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It was 10am on the 17^th March 2020. I had just shared a video with our parents and young people explaining that we were going to add hygiene stations to our projects, but that we wouldn’t close down our groups until the local schools did. Just two hours later we discovered that not one, but two of our young people were showing symptoms of COVID-19. At 1pm, we issued another statement saying we would be closing all our in-person projects effective immediately.

That was eighteen months ago.

I’ve been a youth worker my whole adult life, but in the space of three hours that world collapsed. All our work across five weekly projects that we had built up over ten years of hard graft suddenly stopped. It wasn’t dramatic. There was no fanfare, no thank you speech, and no bouquet of flowers. There was just a sudden eerie silence. I remember sitting on my purple couch, staring at the wall, without any idea what was going to happen next.

I was the director of a youth organisation without anything organised for the youth, and there wasn’t a thing I could do about it.

Do you remember where you were when the call was made? Can you remember that comforting, familiar rug being pulled out from under your feet? You will know, the same as me then, that that wasn’t the end of the story.

Since then, we dodged and weaved! We’ve innovated and we’ve adapted. We’ve run a truly bonkers amount of online work, we’ve run campfires and events outside, and very careful socially distanced groups inside. Phew! What a year!

However, also in the space of a year, many of our young people have moved on. They’ve grown up (how dare they!), gotten jobs, and left for university. Some of our team have moved on too, to new opportunities and different parts of the UK.

At some point you realise, ‘it’s just not going to be the same anymore.’ And that’s sad. We’ve done great work and grown a wonderful community for over a decade. Many young people have met with Jesus and are still going with Him. And we’ve had the privilege to be part of that!

But now is not the time to wallow in what was… We pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, look forward and say to God, ‘ok, so what’s next?’

And here we are!

Llandudno Youth for Christ is about to enter a whole new season.

We’re looking at building for the future, and we’re going to try a whole whack of neat ideas. We’ve got some irons in the fire (super big, amazing announcements coming soon!), and God has – as always – got some immerse plans up His sleeve too.

Please keep walking with us on this journey. We’ve never needed your support more, and we have so many exciting opportunities ahead.

This is a great chance to get involved in what we do. Watch this space, as more info is coming your way!

If you’re feeling inspired though – to give, to pray, or to volunteer – get in touch.

Photo by Abhishek Pawar on Unsplash

Big announcement – huge – mahoosive! Tim and Katie are joining the team going Miles From Home in the Lake District this summer to raise money for both Llandudno and National Youth for Christ.

This part of the adventure is called Miles Across, where a small group rom all over the UK will attempt the Lake’s ’24 Peak Challenge.’ What’s that, you say? We’ll it’s hiking 24 mountains, in 24 hours!

Yup – you heard it. 28 miles across 24 mountains in 24 hours. This is serious trekking with professional guides across the highest and most rugged peaks the Lakes has to offer. This includes all the big ‘uns like Scafell Pike and Hellveyn, and everything imaginable in-between. If you stacked them all up one on top of the other, you’d get to 50,000 ft – Thats almost two Mt. Everests!

In reality it’ll be like hiking Mt. Snowdon five times in two days. Sounds like fun? Yea we thought so – but it’s also going to be hard. Very hard. Stupidly hard.

So we’re doing this stupidly hard thing so we can keep raising money for all the projects we run in Llandudno and to support all the many resources we benefit from from National Youth for Christ too.

This trip, of course, replaces the ‘Tim’s Big Trek’ we planned for last year that was canceled due to COVID-19 restrictions. But the upside is both Tim and Katie get to do this together, and looking at the milage, they’re going to need each others support to get to the end!

Do watch and share the announcement video below.

Will you support Tim and Katie to tackle the challenge? Click here and find out how. THANK YOU!!

Over the last few months we’ve been running all of our projects online. Redefine, Shuffle and Shake, Show Up and Write, Den Fest, and MORE have all been digital-driven, zoom projects. And that’s been great – they’ve been fun, engaging, and supportive. But young people have also been in school online, seeing family online, meeting friends online. This ‘digital generation’ is – quite frankly – onlined-out!

It was so good, then to finally meet in person this last Sunday. We have to meet outside at the moment, but as organised young people’s activities are authorised for outdoors only now, we just had to jump at that chance. We took every care to make an outdoor event safe, and got to work.

Twenty three of us met for a campfire at The Lighthouse Community Church on West Shore. It was quite a cold campfire as so many of us distancing in a ring means you don’t really get too close to the fire, but it was still brilliant! Seeing people’s faces again, and providing them the opportunity to see each other was gold! We talked, shared, played games, told stories, and had hot chocolate. It felt just like old times.

We’re hoping to keep doing things like this for the time being, so please keep supporting and keep praying for us as we move forward.

We’ve also gotten to that place where we are going to start to need to recruit new team members too. So if you’re interested in volunteering and helping young people’s lives be changed by Jesus, then email us at llandudnoyfc@gmail.com

All the best everyone.

Stay safe – love Jesus – pray for young people

Tim

“But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.” – 1 Peter 2:9

Last Thursday at ‘Reverb’ our after school drop in youth club we had our usual mix of fun, fellowship & food for thought. It was another great evening and the young people really enjoyed themselves.

We started off the evening with a time playing games around the board game tables, or playing pool/billiards, or playing the fun game ‘4 square’ which is always enjoyed. Then we all moved into what we have dubbed the quiet room which has a large L-shaped sofa, in to hear a brilliant talk given by our director Mr Tim Gough.

Tim spoke about how God has created each and every one of us, the young people included. The He did this in love and threw away the mould when He created each young person, because He created them as a unique expression of His love. They are each made to do unique tasks and be unique expressions of God’s love in action.

Tim encouraged the young people that the best way to discover what the unique tasks or calling the young people had on their lives was to get to know Jesus through reading the Bible and talking to Him in prayer. The young people were very thoughtful as they listened to Tim words of encouragement.

We then went through to the big hall where we play 4 square and everyone took part in some groups games before we all helped pitch in with the tidying up of youth club.

All in all it was another brilliant night at Reverb and the young people really enjoyed themselves.

This is the sort of meetings we have with the young people, building friendships with them and encouraging them in the Christian faith.

Please do keep praying for the work of Llandudno Youth for Christ. Praying that the seeds of God’s word sown into hearts and lives week in week out, would bear much fruit and we’d see many young people respond positively to the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Be blessed!