A Kiwi's Adventures: Minnis Bay Scripture Union camp

I've had a lovely week in Thanet at the annual Minnis Bay Scripture Union camp. Mel has been doing it for years and years and encouraged me to sign up as a leader for this year. Then covid happened and everything moved online but we thought we'd go for the week anyway. Mel's parents have a house in St Nicholas at Wade but they were in France, so it was nice to have the house to ourselves. We started camp on Sunday with a zoom dinner with a different break-out room for each course which was a really fun way to meet lots of the team. I was leading in the 14-18 year old group and we had 8 of us on our team but the camp is for 0-18 year olds! Overall I think there were about 50 or so people on the team. On Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday my team released a pre-recorded video onto YouTube with an introduction, Bible story, and some questions to think about. We then met at 6pm on zoom for a team briefing and the young people joined us from 6:30pm until about 8pm. Most nights we went longer than that, especially if a young person wanted to chat individually for extra support with two team members. Technically we had debrief from 8-8:30pm and then every night of the week we had either team social or worship evenings - often until quite late! Mel and I were stoked to be on the winning quiz team - first win of lockdown! During the day Mel and I would watch our team videos on Youtube to be prepared for the evening, Mel would do some work (I helped film the story of Jesus walking on water for Mel's Sunday morning service), and then we went exploring in the afternoon.

Filming Bible story

Thanet is a big peninsula so beaches on three sides and it's where Mel grew up so it was cool to see all her favourite places. I enjoyed seeing Margate and Broadstairs which felt quite quintessentially British and there weren't too many people around during the week. Bleak House (originally Fort House) where Charles Dickens apparently holidayed for a number of years and wrote many of his novels, is found in Broadstairs which was cool to see and the white chalk cliffs are rather impressive. We also had a day in Canterbury but it was so hot and my feet hurt - we didn't end up staying long!

Minnis Bay

Margate

I really enjoyed getting to meet a whole group of awesome people (virtually) and I think I'd be up for doing camp again next year, hopefully in person! It was also really rewarding to get to know the young people who joined our zoom call and have some great conversations about faith and God with them. It felt like we had quite a big impact in a very short space of time and wonderful to spend time with the other leaders too.

On Friday evening, Jo and Esther joined us for the weekend and we explored on Saturday and Sunday with them. We saw a replica Viking ship as Kent was invaded by the Vikings and I really enjoyed Botany Bay with the impressive chalk stacks. Esther and I explored the old smugglers caves there too which was great fun.

Ramsgate (where Georgiana Darcy almost eloped with Mr Wickham) was looking stunning on Saturday morning! On Saturday afternoon we hired bikes and biked along the seawall from Minnis Bay to Reculver where we saw the ruins of an Anglo-Saxon monastery from the 12th Century - super cool! Biking may have been hard on my wrists but it certainly didn't hurt my feet and meant we could actually visit - I would never have made it walking.