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Showing posts from 2014

This week in St. Leonard's Youth....

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Coming up this week...  It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas! So things are starting to wind down here at St. Leonard's youth, but don't worry, we will be back after the holidays. Cell... Last week was our last normal cell group meeting until after Christmas. All cells will be will starting back again on the week beginning 12th January (the first full week back at school). Here is the year 10 cell enjoying their secret santas...  This Thursday at 7.00pm - 9.30pm in the church is our yearly Cell Christmas Social, so come Thursday afternoon some of your lovely cell leaders will be decking the church out to all its Christmas socially glory.Be Excited! Its going to be great... If you want to come but still haven't paid Olly or Beth, please can you get it to us today or give us a ring to confirm you are definitely coming!  Friday Pathfinders... There will be no Friday Pathfinders this week as we have broken up for Christmas but we are

This week in St. Leonard's Youth..

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Coming up this week...  This is the last week of normal meetings until Christmas, so get set for a jolly old week. Cell... This week most cell groups will be having their own Christmas socials or will be continuing to look at the Christmas story. At the end of this week regular cell group meetings will break for the Christmas holidays until we start back on the 12th January.  This week is also the deadline for buying your cell celebration tickets, so make sure you get your money and your invite in to Olly or Beth asap.  Friday Pathfinders... Pathfinders is starting earlier than usual this week at 5.50pm (for both older and younger)! The reason we're meeting earlier is that we are going to watch a brilliant Christmas play by the amazing Riding Lights Theatere Company. Tickets normal cost £4 - £6 but for Friday Pathfinders they are £3, so make sure you come to the church hall on time!  Last week was our festive Christmas special and we had a gr

This week in St. Leonard's Youth...

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Coming up this week...  You may have noticed that there weren't very many youth groups happening last week. That was because we were having a cell leaders training session with the lovely CYM so cell leaders had the week off.  There was no Friday Pathfinders because we didn't quite have enough leaders to run.  But this week we are back baby... Cell... It is only 24 days till Christmas (your welcome)!! So this week at (most) cells we will be looking at the story of Christmas. Also this week invites for the 2014 Cell Christmas Social will be going out so keep your eyes peeled for those! :-) Friday Pathfinders... The Friday Pathfinders Christmas special is always full of Christmassy wonderfulness, but this time we are making it even more wonderfuler... we are adding a Christmas jumper dress code.  This week is the Christmas special so make sure you come wearing a Christmas jumper! We will be making Christmas crafts and playing Christmas themed gam

Our new website!!

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Hello lovely blog readers!! I will be writing a new blog soon as an update of what we have been up to, but this is a little note just to say sorry!! For those of you who have tried to visit our website recently you would have seen this: That is because the lovely Paul Cassar has been working very hard to build us a exciting new one. So soon you should be seeing something like this: This is a much needed refresh and there will hopefully be lots of new useful pages. I will let you know as soon as site goes live so keep your eyes peeled!

And we are back!!!!

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Wow, what a summer! Soul Survivor was, as it always is, amazing this year. If you were at St. Leonard's on the 7th September you will have heard all about it, but for those of you who weren't: We took 30 young people and 4 leaders with us this year and were joined by a group from Leicester. So all told we had group of 45. Which looked pretty good when we were all in fancy dress. But more than that, it was amazing to see how much God moved people along in their faith, simply because they set aside some time to focus on Him. What was also amazing was that a pretty incredible new brother of mine gave his life to God that week; it is has been brilliant to see what God has been doing in him since. Here is a little photo montage to give you a taste of what it was like:  After that we were straight back into the normal running of things for September. Cell groups have been running the 'It's Time' materials suggested by Open Doors, CYFA are looking at what

July

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Well, June zoomed by! Here we are with less than two weeks left of the school term, which means two weeks left of being a minion :( The last month has been great, with lots going on in the youth work. Some highlights have been: All of the Soul Survivor fundraising including a day helping out at a tag-rugby tournament, BBQ-ing at the folk festival, and Team Man (HUUUUUH!) at the carnival. A huge massive thank you to all of the young people who came along and helped out! We are close to our fundraising target and it's been fun to spend some time together before we go to Soul Survivor in August.  On Thursday 3rd July, most of the current and new cell group leaders had a training meeting led by the fabulous Nick Page, focusing on leading Bible studies with cell groups. It was really interesting and gave us all lots of ideas. Olly had a fun week in Sweden! Obviously we missed him in the office, but it was a great opportunity and glad he did it.  David Cameron came to visit Eyns

June

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Hello again - I have just said to Olly it feels like only yesterday that I was writing the last blog, yet it was almost a month ago!  June and July are very busy months for us, which is exciting/tiring/interesting, but ultimately should be a lot of fun and the best way to end (except for Soul Survivor of course) what has been an amazing year for St Leonards youth. I am going to bullet point now, as there is quite a lot to remember: Friday Pathfinders is going to be epic this week! We've hired an inflatable bungee run and some sumo suits, and we're also very excited to be inviting the year sixes along too. Next week is also going to be interesting as we have a special guest coming to visit... On Sunday, Olly jets off to sunny (?) Sweden (I literally have no idea what the weather is like there) to help out on a confirmation camp. It should be a great opportunity to do some youth work in a different culture and setting. Best of luck Sweden ;) never fear, he'll be back

May

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Hello, we hope this blog finds you well! We've had a great start to the term and lots more coming up... We have been focussing on fundraising for Soul Survivor quite a bit. On Saturday we painted faces, washed cars, fixed computers and waited tables all in our effort to raise money! (It was the Community Day in Eynsham and some of our young people were hired out as waiters/waitresses at a party.) We have also been swimming as much as we can to try and make the distance from Eynsham to Soul Survivor (approximately 4184 lengths of a 25 metre pool) and been getting in as many sponsors as possible.  If you would like to sponsor us, we would be really grateful! Please get in touch with one of us or add it to the sponsor form at the back of church. Also, if you bought one of the promises from the promise auction, do make sure you get in touch with the young person and claim your promise.  A couple of weeks ago, we had Katie and Elise come and join us for a week of work experience. T

Happy Easter to you all :)

Hello again. First of all I need to apologise for not blogging in so long! I had written one for February but for some reason, didn't publish it. You can be transported back in time and read about what we got up to in February in the previous post before this one.  The beginning of March saw the epic trip to Viney Hill for the Youth Weekend Away. We had 39 young people, 9 leaders, 4 cooking staff, 3 mini-buses and a partridge in a pear tree (I lied about that bit - there were no birds. Or trees.) It was SO MUCH fun! We arrived on the Friday night, set up our stuff, unpacked, had hot chocolate, played games, and eventually went to bed. Saturday saw some team challenges, an afternoon of activities (caving, raft building, or crate stacking and a low ropes course), a night hike and of course a camp fire. Then on Sunday we had a church service (after a delicious cooked breakfast), packing, loading up mini buses, a couple more rounds of tray bash, some creme egg eating and then the jo

An extremely late February post...

Hellooooo. I can't believe how much time has passed since the last blog.  Olly, Jo, Beth and I went on retreat a couple of weekends ago to Center Parcs in Sherwood Forest where Soul Survivor were holding their annual SoulNet retreat for youth workers. It was a fantastic weekend with lots of interesting talks and plenty of time to just worship and be with God. We all felt refreshed coming back, although not much sleeping happened with all the "enforced fun" that Olly insisted on!! It was a lot of fun though, especially playing Pigeon Ball in the pool, going round and round the rapids and spending Monday afternoon in the spa relaxing. Again, we felt that God had things to say to us and were all struck again by his power and what he can do if we have faith!  This term we have lots coming up within the youth work, as always. There is the youth celebration service this Sunday, the 16th February, at 6pm. Following the success of the last one, we're all looking for

First post of 2014! Happy New Year!

Guess who's back?! Happy new year to you all! Here at St Leonards Youth HQ (not actually called that, but sounds way cooler than “the office”) , we are very excited for what 2014 holds. There are a few dates which you can put in your new diaries: On the 26 th January we are holding a promise auction after the 10.45am church service at St Leonard's church. Just to sweeten the deal, we will also be having a cake sale! All proceeds will go towards our trip to Soul Survivor in the summer. We will also be having cake sales on the last Sunday of each month from February – April, with all the money going into the Soul Survivor pot. The next cell celebration service will be on the 9 th February. After the success of the previous one, we are looking forward to seeing what the cell groups can come up with this time and worshipping God all together again. The youth weekend away is the 28 th  February (leaving after school) until 2 nd March. This is going to