It was a lovely Friday evening when the car-park of Twickenham House was invaded by a rabble of teenagers armed with sleeping bags and rucksacks of clothes. Our three minibuses set off into the sun heading towards Ski Supreme in Coleraine. We arrived shortly and bundled off the buses into our rooms where we settled in slowly due to the unbelievable lack of space in some rooms! We made our way to the meeting room, (which doubled as the female leaders room!) for our first session with our speaker Ben, who had had to be rescued after his car broke down on the way to our week-end! With Judith Poston leading, and Abi and James playing the keyboard and guitar, our worship times were integral parts of our sessions.
After a good nights sleep, (one room was up til 5.30am!), we tiredly went for our breakfast before getting stuck into the Banana Boating. For those who don’t know what this entails, it’s essentially six brave participants riding on a large inflatable banana that’s being towed by a motorboat, or tin can in our case. After many soakings and dips in the river, we split into two groups: one going to Coleraine to do a “photo safari” and the other group going to the beach for some games. A photo safari consists of a list of things or objects to get pictures of, personal favourite was a pile of rubbish or in our case several Liverpool shirts! The group at the beach had rugby and football on the go. We were really blessed with beautiful weather for our week-end as if it had rained, the week-end really wouldn’t have been as good as it was.
Saturday night brought something that was nothing short of a sensation as the Ignites Got Talent show got underway, featuring acts such as a magic rope trick, a choir and a painful rendition of singing by Jonny Moody, Adam, and Jonny Houston, and believe me; it was bad! But the clear winner was Jonny Spence and Ollie Simpson with their fantastic dance routine inspired by the Greek dancers from Britains Got Talent. Afterwards we went for a walk on Portstewart Strand in the darkness, which beautiful as all the stars were out in the sky.
Sunday brought another beautiful day and the beginnings of war between leader and young adult. It began with the harmless squirting of water pistols to leaders still in bed to their hasty revenge with their own, larger, water pistol. After a certain Stuart Faloon was ambushed with measuring jugs, the battles climaxed with a certain someone being thrown into a bath full of water, i.e. me!
With what can only be described as the best food there ever was on a Youth Weekend, Wilma McCaughey led the way to feeding us with possibly the nicest stew in the world. Big thanks go out to Wilma and everyone who helped out with the food.
Overall a great week-end with great fun and banter, hopefully Ignite will be brave enough to go again next year!
Stephen Houston
PS. We've included a selection of pics from the weekend on the left here, and you can also view them by clicking here.