Tuesday, 26 July 2016

Guidepost - Evening 1

This evening was so much fun! I don't think I've ever felt such a range of emotions in such a small amount of time, and I'm quite a bi-polar person with my crazy teenage mood swings!

I started by getting there and meeting up with my lovely friend Greta, we met outside because we're both to scared to go in on our own! And with me being the late phobic that I am, I was completely freaking out that we were going to be so late, but in actual fact we were some of the first to sign in.

The evening activities are much more relaxed and casual than the days. There aren't any kids, or even that many adults, it's just run by a lovely lovely girl for all of us teens. Last year when I went to some of these evening activities, the format was that someone would come and speak to us, telling us a story or whatever and then we would do the planned activity for that evening, and it's pretty much the same this year.

We had been told earlier in the relax and reflect session after the day had ended that the leader had ordered a bouncy castle and another inflatable, which myself and Greta were incredibly excited about being the big kids that we are. When we went in, we were told that we could spend 15 minutes or so on the bouncy castle before the speaker started.

Greta and I went straight for the bouncy castle, and were in the first group of people to be on in. Now please bear in mind that this is a standard sized bouncy castle, not some super big adults one and 10 people (big scary teenagers) were allowed on it at any one time. When Greta and I went on it, there was only 9 of us, but it was still like some kind of murder oven or something. Don't get me wrong, it was so so so much fun, but it would be very easy to just explode. At least you would be happy though.

Because everyone was bouncing at different times, there was no rhyme or reason to it, meaning that if you bounced at the wrong time you would become unbalanced and fall over. And because there was so many people in such a confined space, it would be like dominoes and you would all end up sprawled over the floor in a big mess.

I found the back right corner and just kind of hid there and I did actually manage to occasionally mind some of the human dominoes going on. Occasionally. But then Greta would just come along and grab me and pull me down too!

We weren't on it for very long, less than 5 minutes definitely, but that was long enough believe me! And when you get back onto solid ground you have that really weird feeling that you always get after being on something bouncy like and trampoline, like the floor is to hard or something like that.

We then paid a quick visit to the tuck shop (because why not??) and then went and sat in the unusually empty main tent to watch a slideshow of all of the photos that had been taken by the professional photographers on site that day. Soon, the 15 minutes of bouncy fun was up and the tent started to fill up with people coming in to here the speaker that day.

Then we just sat and listened for like 45 minutes while the speaker told us this amazing story about his faith and how it came to be so strong through his son. I'm not going to go into a lot of detail, because I don't really feel like it is my story to share, but the long and short of it is this: when his son was born he couldn't each without choking because of a problem with his food pipe (I can't remember the name). After a series of many very series operations and about 6 months, it looked like the baby wasn't going to survive, and so the speaker had asked the hospital priest to baptise the baby before he died. When the priest drew the cross on the babies forehead, the baby suddenly began to recover and didn't need any of the life support machine it was attached to. It sounds completely unbelievable but it's true - and the speaker finished by say that if that wasn't a miracle, then he didn't know what was.

After the speaker finished, we went outside and weren't really sure about what to do with ourselves. It was only 8, and our parents weren't due to pick us up for another hour. So we had an idea to play the game Ninja, because it's kind of one of those inside things between myself, Greta and the leader. (If you don't know the game ninja, look it up or get someone to explain it to you because it is possibly the most fun you'll ever have!) So we set up a small game with a few of our friends, probably 4 or 5 in total.

But then one of the main stage people came over (and believe me, being on main stage is like being a celebrity in guidepost) and said he loved the game and could he play. Then more and more people came over and suddenly, somehow, it was like the biggest, funnest, most extreme game of Ninja ever played. I mean, we had people doing rolly pollies across the floor and slide tackles, and some far too intimate positions...

And the kind of positions people would get themselves into were even funnier, we had people pretending to be fish and people lying across the floor with one leg in the air... and everyone would just break their positions because they were laughing too hard.

We then took it even more extreme. There was this little semi circle, or a horseshoe shaped ring of haystacks that were designed for people to sit on. We, however, all started on a haystack and had to jump into the middle. Can I just that that this was probably 2m in diameter and there was a good 15 people in it, all playing a furious game of ninja.

I really am not very good at ninja - I came drew first the very first time we played (when there was only 5 of us) and that's just because I kept edging further and further from the rest of the group! After that I was always in the first 5 to go out because my reflexes are non existent. Plus, I had a habit of standing next to completely the wrong people!

But like I said, it wasn't really the game but the fun. I spent the entire time laughing, I just couldn't stop, and neither could anyone else! In my head, I just kept thinking over and over that this is why I love guidepost, because you can take a group of 15 complete strangers, teenagers, all different ages and sizes and shapes, but get the one thing that unites them all (that's religion by the way) and 5 minutes later be inventing new rules to extreme ninja.

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