Confirmation Weekend 2011
Confirmation Weekend 2011 is done and dusted. But what a weekend! Over 140 young people from all around the Diocese crammed into Castlewellan Castle to make the tenth year of the Diocesan Confirmation weekend a record breaker. Along with the facilitators, leaders and Youth Council - 180 people in total were in attendance...
Simon Henry (youth worker from Moira) was our Super Speaker, and he shared about STANDING OUT for God as a Christian in three main ways! He used the three letters of TIN to make his point... Tin (of course) being the gift given on the tenth anniversary...
Testimony - Sharing your faith. Individual - taking it on for yourself and Now - there is no time like the present to do it all...
The talks were followed by small groups with activities, discussions and games to bring the message home, and to allow space for the young people to ask questions and take it all a little deeper.
Of course no DDYC Confirmation Weekend would be complete without messy games on Saturday Night followed by a disco - and this year was no different. The games resulted in super-soakers blasting shaving foam off random people in the crowd, tin can roulette, where you took your chances and had to eat whatever came out (squid, pilchards, mustard covered kit kats...etc). There was the welcome return of girly rugby, boys talking about a girly topic for 30 seconds and the mighty lyrics round.
The boys were slow to get off the mark initially, however quickly caught up with the girls due to some dodgy score keeping. It all (unpredictably) ended in a tie, but the winner was decided by a lyrics round, where some words were read out, and the crowd had to sing the rest... It all ended in a huge sing song to some glee song, and everyone went home happy...
Well, they didn't go home - instead they went to the disco where they were taught some moves from the 90's by two unnamed leaders called Simon Henry and Craig Lutton. It made the young people wish their dads were on the dance floor if only to get rid of those two embarrassments...
Bed time it was, whereby everyone was in bed by 10pm, and up again for a 6am prayer breakfast... Thats the official line, and we're sticking with it..
The feedback from the weekend was awesome - lots and lots of great comments, new friends were made, faith was deepened (maybe even started for some) and nearly everyone said they'd love to come back again next year... We say 'nearly everyone' because that excludes the leaders and facilitators... Actually, that's a lie because even they said they loved it!
A brilliant experience was had by all, God was present - Jesus was glorified and the Spirit worked. The Tenth Confirmation weekend lived up to and surpassed all expectations... what more can we ask for...?
Glory to God!
See photos on facebook