Spring Harvest Day 1

The first day of our seven day break from work –and six of those days to be spent at Butlins Minehead attending the wonderful Christian Gathering of Spring Harvest. This will be our fifth time and we are really looking forward to it. Sara and Mary went into Salisbury first thing – Sara to pick up her 50th Birthday present – a silver charm bracelet with Salisbury Cathedral on it as a starter. Tom most of the morning on his Xbox after having half-packed his suitcase. I packed all my clothes in another suitcase and got out all the paperwork we would need for checking in once we got to Minehead. I cooked some bacon to make bacon rolls for breakfast (Tom had heated-up leftover pizza). Although we got up quite early, we didn’t leave home until about 1.30 p.m. the journey to Minehead taking us until around 4.30 p.m. to complete. Traffic was very heavy around Stonehenge, Yeovil and Taunton which meant we lost about half an hour on a normally two and a half hour journey. On arrival, booking in seemed incredibly easy and we were parked only about 25 yards away from our apartment in about 10 minutes of arrival. We were able to transport our luggage to the apartment without the need of any trolleys. Sara made popcorn for the children and tea for us and we then went into the Skyline to get study (now called “learning”) guides and programmes for the next six days. Tom joined his friend Samuel for the teenagers group, Mary was registered for the 8-11 group and I joined the rest of our group for the first evening event in the Big top – Sara joining us after sorting out Mary’s registration. We had great uplifting songs – many of the Spring Harvest favourites and a brilliant talk by Jeff Lucas. His theme, and the theme for the whole week is “The Apprentice – You’re Hired” emphasising that even if we often don’t feel worthy, we can become a disciple. The type of events we go to tomorrow will depend upon our learning style and we had to complete a psychometric test of sorts which established that my preferred learning mode is theory whereas Sara is “activist” – as is Klynn’s. After the Big Top event, and a late supper (or was it lunch) at Burger King, we went to Max and Anthony’s luxury apartment in the Blue Skies complex for wine and cheese and a good “natter” about many varied things from Winterslow church matters to Anthony’s job prospects! It looks like being a packed day tomorrow.