Methodist Conference day 2

A weensy blog tonight as it's late, my eyes are stinging and it's a big day tomorrow (more about that later)

Today the 3 children and youth reps arrived. Abby and Rox, both 16, are from Wales and Tom, 15, is from Leeds. I have worked with this quite a lot this year as they have been involved in the rep training weekend and other bits of pieces such as meetings and consultations around the Connexion.

They got here at lunch time so in the morning I got some last bits and pieces done and popped down to the PCC for as much as I could. Jobs included getting everything ready for the 3Generate stand, printing rotas, presentation and other stuff, and continuing some preliminary discussions about things which will be discussed later in the week.

This week Tom, Abby, Rox and I are joined by Meg (Youth Development Officer) and Sam (ex Youth President).We had lunch then spent about two and a half hours going through the agenda and what we think and want to say. I'd given each of the children and youth reps 2 reports to particularly focus on, although they can say things about other reports if they want to. This approach seemed to work as the agenda is very thick and daunting! During our time this afternoon the reps fed back to the group what their thoughts were on the reports they had been given and we discussed together what points we want to make. It was really helpful having Sam in the room to offer his perspective having been in this position last year. I cannot advocate the idea of 'team' enough!

We headed over the Central Hall and set up the 3Generate stand, which took a surprisingly long time but doesn't look very impressive! I'm going to blow up some balloons tomorrow to jazz it up a bit :)

We planned to do some sightseeing today but we spent a lot of time briefing and then it took a while to set up the stand so the reps valiantly sacrificed the sightseeing. We are presenting the 3Generate report tomorrow so needed to focus on getting prepared. Hopefully we'll have some time on Sunday to do some touristing though.

After dinner (which was very slow coming because we got forgotten!) as the weather is nice we sat outside to look at the presentation for the 3Generate report and work out what the Abby and Tom will say when they present the resolutions that come with it. This took about an hour and what we came up with sounds really powerful I think. The reps have worked so hard today - they are amazing. They are really excited about this week and have come prepared to contribute. Expect great things people!

You can read the blog by Abby and Rox about the day from their point of view here: http://3generatereps.wordpress.com/2013/07/05/youth-reps-at-methodist-conference-day-1-2/

So tomorrow is the big day - for us anyway! We will be presenting the 3Generate report from about 5.15 onwards and you can watch it online at www.methodistconference.org.uk/live