The Best Laid Plans

A very small shot of one of our lessons during the youth weekend

Well, the Morley youth weekend has come and gone. I'm sure everyone has experienced at least one event in their life that could not be planned for enough and youth weekend is one of those. Every year Morley hosts a weekend where youth from all over the UK come and enjoy some uplifting speakers and fellowship with other Christians their age. It is, as we would say here, "absolutely Brilliant!". There are quite a few churches of Christ in the UK but they are much more spread out than in the states, so youth weekends are a great spiritual shot in the arm for some of the kids who come from smaller churches and might not have a large group of Christians their age to interact with on a consistent basis.

Morley typically has one of the largest youth weekends of the year for a few reasons. First, we are the first congregation to host a youth weekend after the summer break so the kids are anxious to see their friends from camp again, and second, we are one of the most centrally located congregations when you consider all of Scotland and England. Because of these and other reasons our relatively small congregation has to put in a lot of work to make things happen. Still, despite our building bursting at the seams and our fears that it might not all come together the youth weekend is always a huge hit with the kids. This year we had about 90 kids who arrived anywhere from 8pm to 1:30am Friday night and stayed with us through Sunday afternoon. Figuring out housing is always one of the most exiting parts of the weekend. The boys all bed down in the church building with their sleeping bags and just forego showers for the weekend, while church members open their homes to the girls. I think we shared about 40-50 girls and maybe 6 drivers between 7 houses. The ladies of the church also managed to provide two dinners and two lunches for about 120 people with all the drivers and members from Morley included. I was so amazed to see how God used the congregation here to provide such a positive weekend for the youth. An event this size could really be a pain to host but because of hard work, willing hearts, and a lot of prayer and help from our Father the weekend went really well. It was a great testament to what God can do when his people trust him to provide.