I’ve been given the opportunity to work as a steward for the Lambeth Conference, and I am having such an awesome time.

On July 8th I landed back down here in Canterbury, a week before the Conference started so that I could be trained and meet my fellow stewards. All 53 of them. Our boss is a nice bloke called Dave, and his sidekick is a lass called Erin who teaches at an international school in Taiwan. All together we come from 18 different countries (including New Zealand, Australia, Ghana, Tanzania, Belgium, Canada, Mexico and Yorkshire) and speak 33 languages. It’s crazy and difficult and fulfilling and absolutely AMAZING all at the same time.

Training was great – hard work sometimes, and it would have ben easier if  hadn’t come down with ‘flu on the second day and had to spend a day and a half sleeping it off… We got to know each other really well and started to work effectively as a team. Thinking that the Bishops weren’t going to arrive until Tuesday evening, it came as a bit of a shock when wewere dispatched to arrival stations at 11am that day to start welcoming delegates with no idea of how our systems would work! I was supposed to be helping a member of staff with identity cards, was then dispatched to the Parkwood student village to help delegates find their rooms, and finally ended up co-ordinating the minibuses between campus and Parkwood to ensure that the early arrivals were re-united with their luggage, and doing the same with vans the next day. You see, someone had worked out that queuing for registration with 4 suitcases full of cassocks was a bit tricky, so as soon as delegates arrived they checked their luggage in and we took it to the reception area of whichever accomodation block they were assigned to. It almost worked – only 3 bags are still missing, which is only 0.25% of the whole. Not bad for a system that was thrust upon us and that ended up being co-ordinated by a small shouty punk. Any more bags for Tyler Court?