I’m back. I’ve done 500 miles in 24 hours, visited Teignmouth, dropped in on my mum and brother in Weymouth, visited Portsmouth and arrived home safely. Visiting mum was relatively painless, almost a pleasure, which tells me many of you have been praying for me – so thank you.

The journey to Devon was long but I left very excited. Peter (a great guy) is the Director of Teen Bridge project which is a YFC centre. He does stuff in schools and a lot of detached work using a ‘soup kitchen’ on the seafront which loads of young people. There are currently two part time workers, which includes him, and around 15 other volunteers. Between them they do all the above and run Rock Solid Clubs. What is impressive is, although they are only 2 years in existence, schools have welcomed them with open arms and the local nightclub has asked them to run a monthly youth event on a Wednesday night. The first of these starts later this month – which is really exciting.

Staying overnight in Weymouth without Sarah or the children was strange. I awoke in the morning to a knock on the door and a cup of tea to a ‘Rob are you awake’. For nearly whole 5 seconds I thought the last 20 years had been a dream and that I was still 19 and living at home! A very scary experience! Those 5 seconds felt like an eternity!

The evening before I went out for a drink with Steve, my brother and Marcus, one of his friends. It was great catching up with each other in the relaxed surroundings of a decent and quite pub – which served well kept Old Speckled Hen and decent malt whiskies. After 3 ‘Hens’ and a malt we were bound to sleep and natter well! Drinking and chatting about the old times and what we do now, made us both realise how well we get on and, I guess, miss each other in our everyday lives. Families – they ain’t all bad!

I visited Solent YFC on Friday morning and then joined them for lunch (thanks Martin) before traveling back to Gillingham. The Solent team (Martin, Ed and Carly) were fantastic and just great fun to be with. They are having a great time doing schools work, church service and other things and are all dedicated people with a realistic view of their calling. The love they have for each other was incredibly obvious and just cool to see.

When we were talking about time they said something like ‘well its quite busy over these next 2 weeks and we won’t get much time off … but when the work is there and its busy we do as much as we can. We know there will be other times and the work will not be as busy , then we will take more rest and be more relaxed’.

This would raise eyebrows in some quarters but I think I agree with them. When involved in youth ministry it is difficult to apply a 9-5 / 39 hours per week model to something where you are involved with individual lives. I tend to think that if you do then the work is bound to suffer. Many will disagree with me and tell me I work too hard, and maybe I do, but I would reply with that is the cost of my ministry and the sacrifice I choose to make. I also think if I had a different job then I would be giving extra time to my church or a Christian organisation. I work for one being YFC and choose to give my extra hours to YFC too.I think the balance is good and taken years to achieve.

Anyway … being in Portsmouth wearing a Gillingham FC fleece on the day after Harry Redknapp became manager of Southampton was a delight!

The last 2 days have really excited me as it has reinforced how diverse an organistion we are seeing young people in so many different situations and introducing them to Jesus in some radical and innovative, but all very relevant ways. The driving was no fun – but it was well worth it to see and hear how God is blessing what we do. I really do wonder, in all my bias, whether YFC could be the most diverse and largest youth organisation in the country meeting 50 000 young people each week in so many different settings?