After a brilliant week at home, we headed off to Hawkwell for an activities week. You might ask “what would a band and drama team do for an activities week”. Well, we did just that. We had about 25 young people turn up for the week and we turned them into a band and a drama team. Diversion went off to help the drama team write a piece of drama while we helped the band to write a song. Each day we split off into our two parts and the band did a bit more to the final song. In the afternoons we all hang out together playing pool, playstation, basketball and generally just chilled out together. It was an awesome week. The band came up with the name “Connect” because they are all connected together and with God. The drama team chose the name “Herd Wot?” which is an anagram of “The Word”.
The given theme for the song and piece of drama was relationships. The final piece of drama was called “Do you know you you’re talking to?” and was about the dangers of meeting people online. The final song was called “Face to Face” which was about having real friends rather than friends on the internet. By Friday we had the song recorded and the drama filmed. On Friday the band worked on performance techniques ready for the gig that evening. At the gig, Taste played some songs, and Diversion performed their own piece of drama, then at the end of the evening, Herd Wot? performed what they had been working on all week and Connect performed Face to Face. The gig was amazing and Connect even had an encore! We had some really positive feedback from some of the young people and parents so I would consider the week a great success.
On the Saturday, East Norfolk Youth for Christ was holding an “Alternative to Halloween” event called Treat. Last year when they ran Treat apparently there was so much mess after all the games that people were slipping over all over the place! So this year they decided to do less messy games and get the Check It Out team in to help with the entertainment. We set up at one end of the hall to play music and perform drama while the other guys set up their messy games at the other end. It was a fantastic evening where everyone seemed to be getting involved. The games were suitably messy and I managed to fit a stage dive in at the end of one of the songs! After packing down I got back to my hosts in Essex at about 2:30am. They are in Sri Lanka at the moment so they left me lots of notes around the house telling me how to use everything. We’re in the office this week preparing for our 3 week tour starting next week in Oben!
