Sunflower Sunday

On Sunday 27th April 2008 

The Man Behind The Magic Returned….

Bringing a Fresh Blog Post with him! 

As April is slowly coming to a close and everybody is settling back into normal routines after the Spring Holidays one thing stays the same Church & Chips – and this weeks Church & Chips was small, but loud and the theme of the teaching was all about the Creation, but most importantly The Creator.

We gathered together before Worship, as always and met up with friends – some we dont see at school or work and chatted, played games and basically we were ourselves, because sometimes you can find yourself overwhelmed during the week and its good to get your feet back on the ground (or is that just me?) 

Because I have been away and missed Church & Chips last week – it was the first time in a month or so that I saw Victoria, Kelvin & The Girls – and we swapped stories of our holidays, accompanied by the odd poke and anaconda picture.

We started Worship together this morning – Victoria was multitasking due to the absence of the Band as they played with the Scouts at a special march. Victoria led the meeting and played the piano – which even for a lady, seems quite hard! 

After we had welcomed new friends in our visitors from Maidstone in Kent, Victoria showed the whole meeting the picture in which I have a massive (not sure if its fully grown or not) Anaconda on my shoulders. – Our Hymns focussed on Creation with All Things Bright And Beautiful and other school assembly classics and after indulging (Nice Word! Indulging!) in some prayer time the kids and the poor souls who were teaching us went downstairs to explore our amazing cause in more kid friendly detail.

This included playing a game that is very similar to Pictionary – drawing animals and stuff that God created during the Creation Week and making cool Creation Posters, depicting some more of the amazing creations – some of the pictures included Cute Turtles and Amazing Sand Dunes. Finally, before we went back upstairs to join the final stages of Worship we prepared some plant pots – two each – with some Sunflower seeds to begin a compettion to see who could grow the biggest Sunflowers, one of the two pots were given to a member of the church so that we affectivley became little Garden Buddies, Anne told us to ask the people we gave them too how their flowers were getting on – it will be interesting to see whos survives the slugs – and the test of time.

After we joined in with the closing of worship – which included my favorite hymn ever!, unfortunately I have forgotten what it is called – and some more Prayer, You can never get enough Prayer. 

Downstairs we dined on Sausage & Chips, prepared by Maureen – (Dean is working in A) and had a bit of fun before the dawn of a brand new week – which will bring fresh challenges for all! 

Jordan

 

 

Greetings from Planet God

Today (Sunday, April 13th) was again full of laughter and fun as we rounded off our first week of Spring Break. the weeks seem to be going by so quickly – before you know it you guys will be back at school (I know I wont cause Im in Tenerife!) but enough about me and more about Church & Chips…. although if you want to know about me im quite happy to start my own personal blog….. wait too much? – I thought so…

Anyway, Graham led the Morning Worship this Morning as Kelvin, Victoria and The Girls are still away on holiday – I would also like to point out that today is Victoria’s Birthday (ahh the joy of Facebook!). Grahams meeting was all about how Powerful and Good our Lord is and we started Worship with a selection of Hymns, Prayers and other exciting forms of worship (that sounds cool!) including one of the Church’ (as a whole) favorite action songs ‘Wonderful Lord’ – which is a more relaxed type of action song with its point extenuated through simple, yet powerful Sign Language.

After we had opened worship as one group – the smaller youth groups – Primary & Junior Soldiers, split to spend some time working on the Sunday School courses ‘Mobilize’ for the JS’ and ‘Bubbles’ for the Primary. In the Youth class Anne helped us to understand what the Bible and God say about how to handle Bullying in any way, shape or form. – as a group we discussed the Cons of Bullying (their are no real Pros) and unleashed our inner artistic talents by drawing bullies and victims in everyday situations and affectivley ‘Putting Words in their Mouths’. After we had finished the lesson and filled in this weeks page in our workbooks (which included a rather pretty sunflower!) we had a bit of a Kids Alive! fight – using the rolled up newspapers to – well I will leave your imaginations to do the rest of the work.

Ben & Stuart told the congregation what we had been doing downstairs – and because it took them alot of courage to stand up in front of everybody, some of the people they have no contact with they sat down to a round of applause – you should have seen their faces, smiles! smiles! smiles! and we also explored (I think its the Creation, they are doing at the moment) with Roy and his Primary group.

Graham closed his meeting with a little prayer, a good old sing song and of course we said Grace together – The Best Church in The World – missing some vital people – but still praising!

After the meeting we went downstairs to ‘Chow Down’ on Chicken Dippers – and of course Chips! – we looked forward to another week together, i wonder where it goes sometimes Anybody Else?

Finally, before I sign off – There will be NO C&C Blog Post next week or until the 25th for that matter as I am going on Holiday – a well deserved and hopefully enjoyable rest before my exams start in a few months time – yes I am already pulling out my hair!

See You Soon

Jordan 

Memory Lane

Today is Tuesday, I usually post this on a Sunday – yet, technology being technology my Dog chewed my laptop charger cable – fusing it, so I have managed to get hold of my brothers laptop – and even though it is late its still here!.

This post is entitled Memory Lane because of the people who came to Clifton last Sunday – people who are close to the hearts of everybody in the Church and seeing them again was amazing, of course I am talking about James, Penny, Adam & Abbie Van Cleef – they came last weekend to visit us and instantly I saw the change – Adam is taller than me!, thats not fair!

While the little family reunion was in full swing upstairs – the Church & Chips gang were downstairs playing Guitar Hero and looking forward together to the mornings worship and the two weeks of complete and utter freedom because we had just broken up from school for a very late spring break.

Even though we were together on Sunday we were still missing some people – Kelvin, Victoria and the Girls are away – and even though our friends from Blackburn were here we didnt completely forget the guys who usually run around like madmen (the girls) the blonde who tickles me until I nearly wet myself (Victoria) and Kelvin – who is just Kelvin.

We all met upstairs for Worship together – Vicky led – singing songs, praying and worshipping as one group  the Bible Explorers (remember to take notes along the way!) after we sang, and danced and worshipped together we split into our normal Sunday School groups Primary & Junior Soldiers and worked on exploring our God in a more child-friendly way with Anne & Anne! – some of us passed the Bible Challenge but that wasnt the most important thing – we continued on our theme of Biblical exploration using language and on of my all-time favourite bible passages John 316 – (im using the word exploration too much now!).

We were set another Bible Challenge for next week but because I dont want to be in trouble for cheating Im not going to post the answers – I rather like my face.

After Worship we all went downstairs and enjoyed lunch and mayhem together – in that order – thanks to Dean, Maureen & Roy who make the lunch possible and continue in their jobs as zoo keepers on some occasions.

On Sunday I also went to the meeting in the Evening – because I heard a rumor that Roy was leading and I enjoy Roy’s meetings because anything goes – I enjoyed the meeting because of the time of Sharing – James spoke of his memories of Clifton which is what I mean by Memory Lane, and James, if you ever read this – MY BROTHER IS STILL THE SAME!

Kim and Vicky sang and we saw a glimpse of Puppetry Genius (no, sadly it wasnt me) as the puppet who has a striking resemblence to me performed ‘People Need The Lord’.

Thank You to all who take the time to read this and lets hope that The Van Cleefs can come back soon.

See you all next week

Jordan