The simple constant message...

It was a struggle, but I eventually conquered the urge to call John ‘Mr Froud’. I first saw
the Zeph team – or some of them – in my primary school assemblies, and I loved everything in them. I remember one Thursday morning how the rumour went round that it was going to be ‘A Mr Froud Assembly’ (we were that excited it needed capital letters), and as my class walked in the whispers went back along the line that it was true…

Those assemblies were amazing: everyone had fun, we sang songs I know people still haven’t forgotten, and the simple constant message of God’s love always came through. I don’t have a particularly dramatic conversion story, but it was things like these assemblies that taught me enough about God to be able to decide, one day, that I wanted to follow him for myself.

So you can imagine how happy I was to get stuck into working with Zeph as a teenager, having experienced first-hand the good stuff they did. They always seem to have something on – holiday clubs, Re:wind and Fast Forward, the Light Party, Refugee Voices – always something to join in with and have a bit of fun while shining God’s light.

I have to admit though, this last holiday club was not without its hazards. Firstly, a child taped me, by my hair, to a cardboard time machine, requiring three different leaders to attempt to free me before eventually cutting off some of my hair. Later, I was asked to be in a drama, told I was to be a German solider and had to sing in German, before being handed a very large sausage. The sausage was never explained. I feel these experiences somehow sum up the wonders of working with Zeph: laughter, the unexpected and the downright odd, all in the name of sharing Jesus with kids in ways which will make sense to them. Because really, that’s what Zeph is all about, and they do it brilliantly­ – and hopefully will be for a long time to come.

Rosemary Leech is, as her blog testifies, willing to do just about anything to share God's love with children, which is a quality we greatly admire. She is currently studying at Trinity College Oxford but has already proved more than happy to revisit Zeph in her holidays - about which we are very happy! She's a sucker for a cup of tea and a cake, and an all-round lovely lady.