So, We Are NOT Bored, we meet again...

I think it'd be great to keep this blog up! We're all back off to uni/starting uni/starting gap years, we'll all have lots to tell, and it'll help us keep in touch!

I'll kick it off...

My gap year at the moment is with my local Church as a youth work trainee, which involves... youth work! And also studying the Bible, learning to give talks and trying to build my character. All of which I'm really enjoying.

The youth work is really interesting, there's four main things that I help at, two Bible study things (one just with y9s, the other with y7-y9) and two youth club things (one y3-y6, the other y7-y9). So mostly I'm working with people aged 11-14, which is the age group that I least know how to engage with! So that's challenging, but that makes it more... interesting! I'm getting much better with them quite quickly, though, which is good. Really interesting thing happened in a small group at the y3-y6 club, obviously I can't give details, but two of the kids in my group were absolutely hyper, and wouldn't stop messing around (in a bad way!), it makes you realise that you don't actually have any real control over them, your authority is superficial (save for being able to ban them from coming back, but we don't want to do that!). A lot of keeping kids behaving (in a good way!) can be an illusion act, a delicate balance between looking powerful and in charge, and being personal and fun. It was a little scary at the time, but enlightening in the long run. If any of you get involved in youth/children's work or teaching, remember that!

For the Bible side of things, I've been looking into how the Old and New Testament God is the same, a Trinity, relational God throughout, and how the Bible (looking at the OT bits mostly, though) provides evidence for this. Of course, I already believed they were the same, but it's fascinating looking at it in depth, the more I learn the more interesting it gets. Tomorrow I start a weekly thing teaching me to give talks, which will involve us (the trainees) having to present talks on passages to the rest of the church staff, which will be nerve-racking, but I hope to get a lot out of it, especially as I really have no idea where I'd start with a talk. We'll also be aiming them at the age groups we work with, so I'll be doing ages "11-14, which is the age group that I least know how to engage with!"... "but that makes it more... interesting"... :P

Stokes, as we all know, started work on his new Steampunk RPG, which is coming along really well. (We should all have another skype/in person game of that again!) I'm really impressed with how he sorted out guns to work with it, without making it insanely complicated. Keep that up, Stokesman.

Also, I broke my supervisor's wedding present wineglass... not a great start (;