Granton Youth Team

2007. 24-7 prayer

2007-07-26T11:15:00.000+01:00

There will be a 24-7 prayer week held in Granton Salvation Army, it is gona be fab, please come along.
Everyone is welcome.
There will be a large prayer room with tons of messy creative stuff, there is a silent room, a cafe space with free munchies and fairtrade chocolate, a sleep room, and a bathroom. so basicly you could just move in for the week :)

Anyway it all starts at 7pm on Friday 3rd August untill 7pm on Friday 10th August.

Cant wait to see what God will do this time :)

Woop Woop

2007-07-26T11:12:00.000+01:00

Guess what. You will never guess...
11 children became Christians at a camp last week.
How amazing is that? How amazing is God?

the blog that we dont update! ever!

2007-06-13T14:40:00.000+01:00

...we suck!

lets talk about love...

2007-02-14T10:53:00.000Z

so, annelane, hannah and moi had our first girls group last night!

i would be lying if i said that everything went according to plan, but the night, i feel, was in a way quite valuable! yip!

so, we started the night with three girls, then we brought out cake and suddenly there were ten girls, and by the end there were two girls! ....yeah....

something we didnt really paln for was teenage girls turning up drunk on a tuesday night , this is something we will address with them during this week.

however, it was worth it for the two!!

Its all good :)

2006-11-30T10:38:00.000Z

We had our Chirstmas community thing last Saturday, It was great :)

Parents of kids came and met us, some for the first time
Kids ran through the building excited
All ages present and mixing
People buying gifts for friends
Rumaging through stacks of stuff to find treasure
Teenagers serving their community with cakes and candy
Community suprised to see teenagers serving them with cakes and candy
new faces
small faces
old faces

Yay. Merry Christmas Everyone :)

attic

2006-11-08T10:20:00.000Z

Please pray for our small group called attic. Its currently for girls in first year of high school. Its a bit hard at the mo to pitch it right. We are not really sure what God wants us to do with it. It runs on a Tuesday from 7 till about 8:30pm. We are also aware that there are older girls (S2 & 3) that want a group like this but not sure what to do with them. Thanx

Teen Helpers

2006-11-08T10:11:00.000Z

We have launched out Teen Helpers programme. Wohoooo
It seems to be going good so far.

We sent out Application forms a few weeks ago to all of our teenagers who wanted to apply. Then we had a mini interview with those who managed to hand back a completed form, and now we have recruited 5 teen helpers.
We have one guy doing painting, IT stuff and general maintainance of the building.
A girl doing artwork and cooking
and three other girls helping as part of Scream (kids church) and Monday club.
Each one has been linked to a mentor on the team and on Friday afternoons they come in to hang out, get training and have one-to-one sessions with their mentor. Also as part of their programme they will be given rewards in the form of trips and food. First reward was a healthy nice curry on Friday night.

quote of the week...

2006-09-06T18:40:00.000+01:00

"can i please borrow 15p? i need a battered mars bar!"

get that friday feeling!

2006-09-02T19:16:00.000+01:00

We now have a prayer space on friday nights!!

hooray!

On friday nights Granton Salvation Army will be having a
prayer
space. It will be on every week and will run from 7:30 till late.

reading, painting, making stuff, being silent, hiding in a tent, chatting,
drinking tea, messing around, walking around.
Whatever!

The aim is that people come and connect with God in someway.
Anyone and Everyone can come!!

You see flowers in these weeds

2006-08-05T14:05:00.000+01:00

24/7!!!!

2006-07-22T11:21:00.000+01:00

GUYS!!

We are going to have a prayer week!

Note these dates: Sunday 30th July - Sunday 6th August

Keep it free if you are not on holiday/at music school/sleeping

If you live far away and want to come, we will arrange some sort of accomadation for .

If you live non- far away and are not busy we expect to see you!

We will be putting together a prayer rota for the week so even if you can only caome for an hour it would be a fantabulous support! Please email if you want any more information, or to put your name down for an hour slot (grantonteam@gmail.com)

See you very soon!!

And breath out!

2006-07-01T21:03:00.000+01:00

As of the end of scream tomorrow, we will be on holiday for a while!!!!

....sigh

has anyone noticed...

2006-06-10T09:49:00.000+01:00

All the road works?

You heard it here first!

2006-05-24T10:02:00.000+01:00

New people have decided to move in and have moved in
Welcome to the team Emily and Anneleen. They have a very cool house and
live above a lady called Nan.
They have very cool curtains that they made themselves, loads of different kinds of tea, a gym, a sewing machine
and retro roller skates.

Also we have launched a kind of post 16 programme with two of our guys. It was started a few weeks ago with
a karting trip which was fab, and yesterday one of them came to paint our new fence. Next week we plan to take them to alien rock 2 with a video camera.

Ali went to Los Angeles for a training/ confrence thingy. He is due back 2day I think
Wohooooo welcome back Ali, we missed you

Fink thats it at the mo

Oh I have a new car that will be cruzing round the streets of Granton, its a shiny gold Ford KA
Called LVV BUG

Bye

whats happening?

2006-03-26T11:27:00.000+01:00

some new things:
new teenagers
One new baby
some new ways of defacing the front door (i.e attaching a contraceptive device to the door and setting it alight)
Hannah is hosting a new hairstyle (well an old hairstyle really, she's gone curly again)
New people thinking about moving in : )

2006-02-10T13:36:00.000Z

latest edition of: HIYA MAGAZINE (about us!) is now available in electronic form on request, just wing us your email address..

For anyone who has ever wondered what the granton team look like

2006-01-28T14:07:00.000Z

This is us....

Ali

2006-01-28T14:05:00.000Z

Al is our leader! He has been running the project since it was launched a few years ago. He lives with Tom and a life sized cardboard cut out of Jaime Oliver. If you go to his flat he will cook you chilli. If you invite him round he will do your dishes.

Tom

2006-01-28T13:58:00.000Z

actually this is NOT a picture of tom...i dont have one! Tom is the newbie. He moved in with Alastair a couple of months ago. Tom has settled in quite well! We like him, he makes us cups of tea, lots of cups of tea, and tells us interesting stories about his daily adventures.

Gillian

2006-01-28T13:50:00.000Z

Gillain moved in at the same time as Kat last year. Gillian is a teacher, recently she started teaching at a school for children with special needs .she is a volunteer at the project. I can quite honestly say that i have never seen Gillian get angry, which must prove that she has the patience of a saint!

Kat

2006-01-28T13:46:00.000Z

Kat moved in to granton last year (along with Gillian) and volunteers at the project. Kat just started a new job recently, Working with children with special needs. Kat does not like tomatoes which automatically makes her the fussiest eater in the whole world!

Me

2006-01-28T13:44:00.000Z

Um...this is me. I moved in with Hannah a year and a half ago and volunteer at the project. In my spare time i work as a receptionist in a mens hostel. Um...yeah.

Hannah

2006-01-28T13:30:00.000Z

Hannah is a full time youth worker at the project. She likes messy craft and cooking with the kids, but she doesn't really like cleaning up after it. Her favorite food is cake(in vast quantities). She lives with me (and baby the rabbit)in our wonderful ikea showroom/flat.

ITS 06

2006-01-11T18:01:00.000Z

Happy New Year everybody!

So whats gonna happen in 2006?...anyone know?

A top Christmas bash

2005-12-19T13:31:00.000Z

Yesterday we had our Christmas carol concert. It was a sell out! Mums, Dads, Grandmas and Aunties all present. The meeting was led by Pauline King and the kids all took part. The over 7s did a dance to 'in dulce jubilato' it was actualy perfect! all the practices have been a bit rough, but as they say "it was alright on the night". Best bit I feel was when two of the boys jumped up from behind the platform and started rocking out on air guitars.
The younger children took part in a nursery rhyme nativity. Which went brilliantly. They all looked great in their costumes (that Gillian and Kat both slaved away making this week). The children acted out the various nativity parts and sang nursery rhymes to tell the story. My fav song by far was an adaptation of My Fair Lady. Using the words "I have come with Special News" It is a tune and a half btw!
Are you feeling the excitement? Well it just gets better. The afternoon was topped off by a special guest appearance from Santa. Unfortunately we couldnt get the real Santa so we managed to encourage one of our teens to fullfil the task. He definately made a very convincing Santa. After the whole experience he says in shock... "This 6 year old hugged me and said thankyour Santa!" After Suffing our faces with chocolate and mince pies it was time to wrap this party up! Merry Christmas Everyone :)

tis the season...to smash windows!

2005-12-12T15:25:00.000Z

Hans car has had 2 windows smashed in the last fortnight!And a lot of the hall windows have also been smashed in the last few weeks. this is good news for the window fixer people but not so good news for the granton team! esp han, who is now an expert on the price of glass!

...fa la la la la, la la la la.

ive goat to tell you this...

2005-12-09T19:33:00.000Z

We have decided that instead of doing presents for eache other on the team, or trying to organise a secret santa, that we would buy a goat from christian aid it will hopefully be less plastic than those pictured above.

24/7 mess

2005-11-28T16:01:00.000Z

So, it was our first 24/7 parayer week in granton (thus insinuating that there may be another!!) and it was ...good! yeah it was good...

If we were to re-write Ecclesiastes 3 granton 24/7 stylee it may go something like this...

there is a time for chaos and a time for peace, a time to listen and a time to speak, a time to sit and a time to dance, a time for calming music and a time for random bagpipe punk, a time for us and a time for me, a time to paint, and a time to clean paint off the wall, a time to sleep (occasionally) and a time to spin round and round, a time to drink tea and a time to eat chocolate (only fairtrade if you are gillian), a time to ask god for stuff and a time to thank him. There is a time for everything....

big huge ginormous thank you's to the people who supported us this week, esp to those who came to the hall(with special thanks to people travelling from London and Germany!!), it was very nice to meet some new people! you are very welcome to come back and visit us, infact please do!!

Guess What?

2005-10-26T22:01:00.000+01:00

24-7 prayer, happening sunday 20th november till sunday 28th.
It will launch with a pizza party. pleeease help us
gona b a rocking wk
:)

We still exist!

2005-10-08T10:11:00.000+01:00

Realsied yessterday that nothing has been written here for a while!

An exciting thing happened yesterday...Tom moved in!! yeay! We are having a gingerbread party in his honour this evening. Although, none of us actually know how to make gingerbread!

The eye toy!!!!

2005-09-09T19:21:00.000+01:00

....is amazing! Everyone loves the eye toy! Its so good! and did i mention that everyone loves it??

We need to find the teenagers!

2005-08-27T08:42:00.000+01:00

i dunno where they were all hiding last night but we had very few at both the drop in clubs yesterday!!

non hectic night last night in compared to wed night which was good. No breakage, no people who weren't meant to be there running around the place, no major fights.

Hannah has lowered the price of the glowsticks she is selling to pay for the cd mixer thing but is confident that she will raise the £100!...we'll see!

Sam :)

worst club in history??

2005-08-24T22:05:00.000+01:00

with the exception of halloween maybe!

Tonight was a nightmare! some of the wed club kids from pre summer are too old to come on a wed night now, they have a separate club on a friday, but a bunch of them turned up tonight and were just mentally running round the building and not leaving!

as well as them being all crazy, the kids that were meant to be there has also decided that tonight was a night for sheer madness. The lava lamp got smashed (although that was an accident) stuff got stolen, there were sooooo many fights, people refusing to leave, kids jumping on cars and spitting on us!

it kinda sucks cos last week was so good, wonder whats made them so crazy this week?

on a positive note, Han convinced ali to purchase a cd mixer thing (and has convinced him that she will fundraise the money to cover the cost of it(donations welcome!)) which went down quite well with the kids)

...and because han is so convinced she will raise the target amount, ali is adding 100% if she doesnt meet the target by the end of october!

Sam :)

the little monday club kids have multiplied!!!

2005-08-22T22:27:00.000+01:00

seriously!
normally we have between 10 and 15 on a monday night for the ickle peoples club. Today we had 25, where did they all come from??

Weekend of mission week

2005-08-21T17:43:00.000+01:00

Im sorry Sam for our delay in posting
here is an overview of the weekend of mission week.

Saturday took the shape of a fun day. there were four zones
bounce - Bouncy castle (WOHOOOOOOO)
chill - Dvds and a popcorn maker (ali's idea)
make - Decorting mugs (saved by a smoothie maker for the boys)
play - Outdoor team games

It was totaly mental (in a good way) as we had 60 kids.

Lessons learnt
* Boys and craft dont go so well together unless it involves food of some description (Thumbs up to the Smoothie maker!).

* Popcorn is very messy. Dont use it again EVER (ok maybe just untill our hoover has recovered)

It took ages to tidy up for the fun day and after it all we chilled and had a chinese take out. I had a very large and very scary spring roll that resembled both a jobby and worms. Booooo to big spring rolls!!!!!

Sunday we had Scream. The first one back, we were suprised that most of the kids remebered. We have started a 4 week session on prayer, so thats cool.

Sunday night was ichurch. The first ever youth church event. We had 18 young people and they all came not really knowing what to expect. They were faced with a range of messy games and challenges, a film clip about M&Ds and a very short talk by ali on choices. It was hard work and they were all extremely hyper. Their language and overall behaviour was not the best but the important thing was they came, took part and went away wanting more. Overall reaction from the kids is that it was a good night and they would come to another ichurch experience. Yipee!!!

Lessons Learnt
* No cushions next time although they provide added comfort for one whilst sitting on the floor they also work quite well as missiles.
* Less runing around avtive games
* Fairtrade coffee bar is not a good idea as hot coffee can be used as a weapon

The next questions is
When should we host our next ichurch?

Hannah

still waiting....

2005-08-20T17:14:00.000+01:00

for someone who was there to say something about the mission weekend!!!!

one question...who's idea was the popcorn maker anyway????

Sam : )

some mission week stuff...

2005-08-13T11:36:00.000+01:00

mission week isn't finished yet , but since i have a spare minute at work, heres some stuff thats been going on this week...

some new kids and teenagers have been about and came to the clubs.

new people have come and helped us run stuff.

we took the teenagers to M+d's and they didnt break anything or eachother!

the prayer room has been finished and is very funky.

alastar has spent 3 days up a scaffold thing trying to do the sky lights.

the kids found a stray dog and wanted to keep it

we've become nooma addicts!! (see www.nooma.com)

there is a fun day happening today while im stuck at work : (

and tomorrow scream starts back and "i-church" will be lauched

um...more to follow
Sam : )

the last month...

2005-07-27T15:48:00.000+01:00

Um, to update on whats been happening. James has moved away. He is back down in london now doing some youthwork stuff. Our clubs and stuff have stopped for the summer. 2 of the kids became christians at junior camp.

right now... Alastair is making a cupboard, Hannah is painting the new prayer room (which she wanted to call space base!), Kat and Gillian have gone of a camping holiday adventure and i am typing this!

next big thing... is mission week!! which starts on 7th August i think!

and thats all i can think off at the moment

Sam :)

Smashed window

2005-06-22T22:20:00.000+01:00

Our lounge window was smashed last Thursday apparantly by a 6 year old boy. This is very strange for the following reasons
1. We live on the top floor
2. He is six
3. We live on the top floor!!!!!!
A small stone was used and James was sitting right next to the window at time of smashing. (He was very scared, he could have died)

Anyway the window was fixed today and we are very happy
Han & Sam

True Comedy - by James

2005-06-17T01:10:00.000+01:00

True comedy means to be able to take something, anything really, and twist it from something ordinary and mundane to something new, surprising and above all funny. There are many ways that comedy can fail, one is taking something that is clearly not true and stating it flatly. Another is pretending to be someone else in text!
This in particular doesn't work for a couple of reasons. Firstly, unless they happen to be very talented writers you're not going to be able to tell the difference between one writer or another. Secondly, anyone can do it. I mean literally anyone that can write can write something and pretend to be someone else, and in nearly every case you can guarantee that it won't be funny. If you are going to try to make this funny, you should at least try to say something funny in the first place rather than making the classic mistake of taking something that is clearly not true and stating it flatly.
Let's look an example of someone who can write (although apparently only just) trying to be funny.
In fact, picking a phrase completely at random we'll go with: "Hi this is James, Can I have my room decorated pink please!!!!” (A quick extra note here, the number of exclamation marks at the end of a sentence does not make it exponentially funnier.)
Now, this phrase is clearly not funny for a number of reasons.
Anyone who knows me will be more than aware that if there's one colour I do not want my bedroom to be, it's pink.
Anyone who knows me will also know that I'm moving in a few weeks so would not really be bothered what colour my current bedroom was.
Anyone who knows me would also know that I care about interior design about as much as I care about the news that the spice girls might be reforming for the live 8 concert, i.e. not at all.
Anyone who doesn't know me wouldn't care what colour I wanted my bedroom.

Pink Room please

2005-06-16T11:32:00.000+01:00

Hi this is James, Can I have my room decorated pink please!!!!

Ali's First Post

2005-06-16T11:25:00.000+01:00

Sorry haven't posted sooner. Thought the blog would be a great idea then completely ignored it. Oops!!!
Reading previos entrys and I've made some obsevations;

1. Didn't realise the necklace sweets have caused such controversy.

2. Yes Granton is great and we do need help but I'm not singing.

3. There are no entrys form Kat & Gill......but I've sent them the details now.

a fun thing we did today...

2005-06-14T21:29:00.000+01:00

We had a birthday party!!!!!!!!

it was quite weird because beforehand we didnt really want to do it and were dreading the thought of it. Everything seemed to be going wrong too, incl alasatir being stuck in perth seaching for an old lady who had wandered off for no reason.

but... it was really really really really really good!!

and we are very glad that we did it, the kids all seemed to have a really good time, esp the birthday girl who was overwhelmed with everything. we did party games with lots of prizes, we had loads and loads of food (some of which went home with mum) and we had a treasure hunt. It was great to have big brother and sistor helping out too

at the end of the night the place was trashed and all the kids left with tonnes of sweets and prizes. Parents of all the kids seemed impressed with what was going on so we may have a few more parties on our hands in the future. also, it seemed that mum couldnt thank us enough for our efforts.

Tonight has not only been a fun night for eveyone but has also started to open doors in our interactions with families.

hannah and Sam :)

Granton Rocks!!!!

2005-06-10T21:39:00.000+01:00

I love Granton
Yes I do!

The clubs are totaly packed with kids
The Sally is definately the place to be in Granton!
We have seen new kids coming along to every club for two weeks now
It is so exciting.

However WE NEED HELP
if ur reading this and wana come help us DO IT

If you do
Sam will make you a cheesecake
Ali will sing for you
and I will decorate your room pink.

Han

To explain about the necklaces

2005-06-10T17:57:00.000+01:00

I'm sure you have no idea what Hannah's previous post was pertaining to, so I thought I'd clear it up.

Our club on Wednesday nights are for 8-11 year olds. They're a really good bunch of kids with a tendency to want to throw things at each other. We were running short on stock for the tuck shop and so Al asked hannah to do a Makro run on her own, never a good idea since she tends to want to buy stuff withouth thinking it through. And true to form, Hannah brought a whole bunch of those refresher type nekclaces. On Wednesday night, the kids brought them immediately and then spent the entire club catapulting sweets at each other. The floor was a mess and it's only through pure luck that no one lost an eye, an arm or their head.

Lesson to be learned from all this? Don't give the kids stuff they can catapult around.

I am a candy and a fashoin accessory. What am I?

2005-06-10T12:22:00.000+01:00

A CANDY NECKLACE!!!!!!!!!!!

Why I love candy necklaces so much
1. They are pretty
2. They are yummy
3. They make lots of mess
4. The string can also be used as a catapult

hee hee

a learning experience...

2005-06-10T12:14:00.000+01:00

children and sweetie necklaces do not mix!

to update: Kat and Gillian have now moved in and become official grantonites with matching cars and a rabbit called angel (which was named by one of the kids, i think it should be called patch)

Sam

decorating...

2005-05-07T22:57:00.000+01:00

...sucks!!!

some news

2005-04-24T21:29:00.000+01:00

thought it might be worth mentioning that kat and gillian got the keys to their flat so will be official grantonites in a couple of weeks! wooo!

um ...and i have nothing more to add at this time!

Sam

oooooooh a blog...what fun!

2005-04-17T20:51:00.000+01:00

um...was just talking to james on msn and he told me that he has made us a wee blog thing...which is this! so i wanted to write something but didnt really have anything to say. So i shall say not very much at the moment but be very chuffed to be the first person to have a non exempler type post!

Btw if i had my say...this whole page would be pink! and there would be a fairy somewhere too!