Merseyfest Following Festival Manchester and Soul in the city in London it was the turn of Liverpool this year to host the camping of loads of Christians and do with them serve the communities in and around Liverpool. As you may or may not know we work for Kings Kids which is part of Youth With A Mission. This summer king’s kids were taking teams all over the world. We decided as a family to Liverpool. Our team slowly got to form and we had applications from kids in Egypt, Switzerland, Belgium and England. Some people dropped out and others applied. There were two people interested from Brazil but they couldn’t make it in the end. In the end we had a team of 27 people (9 were staff). The youngest participant was 4 the oldest 17. The youngest staff member was 18 and the oldest 40. We were a very mixed and international team. On the 10th august we, as a family, left for Penketh were we would have our boot camp or training camp. We were the first ones to arrive and slowly others started to arrive after us. The first day was very much spent on getting to know each other. 7 Local young people would join us for the training days. It was great to see the two groups getting to know each other. The next three days was spend on worship, intercession, teachings and teaching drama’s, choreographies and sketches. All ages were involved in these from doing them or teaching them. The team had to work very hard in learning these since we were doing a performance in Liverpool city centre on Saturday. When the Saturday came we left for Liverpool. First we went to Croxteth park, were we will be camping from Sunday onwards for a week, to register the team. From there we went to the city centre. It was pouring with rain and it didn’t look good. The stage which wasn’t covered was wet and other problems arose from this. Still our team was not going to be defeated and before we were due on we all huddled together and prayed. By the time it was our turn the sun was out and it was pleasant warmth. During the times we were on it was dry but the minute we had done our last performance it started to pour down again. We had seen our first answer to prayer as a team. The following Sunday we packed up and moved from Penketh to Croxteth park. Our tents were pitched and meals were cooked for us. Together with about 3000 other Christians we were camping in the park our home for the next week. Every morning we all met in the big tent for worship, prayer and teachings as well as updates of the projects that will be done this week. After we picked our packed lunch from the mesh tent we headed for the bus which would taken us to Penketh were our projects were. There were some other teams going with us to Penketh and we were with 48 in total. In Penketh we had five projects to get involved with. We were painting railings, gardening, laying a footpath, painting a youth club, did some things at an event for the elderly, games and circus clowning things on the rec and performances. The people from Penketh were very supportive and kept us fed and supplying us with drinks. Three evenings there were concerts on the rec that we started of with performances. The projects went well and we managed to finish all of them. At one point it didn’t seem that we would manage. For the week we had the extra help of young offenders. They worked so hard and didn’t mind hard labour. On the last day we prayed with them and cheered. They were the heroes; we couldn’t have done some things without them. It had been a good experience to see our team come together and work so hard. They were open to hear from God and we saw God working in their lives as well as shinning out from them. It was a sad goodbye after the debriefing when we all went our separate ways again. However some have already said they want to come with us to Belgium next summer!