General News

 Our various groups were closed over the Christmas and New Year season from 16 Dec 22 and will reopen in week commencing 16 Jan 23. Matthew returned to work today 9 January, however this week was required to prepare the restart, and meet up with and allocate new volunteers who were coming on board to help with the groups.

•  All of the Christmas parties/events went very well –
•  Radiate kids – Christmas party – all of the kids were really excited at having a party to go to and enjoyed the fun, food and games.
•  Illuminate – Teen kids were very well behaved and enjoyed a very special night with pizza (their request), games and a short Christmas talk.
•  Sunday Christmas Service – went very well with a good turn out and a good number of families and infrequent church attenders coming along.
•  Riverbank Primary Christmas Assembly – went ahead with Matthew, JohnMerson and Abi Rankin (her last event before she left The Lighthouse).Matthew spoke to around 400 kids on the real gift of Christmas.

 Front End Youth Work

• The groups are well established again after the holiday break.
• There is now a good team to help with a couple of new young volunteers helping with the Wednesday night teens.
• Thursday SU is around 30 between the two groups, with a new volunteer through SU.  She had had a bit of a difficult experience when speaking about prayer last week, with some young people talking over her and asking awkward questions.
• Friday drop in is going well with two good teams of volunteers alternating fortnightly so they only need to be there every month.
• Northfield SU is going well too, numbers vary, although only one YP last week, but she watched the video ‘Why does the resurrection matter’ and agreed with the content when asked about it, which was encouraging.

The two teen boys who we have been praying for and who came to know the Lord and were baptised have now joined the membership of the local church.  This is hugely encouraging to us and we see the Holy Spirit continue His work in them.

• Matthew has been off for 2 weeks, and it has been school October break so it’s been quiet so far.
• The Weekend away takes place 11^th-13^th 19 young people are going. Matthew Laurenson is speaking on ‘Identity in Christ’ - What the world tells us and What the Bible says.Unfortunately one leader who had been going to transport the luggage has pulled out, so prayer is needed for a replacement.
• Within the schools the Tuesday after school football has been continuing through term time. We are also pleased to be about to start a seven week block of Bible Alive from this Wed with a P6 class (Genesis- Rev). These sessions meets the curriculum requirements.
• Wednesday night groups start again this week.
• One of the young men who had lost contact with the groups has been coming back to church. He had been to Shetland Soccer School when the Cage went up with Matthew Laurenson, and he has been back on track since meeting someone from Ambassadors for Football. They had given him a 2 week internship at a soccer camp in Nottingham, and also one in Lancaster for 1 week. He has stopped drinking now too. This is an answer to prayer

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 11^th – 15^th 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.