A whole lotta shakin’ goin’ on!

No I’m not doing a blog post about Elvis or his music, but am instead referring to the new event being run by Llandudno Youth for Christ in Colwyn Bay – ‘Shuffle & Shake‘.

For this post I interviewed the man heading up the new event; ‘Shuffle & Shake‘, Mr Korey Finch. Below are parts of that interview:

Q1: Korey can you give us a short introduction about yourself?

Korey: I’m from Texas originally and I met this amazing girl from Manchester named Miriam back in 2007 and decided I wanted to marry her, and as a result God put on my heart the desire to be a youth worker in the UK, so here we are now 10 years later. Married and living in Colwyn Bay, doing youth work.

Q2: How long have you lived in Wales?

Korey: I’ve been living here since 2013, so we’re coming up on 6 years now.

Q3: Can you give us a passage of the Bible that has really impacted you?

Korey: I really appreciate the passage, I think it is in Corinthians where it says “my strength is made perfect in your weakness”(2 Cor 12:9). It just helps me see that even though there are things that aren’t perfect in your life, God is still able to perfectly use us.

Q4: What do you do whilst working for or at Youth for Christ?

Korey: Mostly play board games actually…just kidding. There is a lot of office work that I need to do, planning for different events; planning for regular weekly meetings. Sunday I help with Redefine in Llandudno. Monday I’m at ‘Shuffle & Shake’ in Colwyn Bay. Wednesday I’m in the office preparing. Thursday I’m in Ysgol Aberconwy helping with the Recess Christian Union, and then helping with the Reverb after-school drop-in club in Llandudno. Saturday I mostly spend time with the family, but there is the odd day where I might have a Nerf Battle kind of thing like we did this last week, and so, yeah it’s just a balance of events and admin/management.

Q5: Brilliant. So, you just mentioned that you like board games. What is your favourite board game and why?

Korey: I’ll give you two because they’re both totally different. The first is ‘Scythe’, a gigantic, huge game. It weighs a ton, it’s amazing and I love it because I just feel like I’m immersed in the theme: a very diesel punk alternate reality, post world war 2 and there are robots and I like robots, so yeah. That’s fun. I also really like a simple game called ‘Sushi Go’; which is a little card game, about the size of ‘Uno’, but it’s so totally different than anything I’ve ever played and it’s actually inspired me to try to make my own board game..

Q6: You mentioned Redefine, Reverb and Recess, which I’m sure our readers have already heard about, but there was a new one amongst them, ‘Shuffle & Shake’. Can you explain a bit more about it?

Korey: Yeah, the idea is that it’s basically like a youth board game café. It’s open one night of the week for a couple of hours and it’s specifically for young people to have a place where they can connect around a table, and that’s kind of the idea behind that word ‘shuffle’. Not only are we literally shuffling cards etc., but that people’s lives will be mixed and shuffled together. And in that mix they’ll be introduced to Christ. Also part of the name ‘Shuffle & Shake’ is the second part ‘shake’. And that’s just simply ‘we have milkshakes’. So, ‘Shuffle & Shake’ it’s like a board game café for young people.

Q7: In what way can our readers help support the work that you do at ‘Shuffle & Shake’?

Korey: If any adults were interested in helping out or passing along the word about the event, that’d be great. We want to be a help to the community in Colwyn Bay; a bright spot so to speak in Colwyn Bay, and so just letting people know where we are and what’s going on would help. Also if people are able to support financially, by giving to Llandudno Youth for Christ. So, giving to Llandudno Youth for Christ, encouraging people to come to ‘Shuffle & Shake’, thinking of adults that might be able to volunteer and help out, all those are great ways to help support us.

‘Shuffle & Shake‘ is held at Prince’s Drive Baptist Church in Colwyn Bay, typically on the 1st & 3rd Monday of the month during school term time, running from 7:30pm to 9pm. Please do consider supporting this new event that’s seeking to reach young people relevantly with the good news of Jesus Christ.

The next 2 ‘Shuffle & Shake‘ meetings will be on Monday April 8th & Monday April 29th.

Be Blessed!