Cloughmills Go-Team 17 - 21 August 2009
This year the Cloughmills Go-Team was made up of Hannah Drennan, Catherine McCullough, Karen Thompson, Rebecca McCullough, Ben Kennedy, Sharon Kelso and myself as well as several other young people from the Cloughmills congregation.
Each day started with an opening prayer time where some one from the group gave a thought
from God’s Word. Straight after this we had the Holiday Bible Club. We had a good turn out all week with 30-40 children in the 4-7s and around 20 in the 8-11s. I was helping out with the younger group who really enjoyed themselves especially getting to make teddy bears during craft.
After lunch we had a Bible Study taken by Peter McKelvey, where we studied the first six chapters of Romans. This was a very interesting study because the first four chapters show us that we have no hope and it isn’t until chapter five we find we can be saved. It’s hard for us to realise how much trouble we were in.
In the afternoons we had different activities: the first two days we gave out leaflets on being afraid along with an invitation to two guest services. In Cloughmills we knocked on doors and personally gave out as many as we could. This seems to have worked well very—few people refused them and we had many encouraging conversations. However, many people were not at home when we called. We also leafleted several other villages as well as the surrounding countryside.
On Wednesday we held a Pensioners' Tea Party
where the pensioners from the community came into the church and enjoyed several musical pieces and afternoon tea; during this time David Loughridge shared his testimony with them.
For one reason or another several people were away on Thursday and the weather was wet so our litter pick up was on a smaller scale than normal but we spent the remainder of our time restuffing teddy bears.
The evenings were spent at the youth club. This is a club run by the church throughout the year with a special week during the summer.
The vast majority of children who come have no connection to the church but the club is run to give the young people something to do and also to teach them about God. It was very encouraging, therefore, when one of the teenagers expressed an interest in being saved.
On Friday evening Dr Jonathan McKelvey took the first of the two guest services, speaking on current fears such as the credit crunch
, ill health
and others. He looked at the voluntary and involuntary responses we make and how belief in Jesus Christ should be our response.
Tom Somerville