Unveiled Hope!

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“There is a divine mystery—a secret surprise that has been concealed from the world for generations, but now it’s being revealed, unfolded and manifested for every holy believer to experience.Living within you is the Christ who floods you with the expectation of glory! This mystery of Christ, embedded within us, becomes a heavenly treasure chest of hope filled with the riches of glory for his people, and God wants everyone to know it!” – Col 1:26-27

As we look forward to all that 2021 has in store for us, both the highs and lows, the expectations that will be met and those that will turn to disappointment, it is imperative that we do not lose sight of the amazing truth that as believers, Christ is in us and He’s not going anywhere, He’ll be with us in our everyday life and every part of 2021. He is the hope of glory within us, leading us to life and more life.

At Llandudno Youth for Christ despite the current restrictions due to another Covid induced lockdown, we are expectant that Jesus will be moving in and through the lives of the young people that we are going to meet with this year.

Last year was a year full of innovation as we met online via Zoom, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. We taught, we encouraged, we gave hope, we had fun together. It was despite everything a brilliant year and we saw many young people positively impacted by the good news of Jesus.

Please be praying with us during 2021 that God would again breath His Spirit over everything that we do and that we can also find even more creative ways to engage with the young people in Llandudno and beyond, that they would too be able to say that their hope rests in Christ Jesus alone.

May 2021 be a year of the unveiling of hope in many young people’s hearts and lives.

Be blessed!

New Year 7’s Breakfast – This Week!

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Hi folks

If you know someone who is about to go into year 7 then please pass this on to them.

We are running a ‘New Year 7 Breakfast’ as part of our Camp-Not-Camp event this week. This will be a friendly, easy session to get to know them.

They are welcome to bring big brothers or sisters, or parents with them (but obviously the new year 7 needs to be there!).

It will be just 40 minutes, from 10am, this Wednesday 5th Aug on Zoom. Please contact us on facebook (TimGoughYFC), Instagram (@LlandudnoYouthForChrist) or email (llandudnoyfc@gmail.com) for the link.

Please spread the word!

Tim

A schools-driven ministry without schools

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Earlier this week I was cleaning up my old computer files and I found the plan for my first ever Recess lunchtime club. It was the 5th of May 2011, just three days after starting work for Youth for Christ.

The plan included some hang out time with doughnuts, a game, and a set of ‘get to know each other’ questions. These included ice-breaker questions like ‘would you rather live with a polar bear cub or a baby elephant’, school questions ‘who is your favourite teacher’, and Recess questions ‘what’s your best Recess memory?’ This was the first time Ysgol John Bright and I really got to know each other.

That was over nine years ago!

Ever since then Recess has gone through a few changes, but the format and the numbers have stayed roughly stayed the same. We’ve also added RE Conferences, regular assemblies, Easter drama projects, and lots of teaching. It’s been amazing to be a significant part of that school.

One of the most important changes Youth for Christ has been through over the last decade is moving away from the café model to a schools’ model. When I first began, we were a drop-in youth club style café with some schools’ work, now we’re almost the reverse; a schools-driven youth work with some youth clubs. This has been brilliant and really worked for this area.

School is where the action is, and it’s where the young people are. We love our other projects, but we wouldn’t give up our connection to schools for anything. It’s there where we get to build long-lasting and genuinely helpful relationships with young people. It’s there where we get to be a real support to teachers and staff. It would be so weird now if we weren’t there.

Wait – let me rephrase that: It is so weird now that we’re not there!

Most of our regular connection with young people has happened in school. It’s so sad not to be able to walk through those double doors each week, say ‘hi’ to the reception staff, and connect with young people on their own turf.

We want everyone to stay safe, but we also can’t wait to get back to school!

Over the next few weeks we’re going to be contacting the schools that we work with to see if there are any ways that we can be helpful as they start to contemplate slowly coming back to some kind of normal.

So do please pray for us as we send these emails. Pray for the teachers as they start looking again at their lesson plans. Pray for the administrative staff as they figure out all the complicated ‘hows’ and ‘whens’. Pray mostly though, for the young people as they eventually reconnect with such an important part of their lives.

Thanks folks!

 

Photo by Element5 Digital on Unsplash

Praying for more fruit

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Last Friday night in Llandudno’s Venue Cymru a fantastic Christian outreach event for young people was held. The Higher tour, an evangelistic event run by the Message Trust.

The Higher tour had been holding assemblies and R.E. lessons in schools throughout North Wales, from Holyhead to Prestatyn to Mold. It was brilliant. There was also a group that visited schools in the Llandudno area.

To cap off the week of outreach a large evangelistic music concert was held at Venue Cymru, here the bands that had been going into the schools performed their music much to the delight to the young people that attended.

The night was a great success with over 1,000 young people in attendance.

At the end of the event an appeal was made to the young people and over 400 responded indicating that they wanted to ask Jesus into their lives.

It was simply brilliant and amazing.

The tour had born much fruit and we pray that as Llandudno Youth for Christ, and other youth groups and churches in the area do follow-up work with the young people that there would be even more fruit and fruit that will last and have an impact upon the whole of North Wales.

Please do be praying with us for this and also thanking God for the great harvest we saw on Friday night.

Be blessed!

For Yours is the Kingdom…

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We have just 1 week left at Redefine of our series focussing on the Lord’s Prayer. Last Sunday night we looked at ‘Give us our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us’.

This coming Sunday we will be looking at ‘For Yours is the Kingdom, the Power and the Glory, for ever and ever, Amen.’ I love how the prayer starts and finishes with us focussing on God.

We are trusting in Him, our Father, to answer our prayers; so it’s great knowing that the Kingdom, the Power and the Glory are His. All that we do is in Him, through Him and for Him.

Please be praying for the young people as we finish off looking at the Lord’s Prayer, that they would see how truly amazing God is and that their faith in Him would grow and become more firmly established.

Also this week all over the North Wales coast, from Holyhead to Prestatyn, the Higher Tour is taking place. This is a great outreach event that we are praying will produce much fruit as young people hear the gospel presented to them in relevant and meaningful ways.

We’re really excited and expectant over what God is going to do in the lives of young people in North Wales this week. This is a great opportunity. Please be praying for the week’s events.

Thank you and Be blessed!

 

Back with a vengance!

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Not that we are back to strike with a vengance against all evil doers, as Superman & Batman would, but ‘Redefine‘ is back!!!!

We had our first Sunday night Bible study of the new term last Monday night! Whoop!

It was fantastic to say the least, with a great turnout of familiar faces and a lot of new young people turned up too.

We’ve spent a lot of time during the summer praying, preparing and thinking about this new term, and are really expectant of what God is going to do this term through the work of LLYFC.

We have worked hard at creating a great space for the young people to meet in. We now have a great ‘cafe‘ feel for the room we meet in with Parasols, string lights, an illuminated stage area, notice board, welcome area with a hot chocolate bar.

We love the new decor, and the young people did too.

We had a fun game to start of the evening with a modern variation of British bulldog, only this time I was playing a zombie pirate with 2 foam cutlasses that if they touched you, you became one of my zombie pirate crew, until there was only 1 survivor who won the game. It was a great laugh and burned off more calories for me than expected.

Our teaching theme was ‘Found People Find People‘ – this is part of the “We Believe” teaching series we ran last year at this time. At the start of a new term it’s good to go back to the foundations and look at what we as Christians believe. To get back to basics. It’s also important given that we have so many new young people coming to ‘Redefine‘, that we layout for everyone the essentials of the Christian faith in a relevant way.

Our director Mr Tim Gough spoke excellently and really laid out the importance for us as Christians to share our faith with others.

We also had a great time of worship together, very ably led by Simon Platt. This was Simon’s last night with us before he heads down to London to study at the London School of Theology. We have been so blessed to see Simon grow and develop from a teenager who started to come to Redefine many years ago when we were still based in Madoc Street to become a invaluable volunteer leader with us. We are so grateful to God for all of the support and faithfulness Simon has shown and know that he will be such a blessing in London. We will miss him.

This coming Sunday we will be looking at ‘Saved People Serve People‘ and tackling the who area of servanthood and what that means. “Jesus called them together and said, ‘You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all.For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.’” – Mark 10:42-45

Speaking of serving and helping out, if there is anyone reading this blog post who feels that they want to help us out at Llandudno Youth for Christ, whether that be serving on our team for our youth work events or volunteering at our Saturday Cafe on Saturdays at St John’s Church in Llandudno, then please don’t hesitate to contact us.

Be blessed!@

 

A Helping Hand!

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Hi all,

I hope you all enjoyed your Bank Holiday Monday!

Here at Llandudno Youth for Christ we have just had our ‘Refresh‘ mini Conference. It was a truly fantastic day.

We had great weather, great food (I’m slightly biased as I was the cook for the day), fantastic games, great teaching from the book of Philemon, really good campfire worship and time to relax with friends and make some new friends too.

We played Ultimate Frisbee, had a treasure hunt for mini-pictures of Nicholas Cage’s head hidden around the conference grounds, watched ‘Evan Almighty‘, played Parachute games & toasted some giant marshmallows around the aforementioned campfire.

I really hope that everyone who came had as much fun as myself and the rest of our amazing volunteers did.

Everyone was brilliant too. Our great volunteers were there from early in the morning till late at night, helping us set-up and pack away. They took part in all of the games, Bible studies and worship times. They truly were brilliant and really engaged well with the young people.

Some of our volunteers could only make part of the day, with one helping out with 1 part of the day, squeezing it in-between two shifts at work. Another stayed with us until they had to go to another youth group where they were helping out in another part of Wales.

We are so blessed to have some amazing volunteers on our team. Helping us reach out to the young people of Llandudno and beyond relevantly with the good news of Jesus.

We will definitely be needing them in the months ahead as we get ready for next week and the relaunch of all of our amazing events and projects as we head into a new academic year.

We will be relaunching ‘Redefine‘, ‘Reverb‘, ‘Recess‘, ‘After-hours‘ and ‘Spark‘ amongst others. We are very excited to see what God is going to do in and through the ministry of Llandudno Youth for Christ; but as you can see from the news above about the fantastic ‘Refresh‘ mini-conference; we can only hold such great events for the young people with the help of our amazing volunteers; some of whom we will be losing due to them moving away to go to University or due to other changes in their lives etc.

So we are asking for more amazing volunteers to lend us a ‘helping hand‘ with the work that we are doing. The apostle Paul had many people that helped him greatly in sharing the good news of Jesus. He even mentions in the book of Philemon how much ‘help’ Onesimus had been to him. In other epistles written by him, Paul mentions different people who have helped him; in his work of spreading the good news of Jesus, such as Onesiphorus, Epaphras, Luke & Mark.

If like the apostle Paul and the great men & women that worked with him to share the love of Jesus to those around than; you want to see lives transformed by the gospel; then perhaps it’s time to do something and volunteer with us a Llandudno Youth for Christ.

We’d appreciate your helping hands.

Be blessed!

Saturday night at the Movies..er..I mean Sunday!

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This coming Sunday night’s ‘God, Games & Goats’ is going to be a ‘Movie Night’ yay!!!!!!

Come along to Ty Llywelyn Community Centre at 6pm this Sunday 20th August to see a free film with some free popcorn!

It’s going to be an epic movie night watching a 1990s classic; ‘Cool Runnings‘. It is based upon a true story of an underdog team of bobsledders from Jamaica (see here). A bit like our very own Eddie the Eagle Edwards who competed at the 1988 Winter Olympics.

We all love watching a movie about underdogs. People who through tenacity and determination overcome all kids of obstacles to achieve their goals. Watching their triumphs gives us hope. It makes us think that we can accomplish our dreams. That we can do it too.

So come along this Sunday and have some fun watching a feel good movie that will give you some laughs and lots of encouragement.

We hope you can make it!

Also don’t forget that our last ‘God, Games & Goats’ night is going to be on Sunday 27th Augsut where we will be holding a truly epic ‘Ninja Warrior’ night. Truly not to be missed!

Be blessed!

 

Waiting for the summer…

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Hi all, some of you might recognise the lyric & title to a less well known Delirious? song. I thought it linked well into the fact that in less than 12 days time the schools will close for the summer!

Until then, there are so many young people simply ‘waiting for the summer’.

At Llandudno Youth for Christ, we also have a whole host of fun events that are going to be held during the summer school break.

Just one week after schools close our very own director, Mr Tim Gough, will be finally taking the plunge with Tim’s Big Jump! We are so excited for him in doing this! He will be jumping over 400ft from the highest bungee jump in the UK and is aiming to raise £5,000 for the work of LLYFC. Please support him, especially as we draw closer to the jump day of the 28th of July.

In August we have some more fun days to look forward to.

On Tuesday 1st of August we will be holding our overnight youth event at Gloddaeth Church: ‘The Lock-In‘; this is a fun evening for all the young people, with games, a movie, Bible studies and times of prayer and worship together.

Then on Thursday 3rd August we will be holding a picnic and water fight on the green outside the Lighthouse Church on the West Shore of Llandudno.

Finally we a capping off the summer with our great mini-conference ‘Refresh‘ at St. David’s College in Llandudno.

We are looking forward to hosting these great events for the young people in Llandudno and beyond.

Please be praying for all of these events. Praying for the volunteers and young people involved. Praying that God would change lives at each event.

Also, please consider sponsoring Tim as he jumps over 400ft on the 28th July.

Be blessed!

A Great Meeting! – Not to be missed!

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It has finally arrived!

Our annual meeting where we come together to talk about everything that has been going on in the life of Llandudno Youth for Christ.

We will be showcasing all of the different events that we hold. Hearing testimonies and stories from volunteers and young people who attend the various projects that we run.

There will be time to pray together as a community of Christians who want to see young people in North Wales impacted and changed by the good news of Jesus.

We will have worship led by some of the young people that come to our events.

There will be videos, talks and some reports (financial etc).

Also, not there will be cake, biscuits & coffee & tea!

It’ll be an AGM unlike any that you have ever been to before!

It won’t be Abysmal.Gloomy.Mediocre. Our A.G.M will be Amazing.Great.Mind-Blowing!

Please do come along and spread the word.

LLYFC Showcase (with AGM), Gloddaeth Church, Llandudno, 7pm start.

We hope you can make it!