SWAP 2006 Report

For the second year running Holiday Bible club was named Summer Worship and Praise and followed the same format as in previous years. Nearly one hundred young people and about sixty adults met for a week to explore the life of Joseph and fill the morning with related games, singing, fun, crafts, drama and worship.

This year we learnt about Joseph, not just his coat(!) but his life as favoured son followed by slavery and prison, his great integrity, his success in foretelling dreams and working hard, finally his rise to position of prime minister and his forgiveness and protection of his family and people.

By looking at related stories from the bible within a modern day setting of a journey to Egypt, an imaginary pyramid and a couple of camel puppets, the worship sessions were led by Lynn Mee, chief tour guide and Robert Hill, King Ketchup, live and exclusive from Pyramid Rock TV.

The Worship sessions included songs and warm up dances with Cleo the dancing slave driver, incidents in the life of Joseph dramatised by Pyramid Rock TV, explanations and reinforcement from the Egypt Expert with her reference manual the Bible, prayers from the great High Priest, Minister, Nigel Wright, all brought together and orchestrated to progress through the week by our chief tour guide, Lynn Mee.

During the course of the week, a large pyramid was built in the church, its sides made up of each group’s thoughts, songs, poems and activities relating to the “key” word or thought for the day.

Red Group	5-6 years
Yellow group	6-7 years
Blue group	8-9 years
Green Group	9-10years
Black Group	10-15years

Each group was led by their group leaders and helpers who ensured the children were safe, happy and involved.

Every morning we met at 10.00am in the church where the story for the day unfolded with a drama and prayers and singing.

The children then split into their individual groups with their leaders for either craft or physical activities. The crafts included making dream catchers, clay models or plaques, T-shirts with their names in symbolic or pictorial hieroglyphics, painted glass tumblers, scrolls, sweets and tasting of Egyptian food. The physical activities included many games, some active with the “parachute” or swimming across the Nile to escape the crocodiles, throwing bean bags to knock down desert animals; some messy, eating sweets from a plate of flour/cream, wrapping a friend up as a “mummy”, others calmer such as the memory game to demonstrate “planning” and “providing”!

Part way through the morning, a much needed break for food and drink was provided by an extremely hard working team of excellent chefs in the kitchen. Then the groups went back to more activities before all meeting in the church for the final act of worship.

The black group met with us for worship but followed their own programme for the rest of the morning - still exploring the life of Joseph.

On Wednesday the Black group spent the morning with us at the church getting extremely wet outside completing an obstacle course to build a shelter with lots of fun, water and “scarab beetles” made from eggs. They then headed out with their leaders for lunch in Epsom and a game of rounders on the downs followed by a race to the ice cream shop!

Sunday the 27^th August was the conclusion to the week in a special celebratory church service when the children, group leaders and the worship team gave an insight into what has been learnt, made and done over the course of the week when flight EMC 123 is delayed from Cairo to London Heathrow and chief tour guide Lynn Mee seizes the opportunity to while away the time with some of the exercises and songs learnt in Egypt, not to mention a live interview with Joseph in This is your life conducted by Pyramid Rock TV.

Please email if you have any ideas, feedback or wish to be involved with next year’s plans for Swap.