YSA Conference Day 4: The best laid plans of Saxons and Engineseers

If I thought being woken up by slamming of doors on Sunday morning that was nothing compared to what woke me up on Monday Morning. Yes fans a fire alarm But not a standard fire alarm oh no. This sounded more like they had decided to upgrade the hall with the kind of alarm that would announce the launch of a nuclear missile by accident. After turning in a frantic circle on the spot for a couple of moments trying frantically to clear my head I realized I had to get out quick. I hurriedly grabbed a pair of trouser and t-shirt and raced outside. As we gathered in the courtyard I realized I had managed to jam my t-shirt on backwards somehow! We waited what seemed like a age for the campus police to turn up. Apparently someone had got into a hall and though it would be funny to set the alarm off. While the police did a sweep of the hall one of the leaders almost had a heart attack when he realized that there were two girls standing outside in the group in dressing gowns. Fortunately we quickly established then the two girls were foreign students from the uni who had been living in the bottom flat in the hall anyway. When they started to let us back in the hall one bright spark suddenely announced " Hey as it's 5.45am and we're all up why don't we have a big group scripture study group now?" There was no reply accept general laughter.

I decided to finish the last breakfast the way I began, in the same dining room I had used all weekend. Engineseer also appeared to have decided to end the weekend the same way he began by failing to appear for breakfast ( I was starting to get very familiar with the lady on his voicemail). Oh well at least he maintained the same record from last year. The few YSA who were around seemed to be moving very sluggishly. I guess the busy weekend was catching up with all of us!

I joined the YSA heading in the direction of the Armitage centre. The devotional was by John Cary. It was okay, it seemed to to loose track for a little bit or that could have just been me, who knows. He did try and make a joke at one point which unlike his other jokes barely anyone got it at all. I only made the connection after afew minutes when I remembered the Osacar wilde story which had inspired his joke. Oscar Wilde not exactly regular YSA reading is it?

I recieved a txt just at the start of the devotional from Engineseer saying he thought he overslept and was going to pop down to McD's to get breakfast. Allright for some. maybe he knows some secret handshake or something that means he gets extra.

We were supposed to be having a service project that morning but unfortuantely it fell through due to reasons outside of the organisers control. So it ended up we basically for all intents and purporses did a 'giant litter pick' all across the campus, which made a very good impression on the staff. All too soon however it was over and it was time to go back to the armitage centre for the closing cermony. Which again was wonderful. and I did come to a important realisation while sitting there. I had, had a wonderful time. I was tired but again it was a good kind of tired. My intial thoughts on Friday had been too harsh. But it was more spiritual and a
had been more strict in some was then the year before. But it had been fun, it had worked and the organisers had been honest enough to admit that there were some thngs that could have been improved. He also explained that phrase he kept coming out with " To some obedience is still an irritant", it wasn't a pointed comment in a negative sense at us at all! So oops, got the wrong end of the stick there didn't we.

The cermony drew to a close with a montage of photos dispalyed on the big screen included one of me during it's a knockout crawling under a net! The words Beached, Wale, in, net all sprang to mind. Engineseer mind you thought it was extremely funny.

and as the saying goes

that was that.