first four weeks we will be taking the Urban Sanctuary bus.

We had our first visit tuesday gone. It really was amazing to see how much the guys at the school loved it. there really engaged with every thing on board and half them couldn't believe it was free. We had a lot of non-christians join us and some very interesting questions we brought up about loads of different issues. i look forward to getting into the school next tuesday and just being able to talk about what i believe to kids that our asking all the questions.

Flames of Fire

posted by: Zach on 03 August 2007 @ 12:09

Wow. This will be my very last post to the Cymru Blog.

Everyone is running around doing last minute things in preparation for New Wine Flames of Fire next week in Builth Wells.

Each of us on the team has a different responsibility next week. I'm heading up the late night program every night and speaking a few times during the week. John is involved with just about everything in the Furnace speaking for quite a few celebrations and workshops. Michelle is helping out with the prayer ministry, specifically the 11-15s part of it. And Rhi is in charge of the selling of all the Ignite merchandise for the week.
This is that last big thing we all do together as a team. It's going to be a lot of fun camping and working together. It will be the very last thing I do with Ignite this year. One week from tomorrow I will be flying back to Fort Wayne, Indiana. The team, however, plows ahead with work over the next few weeks.

After F.o.F. John is going to be speaking at a summer camp. Rhiannon and Michelle are going to Soul Survivor and will be representing Ignite. The week after that John and Mark will be representing Ignite at Soul Survivor.

The past weeks have been packed full with loads of work preparing all our roles in Builth Wells. With all the anticipation, everyone is looking forward to a busy, but exciting week.

Busy couple of weeks!

posted by: John on 02 July 2007 @ 11:29

Well since Zach last wrote to you way back on the 8th of June the Cymru team have not been sleeping as you may have assumed - in fact we've been busier than ever.

Following our week in St Cyres we finished off a few loose ends of lessons that we hadn't managed to fit into the first week and did our first couple of lessons in Llanrumney High - The following week we were in Llanrumney all day every day taking a variety of lessons and working with the Ez36 bus one lunch time - it was great to be able to finally do lessons in Llanrumney after going in regularly with the bus throughout the year.

The week after that was a little quieter with the team taking a well earned break on Monday and Tuesday - though I was backin work on Tueseday to attend a Furnace (old teens + youn adults @ Flames of Fire) planning meeting and later prepare some seminars and talks for it.

We spent Wednesday going over and refininfg our Suffering lesson ready to head back into St Cyre's for the lessons on Thursday and Friday and into this week. So far we have had the best response to this lesson that we have had to any lesson this year!

During this couple of weeks we also took youth groups in Pontypridd and with Mackintosh Evangelical Church (pictured) - We had a great time interacting with the kids in a more informal setting and really enjoyed both meetings.

We have another quieer couple of weeks before dashing headlong into a crazy summer holiday of activitey with Beach Mission, Church camps, Flames of Fire and Soul Survivor all on our to do list! Pray that God would give us the energy!!

A week in St. Cyres

posted by: Zach on 08 June 2007 @ 14:22

Salutations to all the lovely Cymru Blog readers! The Cymru Team has just finished a fantastic week in St. Cyres school. We've had a lovely time doing two of our lessons, creation and prayer, for years 7 and 8.

We changed our creation lesson a little adding some interesting facts about the human body that the students really enjoyed. here's one of them:
"The human heart pumps some 100,000 times a day pumping blood through about 80,000 miles of blood vessels. That is equivalent to over 6000 times around the world!"
We've had to make out prayer lesson slightly simpler since we were sharing it with year 8's as opposed to year 10's for which the lesson was written. We added a drama starring Michelle and me. We also lets kids have a chance at writing their own version of the Lord's Prayer. Some students have made it into raps and others have turned it into a text message. The lesson has been a lot of fun and the students have enjoyed it.

Next week we have more lesson in St. Cyres and a few booking in a new school for us - Llanrumney. We've done the EZ36 bus in Llanrumney many times before but it will be our first time there to do RE lessons. Keep us in your prayers.

Also, the Cyrmu house has grown ever so slightly with a new resident living inside its walls. Jono, my best friend, from America is staying with us for a while before he travels to the Canary Islands for some mission work. I've certainly enjoyed the American company.

Offensive Mission!

posted by: Michelle on 05 June 2007 @ 16:24

The Cymru team have all just completed a week mission with Dai and the Offensive group. The week started off with a day of prayer on Monday, which was amazing although we all went straight into evangelism while praying. Then Monday evening we went down and did some open air worship outside the welsh assembly building at Cardiff bay.

Tuesday we had some teaching in the morning then head out to Cardiff to give out pack lunches to the homeless.

On wednesday it was raining so we stayed at City temple praying and designing our own tract. We then went out in the afternoon and shared the gospel with anyone in sight of us in Cardiff city centre.

Thursday we went out into Queen Street and sang some worship songs and did some drama, this was an amazing experience for all the team.

Friday we went into “Bute Park” to pray on a pilgrim stone then sang a few worship songs together as a group, which was amazing. Then we split up, most of the girls went back to Queen Street to sing and to give out free water with tracts, as the weather was so hot.

To finish an amazing week off we held an event “Get the light” at City temple in the evening which was amazing, a couple of the group gave their testimonies and Zach did a talk on ” Light”. We also had a few people who came to sing some songs they wrote too, Abi Williams from the office with her friend Pete and then also we had the legend Tim Banister and then we had an ace DJ Carl.

I also had the opportunity in going out into Cardif center in the night to do some Nightclub outreach with another member of the team and Dave Pritchard. It was an amazing experience for me it was really hard for me seeing all the people who were hurting. We had some good conversations and met some cool people too.

All in all an awesome week had by all.

Both challenging and exciting.

God Bless
Michelle

Great week in Hartridge

posted by: John on 25 May 2007 @ 10:35

We've just finished a great week in Hartridge High in which we road tested 2 new lessons (Creation and Suffering) for the first time! The two subjects linked well and we were able to have some great discussions. A particular highlight was a drama performed by Michelle and Zach which received positive feedback from both staff and pupils alike Michelle did a great job since she only started learning the part a week before - they even got a round of applause from one class!

We also took lessons on the Bible and relationships and it was great to see pupils really engaging in the subjects that we were discussing. A particular highlight was sharing lunch with 3 students discussing our beliefs and their beliefs. We spent the whole of lunch chatting and then they turned up at the end of our last lesson to carry on talking!

We have a crazy run in to the end of term with only a couple of days when we are not actually in school! We will be travelling to Llanrumney and Cardigan and also taking a number of lessons in St Cyres' two campuses in Dinas Powys and Penarth.

Next week the team will be joining the summer offensive during Half term taking the message to the streets of Cardiff!!

Creation lesson final preparations...

posted by: John on 15 May 2007 @ 16:35

We are finalising our creation lessona and preparing to shoot our film that will make up part of the lesson tommorrow. Here you can see Zach hard at work on the lesson - it also includes a giant carrot costume which we may show you in action tommorrow... all good fun.

Cymru team hit the road... again.

posted by: John on 14 May 2007 @ 13:49

After a relatively quiet period of lesson preparation for the Cymru team we are about to go into our busiest time of the year yet kicking off with a week in Hartridge High (Newport) where we will be taking lessons on: Creation, The Bible, Relationships and Suffering. It should be a great week - we are looking forward to returning to Hartridge as we had a great week there last time we were there.

We follow that up by taking part in the summer offensive over half term week. We are then straight back into school with a couple of weeks in St Cyres and Llanrumney High schools... and the bookings keep coming in - it looks as though we will be heading over to North Pembrokeshire for a few days working in Fishguard High and possibley linking up with some local Youth groups. There are also possibilities in a number of Cardiff schools, Cardigan and North Wales - one thing is for sure: if all of these schools get back to us with bookings we will have to start turning some away and book for next year instead - this is a problem we would love to have!

Pembrokeshire 2.0

posted by: Zach on 02 April 2007 @ 16:27

It's being posted a little late but here it is:

Two weeks ago the Cymru Team traveled across Wales to Haverfordwest, Pembrokeshire for another packed week of schools work. This week we were in Sir Thomas Picton School. We had about 3-4 lessons each day. Our Easter/Resurrection and persecution/discrimination lessons were among the lessons we presented. We also presented two new lessons - Why we follow Jesus and Relationships. Both went very well for being such recently created lessons. The week was brought to an end with a youth event at The Hive.

One specific moment that the team enjoyed was when we went to a Children's Evening Club in Neyland Thursday evening. Opposed to our normal demographic of 12+ year-olds, we spent a wonderful evening with 6-12 year-olds dancing to songs, telling Bible stories, playing games, and sharing snacks. It was an amazing time. At one point we were all on the floor sharing which Bible stories we loved.

We specifically focused on Peter walking on water to Jesus and how afraid he was. Every child then wanted to share everything they themselves find scary. I even confessed my fear of whales (spelling correct - not to be confused with the country). We concluded that in the same way Jesus was at Peter's side when he was afraid, He is also at our side all the time. Finally I prayed with them. It was such a pleasant moment to see 30 rowdy kids bowing their heads in silence for God.

The Hive

posted by: Michelle on 26 March 2007 @ 15:35

We did an event in a place called " The Hive" in Pembrokeshire on the 23rd of March.

It was great to see lots of young people from "Sir Thomas Picton" & "Tasker Milward" and also some young people from local churches. We had around 100 people worshiping god. Mark gave his testimony, Zach hosted the night John gave a small talk and there was also an amazing Drama.

Altogether it was an awesome night.

Week in Pembrokeshire

posted by: John on 13 March 2007 @ 10:44

We have just returned from a week in pembrokeshire taking lessons in my old School - Tasker Milward. Taught our Easter lesson with a number of classes and also took the CU in Taskers on the Tuesday. The lessons went really well and wre a great opportunity to explore the evidence for and against the Christian view of Jesus. It was a great opportunity to answer a lot of peoples questions about Jesus and Christianity. It was great to have an open discussion on a numbe of issues. The great thing about this lesson is that it is never the same two times in a row as a lot of it is a discussion with the class based on the evidence they have in front of them. This meant that some times we got through most of the evicence folders and sometimes only one or two - but we always had an interesting discussion.

A particular highlight for me was on Friday when we visited the CU at Ysgol Dewi Sant - this was the school where I did my main teaching practise in my PGCE in 2004. When I was there there was no CU and it was so exciting to see a dozen or so enthusiastic young people meeting together to learn more about God and his plans for them. The girls that run the CU were all in one of the classes that I used to teach so it was so exciting to see them leading that work in the school - we hope that we will have the opportunity to work with them again soon.

SYNCHRHONIZE

posted by: Michelle on 12 March 2007 @ 11:20

Last week the team attended an event called SYNCHRHONIZE in Narberth, West Wales, the night started off with a few icebrakers then the Sonflowerz lead us into some worship, it was awesome to see a room full of young people from different denominations worshiping god together. Nigel gave a talk on the welsh revival and an awesome encouraging message on how we can impact our nation.