My gap year is officially over! I graduated on the 7th July with the most amazing bunch of people I could have ever met. It was a truly beautiful day, but more on that later. The last 2 weeks of my gap year consisted of Summer Madness '13 in Glenarm, Northern Ireland and in Sheffield, England (where graduation happened).
Summer Madness is a festival held over the space of 5 days, 4 nights. We were there for 9 days. It is a Christian festival where there is worship held in a huge tent called the 'big top' every morning and evening, there are also cafes situated across the grounds where speakers may come in or mostly acoustic musicians come in and play, there is also a place called info point where there are also exhibitions and books being sold. This is where people show their stuff like Belfast Bible College, blood donation people etc, then there are 2 seminar tents where speakers do, well... seminars. It's a whole bunch of fun and I think there was about 2,000 people there, I'm not sure so don't hold me to it! Loads of people committed their life to God while they were there which was amazing, it brings me joy that people are still committing their lives to God and fingers crossed they get the support they need to continue their journey.
The first four days of SM13 was setting up, a lot of hard work. I have to say we had a great team of leaders who gave us direction very well and were always happy to give you more jobs to do, but hey, that's what we were there for. We also had a great team of volunteers who worked hard (most of the time) and were also great banter to be around. God was always in the conversation and it's really awesome to be around so many people who want to talk about Jesus, discuss what He did in His ministry, ask the tough questions and also support and pray for each other. We had a great morning away in Ballymena swimming pool, it was so much fun to just spend time with the team and have some silly fun. Then came the festival and the campers. Worship in the big top was amazing, totally got lost in it and connected with God in such a great way that I hadn't been able to outside of my home church and Romania. The speakers were so engaging, don't know how long they spoke for because they kept me interested and challenged me! I also received prayer which was really great, God spoke into my life through the prayer ministry team so I was well happy with that. I was sad to be leaving the team at SM13 but it was a really great experience and I will certainly be back.
When God does such an intense amount of work in you during a period of 9 days, it's hard to slack in your faith. I've realised that I have a lot of changes to make to my life and God gets that I'm not perfect but who's to say I can't aim to do the best I can for God? God gets me, He gets that I'm not perfect and knows I'll fail a lot of times before I can change my ways. God is good, in fact He's great.
When God does such an intense amount of work in you during a period of 9 days, it's hard to slack in your faith. I've realised that I have a lot of changes to make to my life and God gets that I'm not perfect but who's to say I can't aim to do the best I can for God? God gets me, He gets that I'm not perfect and knows I'll fail a lot of times before I can change my ways. God is good, in fact He's great.
Our God, is a great big God (clap, clap)!
To be continued...
