30 Sep Youth Fellowship Holiday 2025
Posted at 12:09h
in News
Youth Fellowship once again enjoyed a fantastic annual holiday. We spent four days at the Jarman Youth Centre in Newmarket, and had a holiday packed with adventure, excitement, fun, and fellowship.
An amazing 18 young people (aged 12 to 18, from 9 different local schools), set off on Saturday morning in two minibuses, carried along by gales of YF singing. We stopped on our way at a high ropes course with everybody helping each other cross swings, ropes and zip wires at terrifying height. As if that wasn’t bad enough, the course ended when we had to leap from a platform, our harnesses catching us as we plummeted to the ground!
In the Youth Centre, the young people split into three teams, each taking turns to be responsible for all of the cooking, clearing up, and games organisation over the four days. This can be a new experience for some of our younger members. We then had a series of adventures, starting with an escape room, and then, on the first afternoon, a trip to Cambridge where we all had a go at punting. Apparently it was a first in the entire history of punting, we were told, when James managed to break a punt pole (it’s a long story).
The YF holiday has its own rituals – Mike organises ‘The Murder Game’, in which everyone is secretly given the name of another person on the holiday, a ‘weapon’ and a location, and their mission throughout the holiday is to find a way to get the assigned person to take the named item in the correct location in order to ‘kill’ them. People spend the entire weekend planning how to – for instance – get someone to take a piece of cheese or a spoon from them whilst standing in the correct room. Our new leader Lisa turned out to be an unnervingly effective killer!
The next day we had two fantastic sessions, each led by people who were half a century or more older than the average youth fellowship member, creating fantastic inter-generational moments!
First, we all had a go at lawn bowls which turned out to be addictive and very competitive. Then, in a highlight of the holiday, we had a visit from ‘Slack Ma Girdle’ (honestly, that is their name), an amazing Morris Dancing group, who demonstrated some ferocious dancing – there were very big sticks involved – and then taught the Youth Fellowship one of their dances.
All of this did what the Youth Fellowship does so wonderfully well. Through mad activities, and time building friendships, YF creates a support network and a framework for young people at a critical and often challenging time in their lives.
The impact of these four days will be felt for years to come, and for some of the young people will last a lifetime. Many of the Youth Fellowship members’ parents have sent us lovely messages, emphasising the value of the holiday to their sons and daughters. Not to mention which, everyone had amazing fun!
As always, the holiday costs are paid for by the YF annual pantomime, enabling us to make sure that no young person is unable to come on the holiday for financial reasons.
This year we were lucky to have two new leaders with us, James Scott and Lisa Atkinson. Russell Nixon, Michael Rides and Mark Ellis also led, whilst all the preparatory work – a huge task – was undertaken by Zoe Byrne.
If this all sounds good, and you know anyone who might be interested, St Mary’s and St John’s Youth Fellowship meets every Sunday in St Mary’s Church Hall from 7 to 9.00 pm, and we welcome new members aged 12 to 18. Enquiries to Zoe at [email protected]
Now we are back, we will turn our eyes to the January 2026 pantomime, and we will do it with a group of young people who are energised and close-knit, having shared a wonderful and memorable long weekend away.