Guidepost - Day 2

So day 2 out of 5 is all over and done and dusted, and before I head off to my evening activity I get to enjoy the great pleasure of reliving everything as I write it down for you!

I woke up (too early, but hey, I'm a late phobic!) at 7:00am, and after a quick shower I dressed in the outfit I had pre-picked the evening before - there are wonders as to what your mind can do when you can't sleep! I decided to wear a midi skirt, with some shorts underneath, although this probably wasn't the most practical choice!

After making my lunch and wandering aimlessly around for a while, we headed off (and by 'we' I mean my mother driving and me being fabulous in the passenger seat!). We stopped off at a petrol station so that my mum could refill the car and I nipped into the shop to buy a few newspapers that we'd been asked to bring the day before.

When I got to guidepost, I met up with my group and made sure that things were organised before we went into the pray and prepare service. In today's service we were told about how we have to make everyone feel welcome, especially the difficult children because we don't know why they are difficult. Instead of getting angry, we were meant to reach out with friendship and love to help them. This is a message that I tried to keep in my head all day, but believe me, when the kids are playing up it is pretty darn hard!

The day then officially started and today I stayed inside with the children as they came in rather than being outside to collect them. It was actually really nice because each child has a work book that they fill in each morning with pictures to colour and activities to do all based on that day's lesson. One little boy was so pleased when he managed to finish the word search all by himself. I'm lying of course, I did it all but very subtly! And I don't mind not getting the credit, I can live with that!

Then we sat and watched the next part of the story unfold, where the two girls who were planning a party together had a falling out over the invitation of one rather odd fellow named Bob. However, I've got to say that my highlight of this session was one of the children asking if it was lunch yet when they'd only had breakfast half an hour ago!

We then went to craft were the children made these incredible pond pictures. They had a large sheet of blue paper and a large frog and lily pad cut out with lots of stickers and sequins and pipe cleaners and all sorts to decorate with. I went around and asked each child what they had named their frog, we had 2 Fred's, 2 Bob's and a Speedy!

We then went back to the ark tent for our teaching session done by one of the local priests. Today we were learning the story of Zacchaeus, who for those of you who don't know, was a very short bad man that no one liked. When Jesus came to his town, Zacchaeus climbed a tree in order to see him and ended up with Jesus going to him and talking to him, much to the disgust and horror of everyone else. There was a wonderful Jesus played by a 5 year old who had to stand on the stage and wave at the rest of us who were meant to be the adoring crowds. There was then a poor little 5 year old who had to walk around on his knees to make himself seem short enough to be Zacchaeus!

We then went to drama where the next part of the play was revealed. In todays part, the princess, and the knight and his squire had to use a boat to cross a swamp and ended up getting divided, much to the glee of the bad knight who was following them. We then finished off that session by playing the bean game (you know the one, runner bean, broad bean, French bean...) but there wasn't any winners or losers because it's a little hard to name and shame when you've got over 100 people playing at a time!

It was then lunch time, where once again I spent most of my time running to and from to loo and the first aid tent with various injuries and owies. I did also have a very nice chat with my group leader where we got to know each other a bit better and complain about the kids and how Frubes and the worst things in the world!

It was then nap time where we read one of the classics, I think it's called Farmer Duck or something like that. I actually remember hearing this story for the first time when I was in year 2 in school! We got to make all the animal noises as well, so it was quite fun really!

We then headed out to games, which is basically the children's opportunity to run wild and that's just fine by me. Myself and a couple of friends set up a little throwing and catching game with a couple of the children who didn't have anything/anyone to play with. It was a combination of hot potato and piggy in the middle, and we just kept switching between the two! Almost ironically enough, one of the children that played catch with us was Jesus in the earlier teaching! However, me and my friends didn't take the game too seriously and with myself being incredibly unskilled in the area of sports, I ended up being on my knees a lot and being piggy a lot! It was amusing though when a 5 year old told me I wasn't taking things seriously and being silly!

After that we went back into the ark tent for the remainder of the day. We started by playing a wrapping up game (to go along with the party theme) except instead of wrapping up a present we would wrap up one of the assistants! We chose to wrap up my friend Milly in newspaper (see that's why I had to buy the newspaper earlier!) because she is the smallest and probably the easiest to wrap. We actually got a pretty good system going, the children would hold the newspaper onto Milly, and I would run around with the selotape binding her up! We ended up finishing eons before any of the other groups and basically winning the entire competition. However, Milly could walk because we had bound up her legs, and she couldn't see or talk because we had covered her head!

After that it was time for the group leaders to face their fates (or, you know, a shaving foam pie!). Each group is asked a question and if they get it wrong the leader is pied in the face! Our group was I think the only one out of the 7 or 8 groups to get the question wrong, something that our group leader wasn't particularly happy about!

Then it was time for one group assistant from each group to compete to find out who would get gunged that day. It was my turn for my group, and the competetition was a game of musical bumps. Now let me just tell you that musical bumps hurts A LOT, especially when you play it over an over, and I don't have very fast reflexes... so I ended up coming last. Which meant that I had to get gunged.

I had to sit in this little paddling pool on the stage while they held a bucket ominously over my head filled with pasta, porridge, couscous and quinoa, all mixed with water into a mush and counted down to gunge me. Most terrifying thing ever.

When it happened, all of the water ran down my left side and then all of the pasta and stuff kind of came out in one huge clump and fell down my right side. Not that this made it any better of course. And because I was wearing a long midi skirt it all just kind of sat there in a little puddle in my lap! The worst bit was that I got all this porridge stuck in my hair where it dried so I couldn't get it out!

So when I stood up I had to shake myself off, but I was still dripping as I jumped off the stage and ran through everyone, spraying them all with bits of gunge. Now I'll let you into a little secret - this was all pre set up. I knew that this would happen, in fact I actually volunteered for it (why??) so I had a dry pair of clothes all waiting for me to change into immediately. There wasn't anything I could do about my hair though, I just had to hope that I could pull off my new porridge-in-hair style!

It also turned out that we had won the sticker chart for that day. The groups are given stickers if the do things particularly well, like really good dancing and singing or sitting really quietly, and so on. However I was actually in the loos, de-porridging myself when it was announced.

After all of the children went home we went to the usual relax and reflect session where we heard from some of the other helpers on site. When you think about the helpers, you only tend to think about the group leaders and assistants and the teachers, but actually there are so many different roles. We heard from one lady who works in the water tent, where there is always water ready available in-between the sessions. It just reminds you what a huge project something like guidepost is, and how many people there are putting their full one hundred percent of effort in. It is most humbling.