refresh weekend with Chris Duffet

Over a September weekend Refresh church family got together to hang out, have fun and step out….

With Holy Spirit’s presence to guide us and big hearted inspiration from Chris Duffet and his team, we took some steps of faith.

Saturday morning’s menu ranged from café chatting, to give aways, to public painting…and we invited the community to Fun Day lunch. The ‘bag and card gift challenge’ was to pray. Buy a card & gift. Write a message of hope. Then deliver the gift under Spirit direction…! So one lady at Refresh did just this, and delivered a beautiful, poignant, encouragement to a lady who runs a charity shop.

That afternoon we were challenged a bit further; to either do some Treasure Hunting, or a Trade-Up activity. Starting with something small (we had 2 balloon animals) the challenge was to see what we could scale up to within an hour. We prayed. One of team felt she wanted to trade up for items to help a young friend, who has a young baby, living in temporary accommodation….

A balloon became a bracelet, socks donated, a cork exchanged for a buggy, a promise of a refrigerator…and with 10 minutes left a dash into a Charity shop. The shopkeeper only too happy to donate the items we picked out. Of course she was generous; that morning she was the one who received the ‘bag and card gift’. God making heart connections.

Come the Fun Day lunch and a young girl found courage to come to the party and receive all the donations that the community had given for her and her baby.

The town felt brighter and warmer as we wandered around being ourselves. Lights of hope from every one of us no matter how tall or small we feel, God is going ahead of us, nothing is wasted, every smile a rescue. We saw the good in people…the ‘God colours’ as Peterson puts it. We are bringing out the best.