We have had a busy but fantastic few months in the second quarter and into early summer of this year as we have worked among the young folks in Tillydrone. Groups and activities have gone well and attendance and engagement has remained high despite the build up to the school summer holidays. We have been very encouraged with the engagement of the young folks and we have made some fantastic progress with some of them who we are meeting with regularly.
The groups and activities finished for the summer when the school holidays commenced, however our focus then switched to completing the preparations for the Tillydrone Holiday Summer Mission, details of which are included below. Following the Mission Week, the youth team and volunteers finished for the summer and are enjoying some much needed ‘R & R’ in preparation for the restart of activities in early September.
- Summer Mission Week
From 11th – 15th July, we partnered with Donside Community Church and Lighthouse Support Centre to plan and assist in running their first Mission Week in the Tillydrone area. We wanted to create an opportunity for people in Tillydrone, irrespective of age, to come together, have fun and hear the gospel. This was the first time that anything like this had been attempted and we approached the week with a great deal of excitement but also with a degree of nervousness as to how things would go.
Throughout the week we ran:
- A daily Morning Holiday Bible Club (with lunch) for around 40 children;
- A daily Parent and Toddler Group in tandem with the Holiday Bible Club with around 20 people attending;
- A daily afternoon Cage football session with around 40 people attending each session;
- A daily evening youth programme with around 20 teenagers attending each night;
- One of adult events (women’s night and men’s curry night) which had around 60 people attending;
- Friday Night Family Evening which consisted of various activities (Cage football, bouncy castle, air hockey etc), free food, refreshments and free ice cream. Around 250 people of all ages came along.
It was a truly fantastic week in which we were able to reach, chat with, share the gospel and begin to build relationships with people we had never met before.