The Gathering by Claire Dorrance
So, I started out like any other Saturday morning sleep deprived and hungry. Normally though, I never want to get out of bed into the cold and have to start moving, but on this particular morning I was quite happy to. It was about 6.35ish on Saturday the 9th of February (Normally I don't remember times, but this was so early for a Saturday morning that I still remember with a vengeance.), I was chilled to the bone, and I couldn't feel my feet or hands and felt horrible. I thought the best way to combat it would be to get up and start moving and to get ready for the day ahead. That's when it hit me, or well in fact it hit Naomi and I stood up and fell on her. I'd forgotten I wasn't at home and in fact in a sleeping bag, sleeping on a church floor in the middle of Birmingham.
So I decided to get moving and get ready. So I did. After the feeding and dressing and such things, we were all pretty much ready. (We, being the youth of my church, around 8 boys and 11 girls.) So we piled on the mini bus and headed for the centre of Birmingham. Now this being my second time away with out my parents, it was all very exciting. We arrived at the same place where they hold The Gathering every year. I remember seeing all the hundreds of people inside and getting the butterflies. I recall the weather too, it was brilliantly sunny and warm, and I remember I wore my blue and white checked shirt and how I felt like the bees knees. Even though I look back now and cringe, because I looked far from it. It was a really great day. We spent the whole day, in meetings to do with singing and song writing and playing instruments and dancing, it was a really great time.
After the hours of exploring and meeting new people everyone one left to go and get tea, so after a unanimous vote we decided to go to Pizza Hut. A lot of other people who were there were all also wearing the bright yellow wristbands we were wearing too. So we filled our bellies with mouth-watering pizza we headed back to the centre.
This next part was my favourite, the night meeting, where everyone who was at The Gathering joined together for well a concert. it was a brilliant atmosphere. You could almost feel the air buzzing. So The Gathering Band (a very original name) started to play and I was really amazed at how good they were. When you hear of a band that has the same name as the event you get a very ominous feeling, but these guys really out did them selves. It was great. Everyone was jumping around to the music and really getting into things. I think that night we went over by an hour but it was so brilliant we didn't seem to notice.
After we got back to the church, after a 17-hour day, I don't think anybody noticed or even cared about sleeping on the cold, oh so cold church floor. But I do know we couldn't wait for the next day of The Gathering to begin!
We all can't wait for the next Gathering to begin.
