Last Saturday was a long day for some of us!!
After a lovely church day out walking on the Otley Chevin, 8 from our Inters Group(9-11’s) that meet on a Sunday morning came together to sleep over in church.
The evening began with pizza making, the children were competing for best looking pizza and best tasting pizza. Val Boyd took her time deliberating as she assessed and tasted each one. She finally decided on giving Francesca Best Looking Pizza for her four season pizza with different toppings in each quarter. The taste test took yet more time but eventually Val declared Mary the winner. After all that we all enjoyed eating the pizza and talking about our exciting weeks at school.
This was followed by some sweet games. The chocolate game was my personal highlight, six was the number to roll and the elation at throwing a 6 was palpable. 
The key was getting on the very difficult ski gloves as quickly as possible and trying to get as much chocolate in your mouth before someone else threw a 6. Fun was had by all although some got more chocolate than others!!!
Finally, it was time to sit down and watch ‘Soul Surfer’, a real life film about a girl who struggles with a challenging life experience only to see how God uses the situation to give her a platform for sharing his love.
This film has many different teaching points but this year I choose to follow it by reinforcing the prayer element. Each child received a ‘Prayer Experiment Notebook’ to encourage them in their own prayer lives.
Eventually it was time for a game of ‘Sardines’ (hide and seek but one person hides and everyone else has to find them) in the dark. Everyone had a turn at hiding, some finding very obscure places to cram into and then it was bedtime. The children were all eventually asleep by 12:15am.
The next morning we were up by 7am, eating our breakfast followed by a game of picture scavenger hunt. The morning finished with bacon butties and some chill time before church.
Thanks to Val, Ian and Claire for all their help, I hope they enjoyed it as much as the children and I did…. I guess when you get asked ‘can we do this again?’ you know the children have had a good time… Maybe at Christmas?