THURSDAY

Thursday starts with Breakfast club at Waterside school. Everybody’s favourite subjects for conversation today:
Has the boy from the Frostie’s advert committed suicide (no guff, 6 yr olds talk about this stuff!)
David Beckam was sick after scoring a goal
I had two little bowls of Tesco Rice Snaps and a glass of water if anyone is interested.

Mr G, Rev Rebecca from Christ Church and me were presenting ‘It’s Your Move’ booklets to Waterside year 6 in their assembly this morning. If your not in the know, the Churches in Chesham all club together to buy these books for every year 6 pupil in the town and people from each school present them to the schools. The books have some really good information and advice on moving up to year 7 (secondary school) and it’s a good project. I got to shake hands with a lot of people and say things like “Well done on completing primary school” and “all the best for year 7”, which I like to imagine is the sort of thing the Queen would say if she had been there. Not that we have much in common outside of hand shaking.
During the assembly I shared with the school my fear of being bog washed when I was eleven. That is; the threat of having your head stuck in a toilet bowl and the flush pulled just for being a year 7 and therefore fair game.
But when we got to school it turned out to be a big urban myth. Can you have urban myths in a rural place like Hythe? Either way, I really hope I haven’t introduced a new concept in terror to the kids at Waterside.
For the rest of the day I did a bit of prep’ for Christian Union at Chesham Park Community College that I led with Matt I & Lydia. It was about the end of the world. We read this excellent bit from the Bible:
2 Peter 3 verses 3 to 17


In the afternoon I did a bit more to the Little Spring school radio project (it’s taking ages!),

I started The Broadway Youth youtube.com video channel and uploaded some videos.

Came home and phoned round some Broadway peeps about OUT THERE at the weekend.

So how was your Thursday?

Ben

BROADWAY YOUTH TV!

click here to see cool Broadway Youth videos!

We now have a youtube.com webpage for videos made by & for young people involved in stuff to do with Broadway like Youth Alpha, Free* cafe' and Solid Rock at Chesham Park.
There are 3 classcis in the making waiting for your pleasure right now, with more coming next week.
Cool huh!

SMALL PRINT FOR PARENTS:
youtube.com publishes video for free for anybody, and although they have strict rules about rude, illegal or inappriopriate content please beware that sometimes people break the rules and it takes time for the site to remove offensive videos.

To be safe, please only view youtube.com videos that have been posted or recommended by someone you trust, like us for example!

Add your comments on the videos here. Let us know if you want to post your video on the Broadway Youth page.

Ben

ATTENTION: OUT THERE

Oops! Some of the timings have changed since the original OUT THERE posting.
I' ve changed it so the post is as up to date as can be.
Timings are:

Friday night is 8- 10pm @ Latimer Park

Saturday is 9.30 - 2.30 at Little Spring School

&

7 - 10pm @ Latimer Park.

See you there
Ben

WEDNESDAY

Here’s another slice of Benjamin’s week for your pleasure.
This morning I had great fun unpacking and assembling our new church pool cue (woooow). You would not believe how much packaging they stick on these things, it’s not as if they are made of glass.

I spent the rest of the morning on the phone and reading the bible to prepare a short talk for Solid Rock (Wednesday lunch time group at Chesham Park Community College) and a group study for F.B.I. (a small group for people from Free* Café).

The Solid Rock one was really interesting. It was about God’s contract with Abram and how he and his wife Sarai both laughed when God promised them a baby boy in their 90’s. Instead of getting angry God told them to name their son Isaac (which means “he laughs”). Then he told them to change their names to Abraham and Sarah (“ah ah” get it?). I didn’t have time to talk about it at S.R., but I got to read the freaky bit in Genesis 16 where Abram marks his contract with God by chopping animals in two and laying their carcasses left and right for him to walk down the middle of them. So that blows any claim Damien Hurst had to originality! Apparently it was what people did at the time to mark a deal, like they were saying “may you be killed and cut in two if you break our agreement”. So God was being all ‘contemporary’ and making a deal Abram would recognise. You’ve got to respect that sort thing!

I had lunch with Lydia and the two of us met Matt Ingle (Ley Worker from St Mary’s church) to set up the games consoles and whatnot for F.B.I., where George whooped me at pool but I hammered him twice at table football. Swings and roundabouts. Then we had a really good group study on Jesus’ stories about rejoicing in heaven from Luke 15.

On an unrelated note, I went to see Fearless at the cinema tonight with my mate Simon T. Like all the best martial arts films I left the cinema believing I could actually do kung fu. Which I can’t. Shame.

Ben

STUFF WE NEED FOR OUT THERE / LOVE IN ACTION @ LITTLE SPRING

Can you get hold of any of this stuff?????
Please let me know if you can, we need it for this Saturday (1st July)

• Cakes
• Garden sieves
• Hand trowels
• Paint Brushes
• Emulation paint, remnants are fine (MUST be wet!)

Ben

Youth Alpha this Friday – OUT THERE 2006

Youth Alpha is a bit different this Friday….
this weekend is the 2006 OUT THERE project run by the Restore Hope charity and church youth groups in Chesham, Amersham, Chalfont and Chorelywood.
On Friday night we are meeting from 8pm - 10pm at Latimer Park with other local youth groups to kick the weekend off and dedicate the project to Jesus. There’ll be a band from Soul Survivor Watford and a guy talking about why it’s important to get OUT THERE, to show people that Jesus’ love is a real thing through doing some practical good in our communities.
Then on Saturday the Love in Action team will be hosting a day of work at Little Spring School. We will be doing all sorts of things from digging a herb garden to painting and fencing. We want to see as many people as possible from the churches and the local community so please come along and encourage your friends or family to get involved too.

Love in Action will be there from 9.30 am to 2.30 pm.
Please come for what ever time you can spare.
Your parents or guardian will need to sign a permission slip for you to be there. Adults are welcome too.

Then at 7pm on Saturday night we finish off with a BBQ & gig at Latimer Park. This is just for youth groups, but your friends are welcome. Admission is £3. The band will be playing chart music so there should be something you can jump around to. There’ll also be table football, basket ball and some other activities if you’re feeling sporty.

I can give some lifts (first come first served) on Friday and Saturday so let me know if want to come but can’t get there.

Last year’s OUT THERE Project was excellent and I really recommend getting involved this year. The Friday and Saturday nights were both great and will be even better this year.

Ben

WANT TO SHARE WHAT YOU’VE BEEN UP TO THIS WEEK?

OF COURSE YOU DO!
Send us your email address,
check with your parents (if you’re under 18),
sign up to Blogger
and get posting!!!!

TUESDAY

Breakfast club at Waterside school 8 – 9am.
Everyone has come down with Footie Fever (even Judy Dwight). I think it has something to do an International Plate of Soccer? Mr G brought us all strawberries for after we ate our cereal, what a lovely man!

9am to now
To the office, caught up with Malcolm and Janet after my day off (gotta keep in the loop). I started editing a radio project I recorded with Little Spring year 6 which will take ages! It’s about the hopes and worries the class feel moving up into secondary school. The whole class recorded interviews with each other, their teacher and some linking bits to bring it all together (as depicted in ma' lill' drawin' above). It needs to be ready to listen to on Friday afternoon.

I looked through some youth work books to get ideas for Christian Union at Chesham Park Community College this week which will be about the end of the world, ooph, heavy stuff!
Tidyed out the Free* Café cupboard (a bit).
Thought I’d add a bit to the blog about OUT THERE……

Ben

MONDAY

My day off!
In the evening I went to Quasar with the Boys Brigade Company section. There were several birthday parties there at the same time (who has a birthday party on a Monday night?) and the UV lit corridors were full of shrieking under 10’s, i.e. cannon fodder!
I saw Charlie hiding under a wagon and couldn’t resist….so I shot him 4 times despite being on his team ☺
At this point I should probably make it clear to anyone unsure that Quasar is a game played with toy laser guns, so I only shot Charlie in a symbolic sense which did him only metaphorical harm.
4 was the magic number, Iain shot me 4 times and I shot him back 4 times, all due to a mutual lack of skill / colour blindness as we were also on the same team. Oopsa-daisy.
Mort shot me up a treat; he has a frightening set of skills. He must be in the TA or be some kind of extreme fire arms nutter.

Results:
Red team (my team) won 13100 to 70 (heh heh heh, eat that Mort!)
2nd highest score = little me!
My rank = Phaser Master
You can address me as ‘sir’ if you like.

Click here for a more impressive Quasar score

Ben

WHAT DOES YA BENJAMIN DO?

Hey, get this for a good job:
I am paid by Broadway Baptist Church to work with children and young people in the town of Chesham.
OK, so if you’ve made a special effort to read this blog you probably knew that already.
But do you know how I spend my time? I’ve heard various rumours that I look after toys or play video games all day. Bah, my real job is much better then that!
In the interests of education I’m going to make a few posts over the next couple of weeks to give you some insight into what I get up to on the tithe payers quid.
So let’s get started shall we?

Ben

chewing gum and Engelbert Humperdinck

Ian and me were both at church last night to hear a really interesting bloke called Vartan Melkonian. Boy oh boy he's had an interesting life.

He was born in a refugee camp for Christians in Lebanon in the Middle East. His parents died from a plague when he was about four (he doesn't really know how old he is, when his birthday is, who his grand parents were, any of that stuff). He lived in a Christian orphanage for a few years but ran away and survived by living on the streets and selling chewing gum. When he talked about his expirences of surviving as a street child he said that he felt priveleged because he knew from what he had learned at the organge that God was looking after him. He said he could clearly see the difference between good and evil in the world around him and he knew that he was under God's protection.

To cut a very long story short, he ended up as the conductor of the London Philharmonic Orchestra! Stroof! But his first gig in the UK was at a talent contest in Skegness (wahey Spring Harvest fans) in 1973 where he sang an Engelbert Humperdinck song (ask your grandma) and won. Good on ya Vartan!

HIn the 90's he set up a charity called the Melkonian foundation (in honour of his grand parents who he never knew) to get people from the UK to support the Christian Orphange he went to. It's called the Birds Nest orphange and it was set up in 1928 by a 19 year old girl from Denmark. Read that sentence again - SHE WAS 19! She was sat in church hearing about terrible stuff that was happening to Christians in the Middle East and God knocked her off her pew and told her to start an orphage in Lebanon WHEN SHE WAS 15! FIFTEEEN! And when she was 19 (NINETEEN!) she did it. Let's all say a communal "stroof' In honour of this achievement:

breath in, and STROOF.

click here to find out more about Vartan

click here to find out more about the Melkonian foundation
http://www.melkonian-foundation.org.uk/History.htm

Vartan was invited to speak by the Broadway Mission committee. Broadway gives some monmey to support the orphanage. The Mission committee take the money that Broadway sets aside to support Christians in other places as they share news of Jesus with people and they decide which organisations to give it to. They do a great job and last night was really interesting, so look out for the next one.

Ian and me were talking after the service and we had an idea for Youth Alpha that I'm quite excited about. You can hear about that at Youth Alpha this Sunday (2nd July), see you there.

Links

We have just added some links for your pleasure....some fun, others informative. However, Ben drew the line at me putting on Anton Du Beke's website! (What a bore!)

Let us know of any good links you want added. But we'll have to check with our censor first!

Helenx

I was scared!

Driving through Winchmore Hill today Helen and I saw a sight that burned into my retinas and made me feel quite poorly. If I close my eyes now I can still see it!
It was a white cat like the one Blowfeld strokes on his lap in James Bond movies (or Dr Evil in Austin Powers if your under 21) but it had no ears! None at all! Just pink holes. It's head was like a white football!
This might not sound that scary. Trust me on it, it's not natural. Somehow when you take away a cat's ears it's little face becomes quite demonic!

Post a comment with your own freaky animal story.

Here's what to do.....

There are two options.....
You can view this blog and check out all the info given on it.....or you can join up and become a blogger on it. If you'd like to do that, I will need your email address and we will send you an invitation.

Becoming a blogger requires you to join www.blogger.com. Please discuss this with your parents and check they are happy with this. Feel free to ask Helen or me to chat with them if they're not sure of the details!

Happy reading/posting!
Benjamin

Testing...testing...123

Hey there people.
If all has gone to plan, I have just created a blogger page where we can all keep in touch with stuff that's going on and have a chance to give our two penneth! Details to follow.........
Hx