Daily Programs:
On the Walgett Summer trip the structure is roughly like this:
Mornings: Get up at 5.30 and do some physical work such as gardening, painting, refurbishing a house etc Get breakky at about 9 and have worship!! Head out to the Aboriginal missions with the bus at about 10 and pick up the kids and take them to a park for kids club. Run a kids club songs, face painting, ballooning, games, storytime, for about 1.5hrs and take the kids back to the mission. Go back grab lunch and head down to the town pool in the afternoon and play cricket and mingle with town people till about 5.30. Sometimes we start more community service. Go back grad some tea and at nightime either do something with the community if it’s on……like a bbq or something….or just chill with the team.

On the weekends we often run a program at the lightening ridge church and contribute in that way.

On a Winter trip like Goodooga our program is roughly:
In the morning get up and eat some breakky, and have worship!! and get the team organised for kids club that day. Go to the local centre at about 10 and run the kids club till about 12. Sometimes our team will split in two and some will walk around town and engage with whoever is around, other times a community service project will come up and some will give a hand with that for a few hours. In the afternoon we really concentrate at Goodooga to mix with teenagers and youth (just because sometimes stormco is too focused on children, and there are youth that need us too). Often this involves playing football with 30 or so local guys and girls interacting in well- girly ways. . .

After we have done this for a few days and we get to know people a bit we hold a state of origin party at a local guys house. We put the footy up on the big screen, have a fire and we get some guys together from the team who are musical and play some typical positive rock songs to crank up the party. (This is the most awesome way to engage a town and meet them where they are at.) About 150 people came to the party last year - which is 1⁄2 the town. Later in the week we chill out with the locals at a bonfire and connect some more.

On the last Friday night we held a very random but semi-structured “church” if that’s what we’ll call it - and invite the people in the town. This is just songs, special items, and the gospel message in a drama or story – both for kids and adults.
Oh and we cram in some tea time……and definitely have some team bonding and worship time of a night.

Leadership:
For this trip Troy and Myself will be leading. We will just both work together and bounce off each other and share the bus driving.
We appoint Robyn in charge of the food- menu’s, what to buy for shopping, organising people to cook before we go out etc - this takes the pressure of the leaders….and she is a much better cook. She will often get a few to help her too.

Music:
For this I usually wing it . . . which means I have nothing written down and I make up the chords . . .
1. Jesus you’re my superhero……main chords E B C#m A
2. Who’s the king of the jungle…. two chord wonder D and A
3. Jesus you are my best friend- chorus: C G Am F
4. Halalala or shake a friends hand – Key of A
5. My God is so Big: D A G
6. Jesus Got heaps of lambs: E7 A7 B7
7. Jesus love is bubbling over: Key of D
8. Everyday: Key of E
9. Smile a while – key of D with a A and G in it
10. My God loves me – D
11. He is the king – C

Puppets:
Sorry don’t do puppets . . .

Stories:
Bible stories:
Daniel and the lions den.
David and Goliath
Jonah and the whale
The gospel story
Sometimes the good old uncle Arthur type stories are excellent to teach kids good things like sharing, loving each other, not stealing etc . . . it doesn’t always have to be a straight bible story.

Budget:
Food (for 18 people)
Bus Hire -
Bus Fuel - depending on how far you go
Craft supplies
Sporting equipment -
Team Night -
Balloons and pumps -
Insurance -
That’s a very rough…however pretty good idea of how much it’s gonna cost you to comfortably run a trip.

Craft Ideas:
Kids love beading necklaces etc…..and it’s real easy to pull off.
Oh I suck at crafts no other ideas.

Service Project ideas:
Backyard blitz on a needy persons house.
Planting a nice garden in the main part of town.
Concreting for local churches
Helping the SES units…..they always have stuff that needs doing.

• Tip: Make sure you don’t get stuck doing dodgy jobs that council are supposed to eventually do. It is easy for a service trip to be abused in this way. Define what you are doing, and if it is actually going to share the love by doing it. Find things to do for needy people, rather than becoming extra council workers.

Worship ideas:
Okay what I tend to do as a leader is to ask everyone in the team to be ready to do a worship out there on stormco. We do 2 worships a day so everyone usually gets a turn. This can be simple bible study, prayer time or a ice breaker activity. This takes the pressure off the leaders and gives ownership back to the team.
Sing a few songs……go out of the town, take mattresses and go star gazing whilst singing praise and worship songs with a guitar (the stars are awesome out west).
Lot’s of prayer- it’s important to pray as a team as much as possible. Give everything to God and you’ll be sweet!!
Adventure Ideas:
Over the past 2 or 3 years of doing stormco’s we have incorporated a team night. We usually take turns year about and get all the guys together on the trip and decide that on the team night we will put on something special for the girls. This is to honour them as Godly women, and to show our appreciation for them. This is awesome team bonding too. It’s important to have a team night because often people who attend a stormco may be luke warm Christians, not Christians at all- or they are on fire for God. Team bonding experiences and spiritual encounters are important to foster more service work in the future and to build Godly friendships. The next year it’s the girls turn.
But here are some ideas that have taken place in the past:
• Special tea cooked by either boys or girls
• Boyz have a tradition of writing a song that sums up the entire trip and is a tribute to the girls- good fun this….video it…for the memories!!
• One time at Walgett in summer we served the girls a three course meal in the middle of Namoi river. We set up tables and chairs in knee high water and served them at sunset.
• We organised for a local guy at Walgett to take the girls for a scenic plane flight over the town.
• At Walgett another year the boys served the girls a special dinner by the river and then presented them with carved Emu eggs.
• At Goodooga the girls served a three course Thai meal, and then did foot-washing for all the boys and gave us gifts that were according to Ephesians 6 that symbolised the sword of the spirit, breastplate of righteousness etc.
( I can promise you that after you have done a team night like any of these mentioned above your team will never be the same. It’s an experience that you just can’t explain).
• Freddo awards – this is awarding people on the team at the end of each day with a freddo frog to acknowledge people for something that they did that stood out as special for that day. This encourages an awesome team spirit and is a good excuse to eat chocolate!!

Budgets (without the details)
INCOME
Money left from previous years $$$
Fundraising (including socials, offering…) $$$
Conference funding $$$
Team member fee x number of members $$$ x 23
TOTAL $$$$$

EXPENSES
Craft items (glue, scissors, cardboard, paint) $$$
Petrol $$$
Car & trailer hire $$$
Meals $$$
Phone calls / Faxes $$$
Community project (paint, brushes, plants) $$$
Donation for the school we stay at $$$
Affirmation presents (treasure boxes with scrolls) $$$
TOTAL $$$$$

GRAND TOTAL $$$$$ - $$$$$

Menus for the trip
Breakfast – Cereal, toast, porridge, fruit and crumpets on a few of the mornings.
Lunch – Sandwiches (salad, nutmeat), leftovers, hotdogs on one day.
Dinners – Haystacks, spaghetti bolognaise, soup, hamburgers with juice/cordial.
– If we go into Casino on Wednesday night we buy hot chips and bread and bring salad and poppers.
Desert – Apple crumble, cake, pancakes,

Craft Ideas
Make Aboriginal pictures out of tiny coloured stones and sand on pre-cut MDF.
Squawking chicken cup
Bird seed juggling balls
Hairy grass heads
Beaded bracelets/necklaces
Laminated ID card with a photo of the child, on ribbon
Handbags made from Jeans pockets (we stole this idea from Kingscliff… thanks)
j. Service project ideas
Paint old fences, picnic area, graffitied water tank, goal posts….
Fix wire around tennis court
Clean up drain that runs around football field
Clean, build and plant gardens at the school grounds, and set up a watering system

Worship ideas
Pray to open worships
Interactive games/activities for Team Building (night time only)
True or interesting stories, email forwards etc. (must be relevant ?)
“ Moral of the story” talk
Pray to close
Affirmation worship on the last night
* Different colour teams take worships each day so that there’s not too much pressure on just a few people.
* We try not to have the worships go for more than 10-20minutes in the morning because everyone’s tired and hungry plus we have a lot to do in very little time, there are usually no interactive parts to the morning worship because people simply aren’t up to it yet.
* Night time worships often go for longer (20-30min and 1hr on the last night) and generally include a section at the beginning where people can raise issues or just talk about how the day went.
* On the last night of STORM Co we have an affirmation worship where everyone writes something positive about every other person in the team, then each member can take the affirming notes home with them. You can write as much or as little as you want, and you are able to remain anonymous but most choose not to.

"Adventure" ideas
Canoeing, Fishing, Social on the second last night – State of Origin, ten pin bowling….

Other Ideas:
We find that face painting each day can be a bit much, so we do it every second day with ballooning on the other day. We run sport at the same time as the face painting/ballooning, this gets all those boys from the town who are “too cool” to get in and have some fun with us. After face painting etc the Tabulam girls and the young children often sit on the side lines and play or sing with the STORM Co team members who’ve run out of energy.
Don’t forget to check for allergies of the team members
Last year we had a team member that kept needing to be rushed to hospital (it’s a long story), our biggest problem was that we only had one copy of the forms containing peoples medical information. So the first time we went to the hospital we didn’t have a copy of it which made communications with the doctors very difficult. From then on, before we could leave for the hospital we needed to make sure that we had all of the forms for the people in the car, but no-one elses. This took time.
Have copies of everyone’s forms in every vehicle!!