Hope Revolutionaries
There is a massive youth part of Hope 08, called Hope Revolutionaries. So to kick start this year of Hope, we ran a weekend away for young people who wanted to be involved.
On the 1st – 2nd of February over 20 young people from various churches around Swindon met up at Legge House, Wroughton, for the weekend. Through the weekend we looked at four main points; change me, change my friends, change my community and change my world. One young person said the weekend was “a good chance to get to know other people my age with the same passion.” (Peter, 18)
Saturday morning we looked at how we can bring Hope to our friends and then looked at things like fair-trade and poverty issues - looking at what we can do to change the world. Then in the afternoon we had the Swindon Challenge! Teams set off into the town centre to complete several challenges, including random acts of kindness, finding something that represented Jesus and finding the cheapest thing they could buy!
After such a busy day, why not tire out the young people even more? So we all wrapped up warm and walked to the top of a hill which overlooked Swindon; “Looking over Swindon at all the lights was amazing!” (Sarah, 16) Standing there in the freezing cold and strong winds, young people prayed for Swindon; we all held our glow sticks high and snapped them to represent breaking down the boundaries in Swindon and taking a different kind of light into the places we live and work. “My favourite part of the weekend was the walk as it gave you a chance to think about how big Swindon is and how great it is that we are going to change it during 2008!” (Jenny, 13)
To finish the weekend we had a visit from Bishop Lee Rayfield, who came to speak to the young people and encourage them in their effort to change their community. “One of the things I enjoyed was the Bishops talk about the underlying issues in the teenage community.” (Josh, 15)
|