Wednesday, May 02, 2012

30 Hour Famine recap

Well this past weekend was a crazy one... we had the 30 Hour Famine on Friday and Saturday and then a Soup and Bun lunch fundraiser on Sunday. It was a great weekend despite the lack of sleep and everything went really well!

This year I asked the student leadership team to plan the Famine. They did a great job! It can be a very overwhelming event to plan but they worked well as a team and the event was a success. This year, we chose to support World Vision with their "Food" cause which this year is for the drought in the Horn of Africa. Here is a short video about what our fundraising is going towards:



This year, our students raised $4001 for this cause! Way to go everyone!!!

We started our night in the Attic playing some games. Because it was the last Friday for adult and children's programs, we joined the rest of the church downstairs for some games in the gym, a presentation from Green Bay, and an ice cream social... only our teens got a juice bar instead! I thought the family night was a fantastic idea and it was great to get together with other ministries. It's nice to see who comes out for other things that happen in our building on Fridays since I never get a chance to poke my head into different rooms to see what others are up to.

After the event was done, we headed back to the Attic for our chapel session. The worship team did a set and then one of our leaders, Paul, gave his testimony and spoke about perserverace. Thanks Paul for sharing! We broke into small groups and spent some time discussing together and praying as well.

After chapel, we made sure the church was cleared out before we started our games... starting with the all-time favourite, Gorgon. This is how the game works: two flashlights are taken apart and the pieces are hidden around the church. One person is chosen to be the Gorgon ("it") and leaves to go hide. All the lights in the building are cut and once the Gorgon gets a head start, we release the kids into the building. Their goal is to find flashlight pieces, assemble the flashlight, and shine it on the Gorgon. Meanwhile, the Gorgon is trying to tag people - as the amount of gorgons grow, they become a group, then two, then three, and so on - but the kicker is they try and scare kids in the process. Either everyone becomes a gorgon, or someone wins. I usually do hallway patrol and it's pretty hilarious to listen to the cries of "gorgoooooon" followed by screaming.

We also had a dodgeball tournament afterwards and for once I was on the winning team! What a great way to poop teenagers out!

Once the group games were done, we opened up the different activity rooms and sleeping rooms. For the rest of the night, students had a choice between hanging out in one of the rooms or heading to bed. This year, we had the gym, a girls spa room, board games, movies, and video games. As usual, the only rooms open all night were video games and movies... most people ended up falling asleep at some point.

In the morning we had another chapel session - the band played and the students broke up into small groups to pray for our Famine cause, our community and country, and our church.

Our last scheduled activity was a service project. Usually we clean up the neighbourhood or make lunches for the homeless (I've done that one for the past few years because it really hammers home the hunger... whoa, that was alliteration..). This year the student leaders tried something new - the girls assembled First Gift goody bags and wrote cards for the moms that ministry serves. The guys prepared for our Soup and Bun fundraiser the following day, doing most of the prep work so we wouldn't be scrambling on Sunday morning. It was a great way to do more than usual and it went really well.

Finally, we ended the event at noon on Saturday by breaking the fast together over bowls of soup and buns. Then it was pick up time, a final building check, and homeward bound I went to veg out and relax after a very long "workday!"



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