that sounds bad

I read the last post back and realised that I haven't painted the best picture of what Soul Survivor is. For now it does just sound like a Christian dating festival, however that's simply a side effect of shoving that many hormones into one place. And, believe it or not, a very polite, well mannered, mild side effect that would like a relationship afterwards if we don't live too far away, please.

Soul Survivor, in it's awesome totality, is, as I said before, a Christian festival that is filled with ten thousand young people from all over the country. It lasts two weeks, in two parts. Week A and week B, however this variates on what other events are going on around the time. It was set up and founded by the Soul Survivor church in Watford, where most of the people that run and organise the festival go as their place of worship. Many of the leaders are amazing musicians and making their living that way. Travelling musicians, talkers, comedians, etc - so many people - come and help to support this event, and participate in it's running. There are two main meetings a day, one in the morning and one in the evening. Seminars are run throughout the day and a few at night. you're not required to do, or go to anything though, it is all up to you. And the amount of non-Chrisitans I have met there is unbelievable, many of them find God through just being there and being part of it all but lots don't, they simply leave knowing more about God and Christianity and often, themselves.
Various cafes, a skate park and a market place are open all day as well, and well into the evening. The cafes are all different, and all offer their own atmospheres and enviroments. The skate park is literally that, with it's own cafe/chill out area. Some of the best skaters, boarders and riders I have seen, I've seen there. The market place is simply that, offering huge amounts of music, books, clothing, posters, LOADS of stuff. There are stalls set up telling people about what charities are going on and what things you can get involved in throughout the world and within England, including out of year and student programs.
Being on team means that you're working at the event, you get free entry and fed every meal all week. You're either working in the cafes, skate park, setting up, packing down, being a steward and controlling the meetings, enabling team, and so much more visible and behind the scenes. Not only is being on team really rewarding and available to those who, like me, are financially unstable at the moment, it also gives you a different bage for the week. Now, I didn't think this would make any difference to how my week would go last year BUT I found that people found it a lot easier to chat to me without wondering if it was odd to talk to someone they didn't know. People are doing this everywhere anyway but if you're wearing a bage and usually a teeshirt that incdicates you're on team, people tend to feel that it's easier to talk. This is amazing, I can't even explain it without repeating myself several times but it is an awesome thing to find people easily interacting with you.

On the whole, Soul Survivor is life changing, whether you're a Christian or not it is a real experience. Something unexplainable and like nothing else I have ever been through.