Return to Braeside

So I spent the long weekend at Braeside Camp as part of the worship team. I left from London mid-afternoon on Thursday with almost all of our sound equipment jammed to the roof in my van. We played for one service that evening and then I came home very late that night so that I could be at work on Friday. On Friday afternoon I returned to camp and I stayed there both Friday night and Saturday night.

The camp had free accomodations for every member of the team plus our immediate families, if our families were joining us. I shared a very nice cabin with Justin, one of our vocalists/guitarists. It had a private bathroom, fridge, microwave and the whole bit so it was quite nice even if it was a little girly as far as the decorations went. They also gave each of us tickets for free meals and free late night snacks, so I took full advantage of that. I've never been in this kind of position before so I felt very well treated.

In addition to Thursday evening, our band played Friday evening, Saturday morning and evening and Sunday morning and evening. Thanks to Al Hamilton's gear, our sound system was pounding the floors quite nicely. Not that everyone loves booming music but we had a lot of fun with it. :)

I played percussion all weekend. My hands were pretty sore at the beginning of each practice and it will take a few days for the swelling to go down completely. There was plenty of altar time for us to minister in music and plenty of free-flow worship, which I love. I also had the chance to dance and jump around before God at various points. I particularly enjoyed the fact that I was using the church's two congas since I feel like I was able to minister prophetically on the drums at certain times.

There were various prophecies and words from God during the various services, as I expected. As one example, there was an eighteen year old guy that spoke a word during the final service, after the musical worship but before the sermon. It was a long analogy/parable about someone being trapped in a room with a window. This person blocks the window to block the sun coming in, preferring to use candles and lighters until all of the artifical light sources have run out. God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit are the sun that people are blocking out of their lives. At night, the light of the sun is still reflected into the room by the moon, which represents the Christians.

The speaker came up after the guy was done speaking and asked the guy in the projector booth to tell everyone what the speaker had told him just three minutes before. The guy in the booth said that he had changed the set of powerpoint slides at the speaker's request, which he then displayed on the screens. What was the title of the newly-chosen sermon? "The Light Source."

So fun stuff like that happened all weekend long. A bunch of people were saved, some were filled with the Holy Spirit, etc. Honestly, I can't think of a way that I would rather spend a weekend then ministering in worship for hours each day. It was the ideal weekend.