Friday

Solid is a youth festival held at Stubbers Activity Centre, South Ockenden. We headed over there in 2 vans at 9.30am on Friday. We were responsible for setting up visuals and the creative worship area in the main marquee. So we spent until about 5pm doing that, took forever to suspend 5 cargo nets in the creative worship area! We stopped briefly for pizza at lunchtime and then back to it! Youth groups started arriving from 5pm to set up tents. There were about 900 people on site over the weekend. There were several marquees set up as different venues, including The Fridge which held a few gigs over the weekend. My role for the weekend was selling the Check It Out resource and hosting the artists as well as a couple of performances. So I got to run around with a clipboard and radio looking official! Met Jahaziel and showed him around the site, taking him to the venue for soundcheck. We had a main worship session from 8pm-9.30pm with singing, a sketch from Dave and Rachel, a talk from Adrian Holloway (wrote an amazing book called The Shock of Your Life) and a time where a lot of kids responded. We then did a late night worship slot from 11pm-12midnight, different creative ways of exploring The Apostles Creed. This included me doing a monologue as Mary, the pregnant teenager. Keel had his first experience of using hair straighteners as I couldn’t see to do the back, and I’m sure Mary had perfectly straight hair! I performed it in front of a mirror and apart from microphone issues it went well. A lady came up to me on Saturday saying that her girls had been talking about it all day. Its really encouraging to hear how God can use me to speak to people. Got to bed about 1am in the lodge on site. Alarm set for 6.30am!

Saturday

Up nice and early to have breakfast and then be at the prayer meeting at 7.30am. Then meeting and soundchecking ready to start Solid Kickstart at 8.30am. Basically singing and a bit of a chat to get people going in the morning, including the infamous Mix Dance…see Facebook! Also we had croissants! Then 9.30am was Solid Deeper, teaching from Den which was really good! From 10.30 onwards we were getting things done, putting up the brand new Check it Out stand, chatting with the kids, the boys were running round playing football, rehearsing etc. I had some good conversations and sold a few Check It Out Resource packs. Was also running around with my Walkie Talkie looking official. I met Dweeb and The AFC, showed them the venue and took them to the lounge for a cuppa. Taste did an acoustic set in The Fridge venue and La Roche did a DJ workshop. Just time for dinner and then a meeting before the evening session at 7.30pm. Myself and Keel were interviewed about Optimum which was great, a few girls cheered when I mentioned Chelmsford County High! Envizage performed…well David with special guest Suzy Bower as Rachel was at a wedding. La Roche gave his testimony as part of the talk which was awesome, really moving. There were a few responses to Den’s message. Dweeb played a gig in The Fridge which I got to see the end of the sound was incredible and they did a fabulous cover of Destiny’s Child’s Independent Women. It was pouring with rain but the atmosphere was great. Then we did Late Night Worship session with reflections, David doing a monologue and ended in a bit of a praise party! Wanted to go and see The AFC (apparently they were really good) but my bed was too tempting!

Sunday

Up early again, except we thought the prayer meeting was at 7.30am but it wasn’t til was at 8, so we were ready early, and then couldn’t go anyway because we had to soundcheck! Solid Kickstart again at 8.30, with the amazingly improvised song ‘kick start in the morning’ by La Roche. More singing and croissants, and I had to take Keel’s place in the Mix Dance as he was too busy trying to fix the broken vision mixer. Then we had a meeting before the main marquee event which started at 10.30am. Envizage performed, I did my performance of Psalm 139, Rich gave his testimony and Den spoke and we all had communion.  It was all finished by 12.30, time to pack up the stage and creative arts area, have some lunch and then load the vans. Keel, Ollie and Dan stayed behind to do techie stuff for Junior Solid while the rest of us piled into the vans and drove back to the office – see Facebook for video of Matt and La Roche singing along to ‘It’s Raining Men’. By this point everyone is exhausted and everything descends into hilarity. We unloaded at the office using ourselves as a chain, and then headed back to Stubbers to wait for Junior Solid to finish. Then packed down visuals and The Hive venue, loaded the vans up again and headed back to the office for a final unload. Then off to The Honeypot for dinner. One of the most hilarious meals ever. If I tried to explain it wouldn’t do it justice, or probably be particularly funny. Just because we were so tired! Back home about half 9, straight into bed!

Highlights from the weekend

Seeing 800 young people excited about worshiping God
Seeing the faces of the young people, totally absorbed in the stories they heard of what God has done
A girl called Ashka who was at our schools week in Basildon back in June came along to Solid and became a Christian
A group of guys from Stratford becoming passionate after hearing La Roche’s testimony
Performing Psalm 139 – several people commented to me how much God had spoken to them through it

Playing on the Walkie Talkies…banter across the field with Tim and Rich
Selling Check It Out Resource Packs to people who knew nothing about it
The after festival meal…’sorry we’ve run out of…’…’do you want salt on that?’ ‘What shall we do with the change?’
La Roche putting the fridge in the cream.

For official photos and more information on Solid: www.solidnet.org.uk

Category: Youth Festival by laurabayliss