Catch up

Saturday, December 23, 2006

Well as I have already said it has been a while since I last posted. Christmas busyness really seems to have set in this week or maybe I just did one or two bits of actual work!

Monday and Tuesday were spent sorting and filing. I love the feeling of having tidied stuff and really sorted it out. When I take up my role a year and a bit ago we had cupboards full of stuff but no one was quite sure why we still had it, be it random craft material, useless sports equipment, loads of board games, curriculum dating back to 1989 (when I was 6) etc., etc. I have a volunteer called Tessa who is a retired NHS admin lady who loves nothing better than to sort me out and get everything tidy and in order so that is what we have spent this week doing.

Monday afternoon was cooking Christmas dinner for my Monday Night Chillout group (17-18 year olds) and preparing for the Rock 'Ard Christmas Party. These were good although numbers were low for the Rock 'Ard party - we only had 3 out of our 10 young people. Two police community support officers came to chat about the possibility of partnering in some of our work which is really exciting. The longer I work at this place the more there seems to be so little joined up thinking to deal with the various youth issues - I am hoping that the church can be the link point for some of these people and agencies.

Wednesday was the last day of term and I was working in our local primary school. They have 8 classes and I managed to sneak into all their classes for a bit of the parties going on. I was joint winner (with nine pupils aged 7 to 9!) in musical bumps which was a really good result if I do say so myself. We followed this with a trip to the
Royal Albert Hall for the BT Christmas Concert which was a really good evening out with some great orchestral pieces, a good concert band and all the fantastic carols. It was a lovely present from the parents of one of our young people for Hannah and my work with their son throughout the year - what a great treat.

Thursday and Friday was a mixture of planning and running events and trying to get preparation for the Christmas services done. Thursday lunchtime was the Lunch Club Christmas meal. I used to spend some time every Tuesday morning with the older ladies in the church but it is something that more recently has dropped off the scale a bit so it was nice to catch up with some of them at lunch, they are always so caring and great prayers. Thursday afternoon and evening was preparing for and then running the Christmas party for our 5-10 year olds, again we had really low numbers, 15 in comparison with the usual 30 or so, but the schools had broken up the day before which may have caused a drop in numbers, as well as the really bad fog putting people off coming out.

Friday was our volunteer leaders social where we had invited everyone who had been involved in Children's & Youth work in the last year to come to the Manse for drinks and nibbles. We invited just over 50 people and were very surprised to find that we had just over 40 people come for some portion of the evening. It seemed to be a success and well worth doing again next year.

Today I spent sometime with my sister, Jenny, looking at her RS coursework. She is trying to decide between doing a question on abortion or on divorce and remarriage so I was going through my books finding various chapters for her to read up on. It was good to catch up with her. This afternoon we did preparation for the Christmas services, which we followed by watching the final of
Strictly Come Dancing and opening our Christmas presents due to the fact that tomorrow will be manic with the Christmas Eve services and a social for our young people, and then we are all going away on Christmas Day after the morning service.

Today I have also joined
facebook after various friends kept recommending it to me. So if you have a profile on it give me a shout.

at 8:38 pm  

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