Holiday Club 2011

Our Holiday Club 2011 at Norbury has been and gone but what a fantastic week it was - many have said our best one yet!

This year’s club was based on five stories about Peter coupled with a space theme. During the week, the children, leaders and helpers heard the stories of Jesus calling Peter to be a disciple, Jesus walking on water, Peter denying Jesus, the Holy Spirit at Pentecost and Peter in prison. We learned from these stories:

Neil and Jimmy went on an adventure through space. They met Roberta the Robot and discovered that, if they referred to GOD on their journey, he would help them find the answers. By learning to turn, trust, forgive and train, they were transformed.

The 99 children, who took part, came every day and most of the 84 leaders and helpers were there for the entire week. It was wonderful to see the children run in at the start of each day and so obviously happy to be there.

We had the usual songs, games, jokes, crafts and fun. Our club song “10,9,8 God is great” was an amazing hit. The children wrote loads of prayers for our prayer box and they were read out daily.

We all learned our “memory verse” (2 Corinthians chapter 4 verses 8-9):

We often suffer but we are never crushed. Even when we don’t know what to do, we never give up. In times of trouble, God is with us and, when we are knocked down, we get up again.

A highlight of the week was when one of the children wrote a prayer asking God and Jesus to be her friend. Occasions like that made all the hard work more than worthwhile.

The week culminated in a celebration service on the Friday evening in church. It is impossible to describe the emotions of seeing everyone involved in the week up at the front of church singing the club song about how wonderful God is and looking so happy as they did so. It brought tears to my eyes!

There must have been over 400 people in church for this celebration and the groups of children took it in turns to tell us what they had done during the week. It was an amazing climax to a fantastic week.

I offer my thanks to everyone who took part and for all their hard work. I was particularly proud of the teenagers and older children who gave their support; their attitude and commitment were a credit to them.

Above all, I thank the children themselves for their wonderful behaviour and for making Holiday Club 2012 a truly memorable event.

Cath Palmer (Children's Worker)

Reflections of Obi-Wan-Woody of the Galactic Order of Jedi Knights

I was very pleased to accept Cath’s invitation to take part as I do like a good holiday. Shortly after my arrival on Monday morning, however, I realised that my involvement would mean a lot of hard work for the whole week!

I was asked to work with Linda and her group of children called the SUPER TROOPERS who were all well behaved. We had lots of fun learning about Peter and our Lord Jesus Christ and making arts and crafts on the theme of space. Each day, we had a drama performed by Neil, Jimmy and Vicky while Cath taught us about Peter's relationship with Jesus and how we could learn from it.

It was a quite remarkable event which reached its climax with the celebration on the Friday evening. All the children took part and many parents and members of the church family joined us. The Holy Spirit was on hand too.

We are blessed to have people like Cath, Jimmy, Neil and Vicky who put so much time and effort into events such as the Holiday Club. We are fortunate too that so many members of church family are prepared to give their support. All of us here at Norbury should give thanks that this work goes on from year to year.

Obi-Wan-Woody, Jedi Knight (aka Dave Wood)

Starship Adventure

SOS!!! SOS!!! I repeat SOS!!! We are out of fuel and about to crash land into an unknown planet. All was mayhem on the Starship Galactic. With the fuel out and no hope of safety Captain Briggs and his fellow companions Mark Shaw and Liam Westcoat could only brace themselves for impact!!!

KABOOM!!! The window smashed into a thousand pieces. In an instant hurry, they all ran to the door and smashed it open and all clambered out. They found themselves on a bubbly planet with no sign of life at all.

“It must have some sort of gas underneath to cause all these air bubbles,” said Mark.

“But how on earth are we going to get off,” said Liam.

“I don’t know,” said the captain.

“I know,” said Mark. “Look at these star charts. It says that we’re near the planet Saturn but our planet is bigger so any ship going to Saturn will crash into us. So we split up and look for any other ships. Liam, you go north. I’ll go east. Captain, you go west and then, if we find anything, we can call each other on our communicators. OK, let’s go!!!”

An hour later, Liam called everyone on their communicators that there was a pointy metal object sticking out. Once they were all there, there was the question of uncovering it. They had no shovels.

“I suppose we will just have to use our hands,” said Liam. After ten minutes, they uncovered the nose. “It’s definitely a spaceship but we can’t get it out of the ground. I give up.”

“No!!!” said the captain. “Even when we don’t know what to do we never ever give up in times of trouble. God is always with us.”

After a good two hours, the ship was uncovered. They checked it over. It had a fuel tank and non-smash windscreen. Suddenly the captain had a brainwave. They cued the music and got to work... Finally, everything was finished and the Starship Galactic was spick and span. They had switched the windscreen and transferred the fuel. Inside, everything was set for the journey.

“Fire the engines,” the captain ordered.

WHOOSH from our spaceship to a tiny speck in the distance. It was finally on its way home.