Message Wales partnered with churches across the South Wales Valleys for a week of schools mission and invited young people to the end-of-week gig, where they got a chance to hear the gospel.
As we partnered with churches in the South Wales Valleys to deliver assemblies to all year groups at four high schools, OTC shared lessons on Resilience & Wellbeing and performed some of their truth-filled tracks. The young people loved the music and an entire year group got to their feet and danced and sung along with the band.
At the end of the week, we ran an evangelistic gig where the young people we’d met in school could come along for music and to hear the gospel. 412 young people came to the gig at the Students’ Union in Treforest and heard music from OTC and SoulBox. Sammy from SoulBox shared the gospel and 85 young people responded, received a Bible, and were connected with their local church and youth group!
One of those who responded was Anwen who team member Alice had met in school a few weeks before. In the run up to the week of mission, Alice had been running a six-week Respect ME girls course at some of the partner schools. One group of girls, including Anwen, were particularly disruptive in the lessons and didn’t want to engage in the content. But over the six weeks, they started to open up about their lives and Alice was able to speak to them about making positive decisions and how God loves and values them. When OTC came into their school for the Valleys mission week, one of the girls said ‘Miss, did you do all of this for us?’ and Alice got to respond ‘yes we did this for you!’
The girls were really engaged in the sessions from OTC, listening to team members CJ and James talk about how Jesus had impacted their lives. They loved it so much and wanted to hear more so booked tickets to the gig on the Friday. All of them came along and Anwen responded to the good news of Jesus!
