Shall we Sing a Song for you?

I spent last week in Portrush on the Glenmanus GO team. Team members were Stephen “Jonny” McCollum (formerly known as Stephen McCollum-Cullybackey), Amanda Moffett, Claire Wilson, Charlotte Hyndman, Amy & Catherine Morrison and Emmeline & Erin McCollum. We all arrived at the Manse on Saturday night and were shown the leaflet we would be giving out:

You couldn’t make it up!

The team then went on a short walk where we came across Samuel’s other car, hidden in the street across from the manse!

Then the boys went to Norman and Nancy McCollum’s – best GO team hosts ever! You kinda get the feeling that it’s going to be a good week when you spend the last hour of the Saturday night being bounced up on a trampoline in the dark while constantly giggling, and playing trampoline Duck, Duck, Goose :) On Sabbath morning we had French toast for breakfast. That started an unbroken trend of warm breakfasts, which also included bacon, scrambled eggs, freshly made muffins, freshly made pancakes (chocolate chip – amazing!) and a fry on the last day! Sounds good, eh girls?! After morning worship there was a congregational lunch (apparently only camp get the traditional Glenmanus hot dogs, but we had salad which was still good actually!) and then an open air service on the grass above the West Strand. Others in the Presbytery came along to support the GO team and congregation.

Doing the psalm introductions wearing a rug wasn’t really going to help Samuel’s cause…

Then the team went back to the manse. Andrew & Brian Blackburn and Leslie came too, and after discovering that all 4 Presbyteries were represented on the team, Andrew promptly invented the game ‘Presbyteries’ and fired RP trivia questions at us for about an hour solid. His favourite type of question was ‘Name [insert number] elders in [insert congregation]‘. In the interests of telling the whole story, I suppose it should be stated that I completely wiped the floor with the rest of them (not wanting to blow my own horn or anything), and in the process picked up the first and only yellow card ever to be handed out in the short history of the game. Then we had tea and evening worship, followed by a final HBC planning meeting, where health and safity regulations reached new extremes.

On Monday morning (after set quiet time in manse – good stuff!) we started giving out The Anchor. After lunch we had the first of our team Bible studies – an ABCD on Joshua. The heatwave was back on in force so we did it outside. I also finally met the famous Matt & Heidi Filbert as they walked past just before we started. Titus just moved in next door to them – man, I’m so jealous!! We spent the rest of the afternoon getting set up for the ‘Kidorama’ Holiday Bible Club. The team’s duties at the club were organising the games and doing the Memory Verses – but before we could worry about that the grass had to be cut!

Stephen was handed the strimmer…

…For about 2 secs till Emmaline had to fix it

The best bit was cutting the grass on the banking

The rest of them set up for the club…well, that’s what they were meant to be doing!

After the HBC we headed down the road to New Horizon. We missed the start of John Piper, but managed to get seats in one of the overflow tents – they’ve changed them about this year, so we could actually see the man himself in real life!! He was fantastic for the half hour or so we heard (make sure and buy the CDs!) He disappeared right at the end however – no photo!! Nooooooooooooooooooo!!

Tuesday followed a pretty similar pattern to Monday. Glenmanus have their own photographer dude called Clifford, who took a few (hundred!) snaps of the first two nights of the HBC. Here are a few:

Amanda watches some kids hit about a big inflatable ball

Bucketball

Esther

Reuben desperately tries to stop Scott – great photo!

Amothy

Erin laughing

And again

Emmaline doing the singing

One of the crafts was making balloon dogs, a few of them were let down by inflatable Timmy however

Eleanor and Andrew

Quick cricket went down well too

Nathaniel with the windchimes he made

A typical Erin pose!

After the club, the whole team went back to Norman and Nancy’s house. First of all we played in their new paddling pool (so big it’s basically a swimming pool, with a filter than continually cleans the water and stuff). Me and Jonny had been wanting to go in it the whole time in the heat, now however it was a cold evening! But as I told Jonny, you only live once, so we all got in (eventually!).

I got soaked by Amanda. Not Happy! You can see the paddling pool and the trampoline in the background

Then we had a BBQ for marshmallows (or ‘marshmellows’ in the local dialect – see also Chicago, Lasagne…) and smores.

Amy looking totally wasted

Charlotte eating a smore

Then we went inside and played a few games. After the girls left for the manse, me and Stephen played chess (Bishop J. C. Ryle and all that), where I killed his king using my pawn. Just thinking, can’t believe I forgot about the easy chant!

On Wednesday we gave out the remaining leaflets. Me and Jonny ended up basically in Portstewart before we ran out, well into County Londonderry!!

The best moment of his life!

Yoooooooooooooooo!!!!

I now have a firmer grasp of county boundaries than when I wrote that post about the Share Centre!

Who are ya?

You had to climb up pretty high to get to some apartments – here we catch Jonny and Charlotte standing with both arms the same length (actually, his arms are bound to be about twice the length…)

In the afternoon we had an open air Psalm sing (117C, 19, 1, 23) (doing the thing where you talk about Creation showing there is a God, and singing the first half of Psalm 19, and then saying that we need the Bible to tell us how to get to Heaven and singing the 2nd part – great!) over at the harbour. After it, we gave out leaflets to the people sitting about.

At night, me and J looked at some old photos of the McCollum kids – I had to take a photo of this one as Reuben and Nathaniel look so angelic! Just like real life! ;)

On Thursday morning we did some door to door work, asking people if they’d read the leaflet and what they thought of it and stuff. Not many good conversations. In the afternoon we had another psalm sing in the same place as Wednesday’s, and then came back and started blowing up happy balloons to give to the children at the end of the HBC (thursday was the last night of it). We got sloppy joes for tea!! (from Nancy). However before tea a rather solemn event occurred – having given out 3,000 leaflets emblazoned with the question ‘Will YOUR anchor hold?’, we finally snapped…

Amanda

Stephen and Amy

Stephen, Steven and Stephen – I wasn’t for hanging about too long, notice the football going on in the background!

After the kids had all went home, there was ice cream for the helpers:

I’m taller than Stephen! (who nearly got kicked off the team for being taller than Big Sam)

Team photo

Amy going loopy – I wonder what she was like at 4am the next morning when she was leaving to go to Inglin!

You can get out on the roof of the tower! Never managed it though, would have needed ladders. Seems a lot more promising than getting up Newry’s however! Which I’ll get up yet!!

On the last day, after little sleep (mainly because of a long discussion in which me, Jonny and Emmaline discussed world dominion plans based around his dad) we met at the manse for our last study on Joshua. We then went round and prayed each for each other for what we were doing in the future and went and played rounders (sound familiar?!). Incidentally, Jonny is on the Dirty Ballymena Academy ‘C’U Committee for next year and wants prayer as he seeks to introduce the Bible into CU! (Emmaline is on the Coleraine High one and wants to introduce Psalms, but Jonny isn’t being so adventurous!) He’s been told that they tried having Bible studies once, but they stopped them because nobody came! Anyway, here’s the children’s game of rounders (or the sport of BASEBALL! to my American readers) (as Philip spent 2 years trying to explain to them in Cyprus):

Charlotte

Erin

Then it was on to Barry’s to spend the 2 bags of tokens that Nancy had very kindly given us that morning!

Amanda and Erin on the new thing just in the door

Claire hoping that the horses weren’t going to suddenly turn upside down!

Then we went to Morelli’s for tea:

Get it down ye!

Then we went on a walk and came back for ice cream!

Then we went home. What a week! Emmaline informed us on the Saturday night that no-one had ever come back on a Glenmanus GO team (and they’d had 3 previous ones before we came!) but I really don’t see why! Barrels of fun all round!! And getting to help the congregation with their outreach at the same time!

Thanks to the many of you who were praying for us, it was really appreciated. No team is going to run well without God answering prayer. Continue to pray that the work done will bear fruit in God’s time, and that people will come to church, hear God’s Word preached and be saved.

Thanks to Stephen/Jonny for a lot of the photos

On Saturday I was actually in the country for the Ballyclabber Football Tournament for a change. Most of Faughan were on holiday however, so I played for fellow Westerners, Bready. The first 2 groups had 4 teams in them, and the rest had 3. We ended up in the group of death with ‘Mick’s Muckers’ (Offie, Sweeney, Nate & Michael Hawthorne, Philip Aiken), Lisburn and Carrick. There were about 20 teams altogether. Here are a few snaps:

Tullyvallen

versus “We’re not Brazil…we’re not Dromara either”

The ultimate male playing for Ards v. Trinity

James Bun

Midfield action

A video of Alan Blackwell surging forward, and getting a nosebleed, in the same match

Andrew Blackburn tries to stop Piemonger

Philip and Offie watch on

You have Andy G to thank for this priceless photo of Aggers!

Big Phil in action for Limavady – this was the first year ever that Limavady didn’t reach the final

Deco claims to be more into egg chasing, which might explain his comedy kick out which hit his own defender and rolled into the net

Irene scores for Knockbraken

Conor

Bready’s first match was against Mick’s Muckers. They took the lead with a speculative long range shot from Offie, before he added a better second. I pulled one back for Bready. This time I didn’t forget my dance, I just forgot to do it, however the crowd soon reminded me so I obliged. We still lost however, and we went on to lose to Lisburn 1-0, leaving us with beating Carrick the only thing left to play for. Here’s a few snaps from Carrick’s 0-0 draw with Lisburn:

Joelerz

Peter about to conceed another free kick for kicking the ball into the field

Peter’s pointing has been well documented on this website

Ali searches for the ball

Jonny McClure in action for Lisburn

In the big match itself, Carrick changed their tactics, with Joel coming outfield and heading in the opener. We came back however with 2 goals from Mr. Skills, which sent Lisburn through behind Mick’s Muckers, and Carrick finished bottom.

Lisburn faced controversial opponents in the quarter final. Ballymoney Galacitcos, in full kit, had obviously been on their way to play a proper match when instead they turned up at Ballyclabber. They must have kidnapped the Cloughmills team and tied them up somewhere, keeping Adam so he could negotiate with the RPs. They played Adam in nets, although forced him to wear pyjama bottoms rather than shorts so he wouldn’t be able to get far in the stifling heat if he tried to escape. Lisburn put up a brave fight, but lost on penalties with Jonny hitting the bar.

The Galacticos Cloughmills were drawn with ‘Dromara’ (Gareth Kerr and his mate John who reads AWS, plus some randomers) in the semi-final. Both keepers, being the only RPs, received huge cheers whenever they touched the ball. For once the ‘Who are ya?’ chant was a genuine question. Mick’s Muckers beat Convoy in the other semi-final, and then Convoy beat Dromara in the 3rd-place game.

Convoy were just happy to be there. It was the first of two big outings for them – tomorrow they all go in a big bus to sing hymns and play organs at Stevie Wright’s wedding

Then it was down to the final.

Adam was left bemused as Philip Aiken gave the RPs the lead direct from a corner

Pete was called on to be linesman as a controversial match was expected

The final went to penalties however, as Sweeney conceeded for the first time since I scored past him in the first game and the game ended 1-1

Offie missed the first pen, but Sweeney saved Cloughmills’ first to keep them in it (penalties are sudden death from the start). They scored another 2 each before Nathan blazed over the bar, and ‘Cloughmills’ were champions

The runners up

A few additions to the Camp post

Emma complained there was no photo of her – here you go!

Also I forgot to mention another great comedy moment. When we got back from the Share Centre, we were getting stuff out of the boot of the bus and young Steve McCollum climbed right in to get some boxes at the back. Then the bus started to drive off! We managed to get the bus stopped before it drove Steve to Portadown, but the look on his face as it started driving off was priceless!

Last week was one of the best weeks of my life, spent with 140-odd young people who descended on Armagh Royal School for Senior Camp 2006.

Camp started on Saturday with me and Deborah fairly racing to get there before the buses, but as it turned out we could probably have walked and still managed it. I will never understand how it can take a bus over 2 and a half hours to get from Coleraine to Armagh. I’m not complaining though as it meant that on discovering I had been promoted to the Mall, I was able to get a room with an en suite! Score! When the buses finally arrived, all people wanted to do was watch Engerland v. Portugal rather than actually play football. Disappointing…although Lamps, Gerrard and Carragher missing from 12 yards did provide some entertainment! Ronaldo and Portugal were already proving what a nasty bunch they actually are though. Then it was finally time to eat tea (setting the high standard for the week), which had been put back, and we got to play some real football. Woohoo! In the evening we had the usual time of introductory games – but not the usual games! Good stuff committee!

On Sabbath morning we had a fry for breakfast, followed by the first of our devotions from Roger Ellsworth’s book ‘How to live in a dangerous world’. Soon it was time for our first talk from David McCullough on the life of Abraham. Following our great Sunday dinner we went on a walk and then came back and did Nathan’s Bible quiz! No fun allowed! In the evening, there were seminars by David Lockington (the eye) and Catherine Donnelly (evolution).

“If you’re wearing 3/4 lengths you’re not a real man”

Luke flat out

Monday’s schedule started early with a spot of football at 8 for an hour (where someone managed to get himself sent off!) before breakfast at 9, quiet time and the talk, followed by yet more football. Eventually it was time for Gregg’s games – I’d been looking forward to them for 2 years and they didn’t disappoint! The slippery slope was of course the best! Leslie has a great photo of me going down it.

The evening’s activity was a Team Challenge, where my team triumphed! Easy! Easy! Easy!

The boy in the adidas top is John James. Like John George, except he actually has a surname!

Get it down ye!

Lynda, Lynda – Lynda, Lynda – Bell, Bell, Bell (x10)

On Tuesday we piled into 2 buses for a trip to Crawfordsburn. The bus journey was boring for the first half, but then the singing started!! Absolutely amazing! We composed numerous classics, the lyrics of most of which probably better not be put in writing here, and arrived at our destination to the sound of a song specially composed for the county we now found ourselves in:

[audio:http://www.shallwesingasongforyou.co.uk/audio/BurnItToTheGround.mp3]

Other repeatable songs included “RP till I die” and various football songs. At Crawfordsburn we played volleyball and football while getting sunburnt and eating ice cream. Then we had a BBQ and went to Dundonald. Some went to Indiana land, some did ice skating, and the rest of us filled the time waiting for crazy golf by playing headers and volleys with the all new ‘switch!’ rule. Which hasn’t been repeated since! Peter McCauley triumphed in our crazy golf group, which also consisted of Andrew Aiken and Andy Morrison. We did the course we didn’t do with Renwick – we didn’t have the real blackbeard this time however! Philip Moffett managed to win a golden doubloon at the 18th hole entitling him to a free game, but he intends to keep it! His specialness was slightly reduced however when Richard McKelvey repeated the feat. The bus journey on the way home was officially the best bus journey in the history of the world ever. The singing continued and the Steelo dance was created. The only bad thing about Tuesday was that there weren’t any discussion groups.

Some of the Lads at the back of the bus

Clare and Deborah – not on the death bus 8)

The old guard take a breather

Philip in the middle of his ‘lucky luck day’ – he also found a 50p that the golfing place told him to keep

Lee brightened up our week. And before Paul has a hernia – Lee is allowed to wear an England top cos he’s English. It doesn’t mean we don’t mock him, but he’s allowed to wear it

On Wednesday morning David (Italia!) McFarland had decided to gather a few lads to play football. He didn’t get enough however, and all this meant that at about 8:05am Peter Loughridge resorted to stealing my sleeping bag to force me to get up and join them. My protests that this wasn’t boys’ camp were in vain! The afternoon activities were karting, paintballing/airsoft and plate painting. I was first on the list for karting when the sign up sheets were first issued, but when the committee asked for a recount I was swayed by rumours of football and decided to stay, paint a plate for 5 minutes and then play some football. As it turned out I painted a mug – for about an hour!

My shame was compounded as Claire pointed out that I had painted plates before…and she didn’t even know about those flower pots we did last year!!

Ruth, Sandra, Pete, Phil and Jenny Moff…Officer!

There was no football on the go, so I played tennis, losing 3-0 to Ruth (no shame! although I blame the church bells beside the tennis courts for playing hymn tunes for my dropping my serve!) and then me and Philip teamed up to take on Cream Bun and Peter.
In the evening we watched dirty diving Portugal get knocked out by Les Blues in the World Cup Semi-Final. Small part of Spain!! Note that Warren Feeney succeeded where France failed (scoring against Portugal in open play) and that the best way to deal with divers is the Colin Murdock approach (give them a reason to fall over in agony!).

On Thursday it was the competitive games. Each of the 6 teams played 5 games of football/bucketball (ig ‘boringball’) and 5 games of volleyball/tennis. The football suffered from being played in the hockey nets (goals were few and far between) but the tennis was good. Our team came 3rd in the football and won the tennis.

Some of our team

The volleyball – there’s Sharon’s wee brother!

And there’s no volleyball without the Somerville’s running the whole operation!

In the evening it was the concert. They had to find a way of replacing Matt Jess with Offie as Brian’s concert-partner and so the video was Dr Who – with Matt regenerating into Offie! Genius!! Good to have Matt playing some part in the concert too!

Philip decided we should redo our ‘I need a hero’ act from Cyprus one year on. One of the funniest moments of the night was during the practice when I became the first person ever to forget my own dance! No such incidents occurred during the actual performance, which went down rather well! Suppose people’ll complain if I don’t at least put on a picture:

Mark and Ian were taken care of…

…As were Joel and Moffett the Prophet

Here’s a video of the lads doing the Steelo:

Here are a few videos of some of the other acts. My personal favourite was Gregg and Joel’s ‘I love my camp days’ song. I only recorded about a minute of it before my camera ran out of space but I think young Gavin might have got the whole thing so I’ll try and acquire that:

Sorry about the certain person in close proximity to the camera letting off a yell as Matt Jess manages to slag off RP girls by video link…

Andy Moffett did his Inflatable Timmy joke for the second (and he claims last!) time at Senior Camp, once again standing on a table and doing the walk thing. This clip is of the punchline.

Calvin was a popular boy after his Johnny Cash impression

And some snaps:

Luke and Rebekah Throne

The Musos

Cromie’s Dylan-esque mouth organ playing

Would you mess with this man?

The committee song was never going to impress me seeing as they did it to a Coldplay dirge…

There were also a few attempts at games interspersed in:

Meal or No Meal was a parody of the awful TV gameshow. The only reason I’m putting this photo on is that John George is in it. Hooray!

James was up in the Meal thing and Rebecca was up for ‘The Price is Right’. Strobert will be interested to know that they picked contestants for Meal or No Meal by putting Gold bars under random chairs! Genius!!

Those who got up in time for Breakfast on Friday were treated to a fry. Those who missed it however didn’t even get lunch for hours as 10 minutes after the talk we left for…the Share Centre!! The committee were clearly having a giraffe by taking us there after my recent attack on it! As the party had run on wile late the night before, David was worried that people might be at risk of falling asleep – so to keep us on our toes he preached with a gun in the box that served as his lectern. Would have been a great photo but I just missed it!

Mary doing a spot of wall climbing

On Friday night we had the party – surprisingly, it was brilliant! And everybody agrees! Must have been because it was at camp! Then supper, walk, psalm sing and ‘party’ in the mall!

On the last Saturday we had to drag ourselves up, pack up, clean the place and leave. Frances’ poem and awards at breakfast managed to confuse everyone as usual – I’m tempted to do my own SWS awards… Before we left there were the usual photos. There is a group photo of everyone doing the Steelo – someone send it to me! As Pete said, my greatest ever moment would be the kop at Windsor Park doing it!

Steelo doing the Steelo!

Here’s a few more random photos from the week:

Christine and Deborah

The McAuleys practicing their acrobatics for the concert. By the time the concert came round however, Laura had done her ankle in, and the less said about the actual performance (well, the ‘male’ performers, the better…)

Andy Moffett (‘Would you call yourself a Nationalists? No, I wouldn’t say Nationalist, I’m more of a Republican…’) and Jennifer

Laura and David (ig Davide): “You’re not really French…”

Katherine, Luke and Stephen McCollum Cullybackey

Cullybackey were well represented at camp – they have 20-odd in their CY although seeing they don’t go to many other events I thought all Cullybackey had was Jonny and Stephen! You won’t have seen any of them at the CY outing as they have their CY weekend on the same weekend the outing’s on every year. Jonny said a certain John T was to blame, so John, if you still read this – sort it out!!

My favourite sister

Stephen (not an RP!) Alexander, Hannah and Luke

Rebecca, Lorna and Philip

Chip!

Gorge and Grace

Ian, who became known as ‘Mr Skills’

The Zoolander factor – the same people having birthdays every single year! Conor for example picking up his 4th card in a row…(even Graham Poll doesn’t give out that many)

Debs and Rebecca

So there it is. Camp. The best week of the year. If you weren’t there this year, go next year. If you were, go back (I don’t care how old you think you are!). If you can only do one thing a year, go to camp. Over GO teams, over anything else. In the words of Cream Bun, “I Love It”.

Links/Acknowledgements:

- The talks are now available from DromoreRPC.org (they will also be available from RPC.org whenever Jeff puts them up)
- An exclusive for SWS readers is an mp3 file of (almost) all the book reviews done during the week (featuring David, Andrea and Philip) (15 1/2 mins – 1.78MB)
- Most photos are courtesy of Bebo: Namely Pam, Christine, Mary, Luke, Alistair Rolleston, Gorge and Lorna. A few are mine and the rest are Deborah’s.

Update: A few more snaps courtesy of Lorna…

Dean and Gareth

My new housemate

Emma and Rhoda

Mark, Heather and Andy

Piemonger and Heather

Steve

Lorna and Rachel

He’s back

Hannah and Naomi

McCavro – now we know where the Ultimate Male got it from!

Group photo including Philip at his last ever Senior Camp as a camper :’(

Senior Camp 2006 Report Coming Soon…