Aylesbury Youth For Christ Blog

It’s been just under three weeks since my last blog and a lot of awesome stuff has happened since then. I feel really blessed to be able to tell you about.

A lot of the newer guys are really into their music and are very talented young musicians. One week two of the young people brought in their instruments one being a guitar and the other and electrical drum kit! They literally played a concert for the whole café, it was awesome. These new guys are such a blessing to the café, all be it they are a little crazy but great fun to be around.

Haddenham cafe has been blessed with such an amazing location that we have the resource of a massive playing field to use at our pleasure. Which we have taken full advantage of these past few weeks as its getting dark and cold pretty quick, which means soon we won’t be able to go outside till next summer. So this past week we played some Olympic style games such as cucumber javelin, tug of war and many others. Even though It was a bit on the cold side we still managed to have a lot of fun. It’s great that we get to play games as a whole café as it helps everyone bond together and it’s just nice to see everyone having fun together.

Since October, we have been helping run another youth group in Haddenham, which attracts the older young people in the village. In just three weeks has grown an unbelievable amount. At first it took us a while to get to know the older guys, but now they know who we are, the culture of the youth group has been really great. The young people there are truly amazing and I feel so blessed to be able to work with them. I just hope we can continue to work with them and help them to grow into valued members of the community.

Haddenham youth café has been running since January 2011. It was set up by one of the local churches who had a vision to see the young people of Haddenham have the opportunity to experience a sense of community and values also St Mary’s provides funding and volunteers. Which we are extremely great full for and without which the café wouldn’t happen. Over the past ten months we have seen Haddenham café grow massively, we’ve seen more and more young people stepping through our doors and experiencing what youth cafés are all about.

The Youth Centre management committee are also asking us to help at another youth group during the week and we should know in the next month or so if we will be involved long term.

Since we’ve been back from the summer holidays we have been joined by a large number of new year’s 7’s, who are full of energy and bring and awesome vibe to the café. Due to the fact that Haddenham doesn’t have a secondary school, when young people leave primary school they tend to get split up from their friends because they go to different schools. This is one of my favourite things about the café which is it’s a place for young people to stay in touch with their friends from primary school.

Another thing is that we already have a great bunch of young people who it’s been awesome to get to know and build relationships with over the past months. One of the café’s main goals across all of our youth cafes is to see young people transformed and its fantastic to see this already happening at Haddenham even in the cafés short period of life. For some young people that might mean there confidences has grown and are now able to talk to people they don’t know, for others it could be a bigger step such as stepping into the role of a volunteer and actually serving at the youth café. This for me, either way has been pretty epic to see.

For me, Haddenham is an awesome café already but has the potential to become even greater. Haddenham has such a large amount of young people that we could be reaching out to, it’s amazing. But we don’t wana run before can walk, after all we haven’t been running a year yet. I just pray that God continues to bless they café even more than he already has and that we can reach out and meet as many young people in Haddenham where there at as we can. I just ask for your prayers and support as we continue to serve the young people of Haddenham, and I do appreciate it.

Jake McMenamin

Why not check out the Haddenham Cafe Website