The wet year!

Tomorrow, I head off for set-up! Around 6,000 delegates are expected to register into the New Wine Conference on Saturday and there's a little bit of preparation to do before they arrive!

For those who haven't a clue what I am talking about (probably quite a few of you), I explained a little bit here, but this one makes it much clearer. My boys grew up with annual trips to New Wine South, but these days, the one I do is North and East, while the boys choose between joining me or doing the Soul Survivor Conference (for youth) at a slightly different time.

During the Conference, I'm hoping to post a daily photo, but I'm starting off with a couple of days of tasters from 2007 (today) and 2008 (tomorrow). I have no pics for 2009, so I'm thinking that I must have been too busy to want to bother. This year, I'll make sure I do!!

2007 was the wet year! It was my second time on team, though the first time on the Newark-on-Trent site. Because of the dates, the boys and I travelled straight from school on the Friday night. The journey was through torrential rain and we arrived to find our camping 'village' four inches deep in water! Ben spent the night in a tent with a friend who was pitched on slightly higher ground, while Mark and I joined 40ish other 'refugees' in one of the permanent buildings; seen here on the sunny day!

Unfortunately, my airbed deflated at about 1a.m. and it's hardly considerate to start blowing it up again with so many sleeping bodies all around. Under the layer of carpet, that concrete floor was rock hard!!

Next day, we set up in a new location on one of the 'high' points of a pretty flat site. I think we came off fairly well overall...

...though you can see the mud.

Some villages were much worse off...

and...

but the kids still managed to have fun!

and the full programme of events went ahead, so everyone made the most of it!