Blog!!

Hello again everyone!

It's been quite a long time since I last wrote here (and by that I mean a ridiculously long time) so quite a lot has happened since then so I'll have to be brief with everything.I've got my diary so let's begin. I think last time I wrote we were in the middle of the Christmas lessons making hundreds of little stockings to give out. Those lessons went down VERY well, particularly the chocolate at the end. It was great! We did those in two schools and told approx 400-500 schoolkids the christmas message. Awesome!

On the weekend of 13th December I went to Edinburgh for the weekend with Jack, Elaine and Miriam. It was great fun but very wet and cold (and the big holes in the bottoms of my shoes didn't help much..). My journey back lasted a bit longer than it should have done when ALL the trains were delayed or cancelled at Doncaster thanks to the wires over the tracks coming down somewhere near London, so there was only one track in places on the East Coast line from London. Nightmare! I was delayed 2 hours and got back about 10 but Miriam's journey was slightly different. When she finally got to Peterborough she was put in a taxi with some others going to Norwich and I got a text from her at 5:00am saying she had got home! BUT! She filled in a complaints form and got a full refund on her ticket! So she had a free train ride to Edinburgh and back!

Then the Christmas holidays came along and I got the parents came and picked me up which was nice of them! Then I went to Devon and went out for a meal with some of my friends and had Christmas with Miriam's family, then came back to Os and had our family christmas (two christmasses!!) then went back to Devon for new year. 'Twas an awesome holiday with lots going on.

In January we did all the regular stuff but it was mainly a recovery and plannng month after the Christmas madness.

We had a fundraiser which was a James Bond evening. I tried Caviar (which I didn't really like) and a vodka martini shaken not stirred (which I liked even less!). But it was brilliant evening and I won some Ferrero Rocher (because the people next to me kept winning the raffle so they gave me one of their prizes...surprisingly I didn't complain)

So we move on to February. The Careforce conference was meant to happen 2nd-5th but was cancelled because of the snow. But I'd already gone home and my friend Mel was staying too so we went up Horseshoe pass (because it would be silly to try travelling to Wakefield in the snow) and went for a walk in the snow! There's pictures on Facebook and also in my album on the church website thing. We also had Philippa Hanna (a christian singer/songwriter..check her out, she's really good! www.philippahanna.co.uk) visiting to do lessons and assemblies playing her music and telling her testimony and teaching songwriting. It went really well and all the young people seemed to love her!

We also did some RSE (Relationships and sex education) in a private school which was a new experience for me. I've never been to a private school before. There was a sign saying 'keep off the grass' which shocked me in a school! If it had been in my school it probably would have been used as a goal post by people playing football on the grass!

In March we had a charity called Invisible Children visiting..they campaign against children being used as soldiers in Uganda. It was really moving to find out what was really going on in that situation. Visit www.invisiblechildren.com if you want to find out more, I won't explain on here..I've written too much already.

March also held the run up to Easter. One thing I did was to help out at a thing Wakefield Cathedral were running for the schools where the kids travel and act out different bits of the Easter story. I was Jesus for the afternoon. It was great fun, especially turning over the tables in the temple where I had to yell at them as loud as I could...their faces were pictures! I had to switch between being a leader and being Jesus so they weren't expecting it at all! It was brilliant!

We also did Easter lessons which took the shape of a game of Deal or No Deal (the gameshow) where they all had a box with Easter questions in. They had to pick someone else's box and got asked an question from that box and if they got it right they won some chocolate eggs. Then we told the gospel message at the end!

April was actually Easter, so I came home and had my holiday for much of it! And most of that was in Oswestry, I went Ice-skating with my friends and Miriam came to stay and we celebrated Easter! Then I went down to Devon for a week or so and then went to the Gadget show live at the NEC on the last Saturday of my holiday. It was a good holiday!

Afer my holiday we did some 'Jesus and Justice' lessons where we talked about justice and what Jesus said about it. After the holiday we also had Sarah from Leeds Faith in Schools starting as team leader after Andi left to work full time for the council. So that was quite epic as Andi had worked for CROSS for 11years!! Sarah will be team leader until the summer when a new team leader should be chosen, it's currently in the recruitment stage...

May was a strange month! I'm sure most people if not everyone reading this (on Facebook and church thing) will know that my Gran sadly passed away on May 1st. So I stayed at home for a few weeks until the funeral and missed training as well as the 'Schooldays disco' fundraiser and some of the Careforce conference. But I went to a day of that and it was really great to see the other volunteers again.

Afer that I went to some training on how to make websites and since then that has been an ongoing job. That's pretty much finished now if you want to check it out. www.crossproject.com. If it comes up with a black screen then it's not up yet, that's the old one, go to http://crossproject.wordpress.com.

And then it was half term until June!

This month I've been to some apologetics training which was really good. Learning how to answer some of those awkward questions we might get asked. We've also ha Philippa Hanna back again (she missed two of her days last time) doing some songwriting lessons. That was brilliant!

So that's that. There's a lot there. My brain is TIRED now after thinking through all that! I can't be bothered to proof read it so please forgive any errors. I think I'll go and have a nap.

God bless you all with amazing things!

Jim