Twenty four of our Juniors, Seniors/Brigaders and Company Sections of the Brigades had a weekend away to Bilberry Hill Centre at The Lickeys in Rednal, Birmingham 8-10th February. The weather was very kind to us for the whole weekend.
On the Friday evening after settling in to the bunkbed dormitories, we received our food delivery from Sainsbury's! and then played some "getting to know you" games in the sports hall. We had our first instalment of devotions on the Lenten theme which set us all the task of putting tokens into a pot every time we ate a different type of food and drink, used water for the toilet, washing our hands and showering - we had to wait until Saturday evening to find out why!
All of us did "eventually" have a good night's rest.
On Saturday, three of the lads and an Officer attended the BB Leadership Training at Lye whilst the rest of us had an amble up to the Lickey Hills Countryside Centre where the youngsters were split into three teams to go on an A-Z scavenge hunt finding something that they could put in a bag beginning with each letter of the alphabet - they showed plenty of initiative and imagination! They also came across the Prayer Hut that was being used throughout Lent - an initiative by the Lickey Churches. After their hunt, we all enjoyed a picnic lunch at the top of the Lickeys.
Later in the afternoon we enjoyed two games of ten pin bowling before going back to the Centre for dinner - needless to say they all had a healthy appetite! After dinner there were more sports games, a quiz and then our devotions. Everyone had put their tokens in the pot to be counted and for all of us the tokens added up to a very large amount! We were then told of a story in which some people in poor areas of the world do not have the luxury of any water on "tap" and have a very poor choice of maybe one or two food items in their diet. We all had time to ponder on our very "rich" lives.
We then had our supper and a lazy evening watching a film before making way to our beds.
On Sunday morning we went to a local Baptist Church and received a very warm welcome and a family service which was on the theme of "Temptation" which fitted in perfectly with our weekend's devotions. The service used lots of technology with no hymn book in sight! We also came away with our very own hand-made wrist band (WWJD What would Jesus do?, PUSH Pray until something happens, or one you made up with yourself). A very positive experience for all of us.
After lunch we played some board games and had a beetle drive and ended our weekend with us sharing the grace together, before packing up and heading back to Redditch.
Fun, friendship and fellowship was had by us all!