Ok so there are 3 residential training weeks a year held at St Marks, Audley End. I travelled in Ivor (the Envizage Van) with a load of guys. We got there about 10.30am on Monday and were allocated our rooms. Now St Marks has been many things including a Benedictine Infirmiry and pig houses (www.stmarkscollege.co.uk if you’re that interested!)

We had a fabulous guided tour from the second years and then our first session was basically a few games and an introduction to the week. Then was lunch, afternoon session on Teamwork, bit of free time, dinner, worship service in the evening where Andy and Joy spoke about The Fall and then bedtime!

The structure of the days went something like this:

6.15 – Alarm went off
6.25 – Stagger to shower
6.57 – Make coffee
7.00 – In the chapel for personal devotion, or we could prayer walk.
8.00 – Breakfast
8.30 – Back to room to do hair/makeup etc
9.00 – First Session
11.00 – Break – Coffee, biscuits etc
11.30 – Second Session
1.30 – Lunch. Where i rediscovered the amazingness of Dairylea cheese spread. Dairylea, tuna and sweetcorn sandwiches are amazing!!!
2.30 – Second Session (apart from Wednesday when we had photos taken and then free time where I played football and Volleyball with Lindsay, Lucy and Emma, ha we rocked!)
4.30 – Free Time (Generally sat in the lounge listening to La Roche playing songs on his mac)
6.00 – Dinner (The best being Roast Pork, and the best pudding was Plum Crumble and Custard….yum!)
7.30 – Evening Worship Service: Monday we looked at The Fall, Tuesday The Law (Mike) & Thursday The Cross (Den) (Wednesday was games night – the after eight game was amazing! And the seemingly legendary cardboard box game.)
9.30ish – Free time and Bed time!

The days were pretty intense but awesome! It was quite strange having boys in the seminars, having been at an all girls school, it was quite weird to get used to!!

The seminar topics were as follows:

Teamwork – Mike Simmonds. Fairly classic stuff including team activities like building the longest and highest bridge out of newspaper, completing jigsaw puzzles (where we got accused of stealing pieces to scupper the other team…turned out the other team were just being blonde!) and building the highest tower out of Jenga blocks.

Child Protection – Claire Earl. We had to write our own Child Protection Policy which was interesting!
Adolescent Development – Claire Earl. We were in 4 groups and using magazines had to make a poster exploring what the following sexes and age groups were influenced by/experiencing: 11-14yr old Girls, 11-14yr old Boys, 15-18yr old Girls, 15-18yr old Boys. It was really good – we had 15-18yr old Girls so basically cut up Cosmo and Heat to stick on our paper. Looking at magazines objectively you realise just how much the culture is driven by sex, from adverts to articles, and even pieces of friendship were about lying and pretending to be friends. Makes you realise what a twisted world we live in! Everyone seemed to get the giggles when it came to discussing the physical changes an 11-14yr old boy goes through…
How to Run a Small Group – Claire Earl. Practical tips and scenarios on running a youth group.

Devotional Life – Lindsay Norton. Really good stuff!!
Social Skills – Lindsay Norton. Funny session – basically on communication and how to behave correctly, i.e. don’t burp or otherwise at the dinner table.

Overview of the Bible – Dennis Pethers. This went on for the all of Thursdays sessions and was INCREDIBLE!!! I can safely say i didn’t know about 98% of what he said. Looking at the sections of the Old Testament and the history of the formation of Israel. Really fascinating stuff and so helpful in understanding how to approach the Bible! It seems to be a legendary session at Optimum Training Week One that everyone finds incredible and wants to go back to teach to their youth group. And everyone says the same thing – why don’t we learn this at church?! Everything makes so much more sense now!!

How to Share Your Faith Story – Andy and Joy Clark. Looking at writing your testimony, or story and how to share it with people.

I can say I have learnt so much from this week and loved every moment of it!!

We left about 2.30 on Friday, back to the office and loaded up the vans with all the equipment for Saturday’s commissioning service. Then went home, unpacked and went back out to Pete and Cor’s house just down the road where the Kent people (Ryan, Maddie and Jayne) were staying overnight. Lots of people came and we had pizza and garlic bread and watched Juno. I left about 9pm because i was tired and went home to bed!

Tags: After Eight Game, Cardboard Box Game, Dairylea, Juno, St Marks, Training Week 1