Focus Focus

We've been a week home from Focus, our church's All-church Holiday north of London and are still recovering from the awesomeness that is Focus. Jamie had a chance to be a normal attendee this year; I was still kicking it with the younger youth.
Highlights:

• Brad getting to see some young men grow in their relationships with Christ and their desire to know him more. Awesome!
  
• Seeing Aidan ride his new bike everywhere (and Oliver on his tail on the scooter).
• Aidan's birthday on Friday -- (he got to open grandparents presents) put on Gary and Judy's gift (a football/soccer uniform) then put on Larry and Carole's gift (spiderman outfit), proceeded to play until dinner and then crash in the buggy at the dining hall before eating a bite.
• Naps every day for the whole family
• "chalet" parties - don't get too excited. Our "chalets" are the little one-bedroom teeny hotel-like rooms (with rock hard mattresses) that we stay in. No fridge's but one little 10-inch TV that at least gets cbeebies. Best part about chalets is that lunch's are on your own so all of your neighbors (chalets are connected) that face the same green sprawl out with their cheese and wine and sandwiches and watch kids together and get to know one another. They purposefully try to put you by people in similar life stages, so we had several other little 1 and 4 year olds around. Those are chalet parties.
• Amazing teaching - Pastor Agu, Bishop of London, Mike Pilavachi, Pete Greig and Shane Claiborne (not to mention HTB's very own Nicky Gumbel!) were some of Jamie's faves.
  
• Definitely saw the Spirit move and stir up His vision for His kingdom. Theme was on "Transformation" so lots of talks about how you can transform society, your neighborhood, yourself. Cool stuff!

Definitely a tradition to think about bringing back...lots of love!
Forbes