2010 Scotland – Peterhead Academy
After an epic drive north, we hit scotland. And then after another epic drive north of north we grasped Peterhead, the town in which our work was going to be that week. Arriving at Newhope Church we discovered that our accomodation was another porta cabin kind of building with waffer thin walls and ceilings. And on one hand this was far better than the car park submarine in Bradford, because we werent in the middle of Bradford, but on the other hand we were in scotland… so very very cold. We also discovered that the heaters in the building were all run on meters, which could only be topped up by the old 50 Pence coins, the big ones. So that was another interesting discovery! The next interesting discovery was that the showers ran on the old 10 pence coins… and hadnt been topped up in a while. So the first four people in the shower on Monday morning were incredibly blessed, whilst the rest of us had to make the decision whether it was worth having water cooled to outsides temperature cascading down us in order to smell nice.
Sunday night though hosted the opening service where we mainly led worship, but also explained who we were and what we were going to do in the following week in Peterhead Academy High School. This meant that we had to set up pretty much all of our equipment for the service so we didnt have to get in mega early on monday morning to set up, which was amazing. 
We set up in a theatre basically, with tiered seating with a 250 person capacity. The school is very lucky to have such a proffesional theatre at its disposal, with such a big and versitile stage.
This has been an interesting week because it has been unusual. Normally we get to hang out with kids at break and every available moment, but because we were on one side of the school rather than where we ususaly are in a central hall, we didnt see so many as they just dont hang out around in that kind of area, and at lunch we had a space allocated in the 6th form area, but all the 6th formers are on study leave so it was mostly empty. However, the lessons have all been hugely successful and the gig was brilliant – the seating didnt make it any less affective or entertaining (normally kids like to all stand at the front and get as close as they can) and on friday there was a group of about 6 kids from different years and friend groups etc who started chatting to La Roche during a two hour free we had – one of the only free’s we had all week, they are quite rare! I decided to come and sit next to him and see what was going on because I love to be able to answer questions that genuine kids want to hear, or just talk about things they find difficult etc, and it looked as though having another member of the band there might take the heat of him with 6 kids talking and asking questions. And it was amazing. really really amazing. we spent the next hour and a bit talking about God and Jesus and how all these things that some people think he is isnt true. And you could really tell that they wanted to be there by the way that they listened to us. One of the girls there called rachel said that this week was the first week she has ever considered God seriously because we werent ramming it down her throat, she had heard stuff before but did not want to listen to it because it was kind of forced on her. There were another two girls who were best mates who decided they wanted to be christians during the talk and were excited about going to church next sunday!!
We did the gig on the thursday night, which i think really works because the next day those who had seen the gig obviously had more questions now that we had told them the gospel more clearly because we held a question and answer session in the theatre at lunch. Over 100 people easily came to this, almost as many as the gig itself we think and it was incredible because they were asking questions like “Why cant we see God?” and “do you have to go to church to be a christian?”. It was awesome, and totally on there own ground and questions so they were genuinly interested in the answers. It was exciting stuff. So, one of my favourite weeks so far as it was the first time that people said to me that they wanted to become a christian!
God is a pretty awesome God.
Much love
Ben
