Super smash bros. brawl

as you all know, one of the most popular games at free* cafe is super smash bros. melee, and if i remember correctly, ben has the nintendo wii (i heard they are gonna change the name....again) on reserve or something, but anyway, here is the link to the new trailer for super smash brothers, brawl, which is the new 1, and yes ben, wario is here.

The Empire Strikes Back!

Please note: Mr Random's views on England's ownership of the rest of the UK and his plans to resurrect the Empire (via a really big bridge) do not reflect those of Broadway Youth, Free* Cafe', Intentse, Youth Alpha or Broadway Baptist Church, crumbs they probably don't even reflect him on any given Thursday. So please don't get too excited dear reader.
If you would like to join Mr R in informing all Scottish and Welsh people every where that they are infact English people with funny accents, please see your G.P. immediately.

Nice to have you back D-boy!

Ben

Good ol scotland

scotland now belongs to england, cos i sed so and because i went there, it NEVER gets dark (well on the beach anyway) (i meen truly dark, like cant see a thing dark) i went there with a few of bens possesions, which i will be returning wen we have time to make aragments and stuff, oh and walers belongs to england now, because its attached to it ad were bigger than they are so we get it, and thats also the reason we get scotland, and if we build a realllllly big bridge, we might get ireland too, how does sound, no more confusion as to whart country your in!!! above is the current map, below is the new one... well i couldnt get my photoshop to work so there isnt a new map.....just imagine one

The Island - a prison that feels like home

No not ITV Celebrity Love Island! We refer to the Ewan McGregor film. Over on Broadway Youth TV you can now watch a classic Free* Cafe' video from earlier this year featuring clips from the movie and a dose of Bible.
Click here to watch it right now.

Bye bye Intents

Or is it Intense? Or Intentse? Depends who you talk to. However you spell it, it’s all over now. Here’s what we did today:

We started with a the classic ‘get everybody holding hands and twisted and see if they can untangle themselves. We tried it groups of four and did alright. We tried it with groups of eight and…. had mixed results. SO….. we tried it with 36 people. It almost worked. Almost.

Mingle gave the talk on everybody’s Sunday School favourite, Daniel and the lions den. Or Daniel chapter 6 if you prefer. Click here to read it. Incidentally, as I write this a blonde boy on my television is assuring me that Fosties are “gonna taste great.” But I’m unconvinced. I digress….

We had a good group time today. I was in quite a big group but it went pretty well. Some people said some really interesting things.

Carl was up on stage for the third day in a row after the group time. This time The Ming was interviewing him about how he became a Christian last summer. Then the Big M talked a bit about his own experience of getting closer to God. They both did really well and this was my favourite part of the day. After all that we played some water games, got incredibly wet and had a half hearted go at a round of Absorb-a-tron (see yesterdays post for details of this trail blazing game!). Sarah and Carl got me proper proper wet. Thanks guys!!! After around of http://www.whatisultimate.com/ Ultimate Frisbee we got stuck into the BBQ. Whilst Phil, Imi and I discussed leg room on economy flights (how rock and roll can you get) and why you should never put a hot dog in your friends hand bag, lots of people had fun singing very loudly to children’s worship songs they learnt at Back Packers whilst wearing wigs of many colours. Ben (from Emmanuel church) looked strangely like Dennis the Menace in his.

And thus Intents (Intense) (Intentse) is finished and I have a week to use for study.

Ben

Your love is teaching me hooooooooooooooow to kneel

Day three of Intents, you know, that holiday club for young people in the town of Chesham. No? Well it’s a holiday club for young people in the town of Chesham. Yep, really.

Minutes before I was about to leave for Intents the rain suddenlly hammered down. I waited for a bit and then prayed for the storm to stop just long enough for me to walk to Intents in the dry. Literally a second after I prayed, Malcolm (Broadway Administrator and Chesham all star) pulled up in his car and drove me down there. How’s about that for service!



Whilst I was praying with fellow Intents leader Sarah, Bernie and John, the sun came out and the soggy people who’d been helping at Back Packers all day cheered right up.

We started off the afternoon’s session with a game that deserves to go down in the history of great 'made up on the spot' ice breakers: Absorb-a-tron!

How’s it played?

Get 30 or so wet teenagers,


Split them into two teams,

Put a jug on the floor for each team,

Explain the one rule very carefully – DON’T MOVE THE JUG!

Give both teams 5 mins to ring out their clothes and hair into the jugs and find other methods of filling them with water

Regularly kick over each teams jug so the game doesn’t end to quickly ☺

Try it at home kids!

Sarah from Free* Café got me very wet (cheers for that!) and Catriona (sorry if I’ve spelt that wrong) came up with a pretty impressive method of carrying water with her hat.

Today’s talk and group discussion was on Daniel 4. This is an amazing chapter of the Bible and easily one of my all time favourites. It’s a person letter to everybody in the world from the most powerful man of the time. In it he explains how it took 7 years of mental illness and loosing everything he had before he’d accept God’s authority over him. You can read it here.

To spice up the talk we all acted out Nebuchadnezzar’s dream (at one point we got to be chain saw wielding angels) and Carl acted out a mental break down to a sound track of fuzzy guitars and some funny noises made by me. I got a bit embaressed and stood behind a screen to make my noises, so I missed what Carl did. It seemed to work though. Nobody was laughing by the end of it. Then we went through all the moments in Jesus life were he submitted to God and gave him a cheer. And boy oh boy there are some good ones,just looks at this one, oh and this one,this one is good too, and this one is amazed me when I first read it ten years ago. The point was pretty simple: human beings are selfish and proud. We were never designed to be our own bosses and real, fulfilling life starts when we submit to God.

We listed to Vertigo by U2 whilst we reflected on Daniel 4. The last line of the song is:
“I can feel your love is teaching me how,
your love is teaching me how,
how to kneel”.
Which sums up my own relationship with God pretty neatly.

You can play a Vertigo video game here.

Stroof this was a long post.

Ben

Oh boy did it rain on Wednesday night!

Yesterday started with a right old drama. I got to work and found out that the storm had knocked out our power. Apparently the power was down at the Back Packers site too. I went to Café Nero to prepare for Intents because it was so dang hot in my office (let's hear it for laptops!). The girl serving behind the counter was telling all the customers that there had been two inches of water flooding through the shop that morning and loads of rats scuttling about (she was very careful to point out that critters were “outside” the café, heh heh). What an exciting start to the day, huh.

It was all over by 1pm when the power came back.

Nothing lasts forever?

Check out the video from Intents yesterday. It starts with photos of people and things that had a lot of influence at one time or another. Followed by pictures of stuff that just isn't going to last forever, even if you wanted it to. It's based around the dream in Daniel chapter 2 (see the posting below). Have a look and post a comment.
click here to watch it

Ben

Man has dream about a rock

Intents day two
We kicked things off with some icebreaker games I got off that thing where all the computers in the world are connected together, like a big motor way for zeroes and ones. (Youth leaders take note: I nick a lot of game ideas from this site here, it’s a really useful resource) We played a game of Chinese Charades, a bit like Chinese whispers but everyone stands in a single file and have to pass a word down the line using actions. One team were pretty good at it. The other team managed to turn a perfectly passable bit of mimed peddling (for the word 'bicycle') into something that looked like pushing a lawn mower and didn’t involve leg movement at all. Failure like that takes a particular kind of inattention, which should be applauded. Sort of.☺

I gave a talk on Daniel chapter 2 out of (yes you guessed it) the Bible. Click here to read the chapter, it’s a beaut! It features a nightmares and nocturnal threats of decapitation, who could ask for more? It’s one of those bits that everybody who went to Sunday school thinks they know really well, until they read it again and see all the details and the layers that it works on. As you can see, I enjoyed getting ready for this talk.

Carl and Phil (both young people from Emmanuel church, I think) kindly volunteered to come up on the stage and pretend to be Daniel and King Nebuchadnezzar. They did a pretty good job of it and pulled some high quality facial expressions between then.

We played a short video after the talk to help people to reflect on the message of the chapter. It’ll be up on Broadway Youth TV some time soon.

We split the discussion groups today so they were smaller and we got to chat more. Then we played that old chestnut where each group has to make an outfit out of newspaper and other old junk. We dressed up a girl called Sophie as a super hero (I swear it wasn’t my idea!), she had a cape and everything. Didn’t win mind you.

Ben

Meanwhile..... over on Broadway Youth TV

Crumbs, Jango's frets is now the most watched video on Broadway Youth TV. Didn't see that one coming! Shame it's not one of our best, aye. Click here to watch it

First day of Intents

Intents week is finally here. At 4pm-ish the Back Packers lot (kids holiday club) cleared out and we moved in to the main tent. Mingle got things started off by getting the 28 or so young people and adult leaders moving about a bit. Then I got them chatting about some of the more important questions in life, like Elvis or the Beatles, Summer or Winter and Barbie: style icon or tool of the oppressor?

Sarah Shelly from Emmanuel Church gave a talk and got us reading Daniel chapter 1 from the Bible.Click here to read it yourself. This is one of my favorite books so I'm looking forward to spending some time with it this week. We split everybody up into groups to discuss the chapter. The group I was in was massive, but everybody seemed really nice and there were a couple of people I know from Free*. We talked for quite a long time and didn't get through all the questions (oops, that's probably my fault). I think tomorrow we're going to split the group up to see if we can get through everything.

To finish with we played a game that involved moving dry food from one place to another using various things stuck in our mouths; chick peas with a drinking straw, marsh mallows with a tooth pick, a polo with some spaghetti. We didn't do to badly considering we had such a big team. Then somebody had the bright idea of trying to see who could spit a chick pea the furthest, which turned out to be one of those rare sports that I'm not completely rubbish at.

My other lasting memory of the day is Nish and Lydia's aggressive teaching style. They were trying to teach me French you see.... and I'm just not very good at listening and repeating simple sounds. It's amazing I learnt to speak really.

Ben

Last lot of bowling pics

With one pin to go, Dan tries out on of those ramp things. What a comedian.












Surely he can’t miss, can he? The ironey would be far to sweet....













.... Apparently he can ☺












Slumby celebrates a strike.
Apparently no one ever told Ben that it's rude to point.

Matthew gets a spare

Matt takes a wobbly run up in his much vaunted “radical style” and let’s the ball fly!













3 pins remain to taunt him.








The computer gives some helpful advice:
Hit them with a bowling ball










Can he fix it?












Yes he can!!!

Bowling Pics part 2

objects to be destroyed (post a comment if you get this Man Ray reference)






Mahbenja introduces the concept of Strike Lights









It takes time to find the ball that's right for you. There are a lot of important factors. So I just picked a pretty one.











Benjamin, post strike!
















Iain get's the first split of the night.

Friday's Bowling Trip .... in pictures!

The story of Friday night in child-safety-policy-friendly picture form!




Hey you can Discover The Wonders Of The World at Leisure World in Hemel Hempstead. Oh Boy! And we just came for some ten pin bowling.







Queuing up was hard on some of us.








The HotShots alley quietly awaits our frantic bowling action










Everybodies favourite part of bowling.... the beautiful and totally hygienic shoe exchange












Lauren gets our names in computer. My Dad did this bit when I was a kid and I've never learned how to do it. It looks quite hard.

Summer is offically here...... NOW

This morning was the last Youth Alpha of the summer (boo hoo hoo) so that's pretty much it until September.
Not literaly 'it' of course. For one thing some of you guys are helping at Back Packers next week (Churches in Chesham working together to run a children's play scheme in case you're not in the know), The Ming' and myself are helping to head up Intents for 11 to 16 yr olds (4.30 - 6pm Tuesday to Friday next week in the big tent in Thomas Harding School field, parental permission forms needed buy freely availible for yours truly), and the Broadway Boys Brigade camp is at the end of August and I'm going along for the ride. Oh and Broadway Baptist Church has it's usual Sunday Moring Service from 10.30 - 12pm. So still quite a bit going on really.

Anyhoo, here's my point....

What better way to keep in touch with people then to sign up to blogger.com and get posting on our little ol' page right here. Or if you're already signed up, get posting now or start a new blog dedicated to your very own self.

We'll be keeping the Broadway Youth blog up to date with anything that comes to mind and there will be things appearing on Broadway Youth TV at regular intervals through out the summer.... but what about you? You must have somethign to say? Particularly if you are flying around in a private helicopter on your holidays (mention no names, heh heh). And we all want to read it, so get posting!

God bless

Ben

More video pics

Some more pics from the classic video that introduced Mingle to the world (well the world of Free* Cafe')
Click here to watch it at Broadway Youth TV









Ya Benjamin looking really quite fine don't cha think.








Ming' having victoriously completed a seemingly impossible jump.











Benjamin eating carpet after his dismal attempt to match The Ming' in a physical contest. Best make it a battle of the will next time huh.













Some scared pigeons.










A mighty and definant pigeon who moves for no man. Or Lady.

Last Youth Alpha Friday for a bit

Ahhhh, all the Broadway Youth stuff is coming to an end for the summer and Youth Alpha Friday nights are no different. So to end in style tonight eight of us went bowling at HotShots in Hemel Hempstead. The last time I was there was with our Church House Group. I scored 28 and came last. I was beaten by two elderly ladies.

Today I scored 128!

But wait, before you break out the Fanta, I should point out that we had those barrier things on our lane that stop your ball ging down the drain. The ones little children use. After scoring two Strikes and about a couple of spares I thought it was time I stopped trying and let one of the lads win. I used a ball with tiny holes my fingers barely fit inside, I threw balls left and right. But the darns things bounced off the sides and gave me another spare and some 9's. Bah. So I beat everybody, I am the champion. But I swear I take absolutely no pleasure in it what so ever.
To give things a bit of a twist we had some blue mini fairy lights or 'Strike Lights'. Everybody who got a strike had to wear them until the next strike was scored.
Our proud Strike Light sporters were:

Mahbenja
Charlotte
Sarah
and
Lauren

Yay us. The award for best Strike Light / outfit combination goes to Lauren for wearing them like a choker and not looking out of place.

Post your own happy bowling memories here everybody.

Ben

Mingle Video picks

Mingle's first attempt to milk a cow ended in disater for two reasons. Can you spot what they are children?










Rocking the mic rightly

















Shoes.


Click here to watch the video.

HAPPY HOLIDAY TO YOU!

The Summer hols are finally here! Good, huh. Welldone to everybody who has survived another year of school, and a special weldone for anybody who has survived their first year as a teacher and a special special warm contratulatory hand shake to anybody who has survived being married to a teacher in their first year in the job. You are truly a wonderful person.
Oh and nuff respec to everybody who finished school forever this year, you people are an inspiration!

To celebrate the next 6 weeks of holidays we've stuck the first ever Free* Cafe' video up on Broadway Youth TV. Click here to watch it. Now you can see a fresh faced Mingle chit chatting, wearing nasty shoes and touching a plastic cow any time you like. And of course there's a healthy portion of ya benjamin in it too.

DON'T FORGET!!!!
Intents for anybody aged 11 to 16 (if you're older you could come and help out if you like), 4.30 - 6pm Tuesday to Friday next week in Thomas Hardy school field. In a tent, obviously.

See you tonight Nish.

Ben

See a little girl intimidate some grown men

Well, don't literally beat kids. That would be wrong. Find something to beat them at if you must, like Badmington. But do watch this video of a little girl making some adults feel very uncomfortable in Wall Street, the financial capital of American.

Click here to watch it.

Rupert's Adventures in Africa

Although in truth he is no bear,

To Africa he flew by air,

And upon returning home one day,

He made this vid' for Free* Cafe'.

Click here to see it!

EDIT: THIS VIDEO IS CURRENTLY DOWN FOR MAINTENANCE.

Compare and Contrast

Which do you like better?
The er, "authentic" look of the old Free* banner as made by me, spray painting free hand on a massive dust cover.
Or the clean lines and professional finish of the new Free* banner?

Ian dancing behind a Sponge Bob Towel

It's Sponge Bob, in towel form. And is our Ian happy? I should say so.
Pics from Free* Cafe yesterday.





































Just look at him go!