NEW WINE 2019 

New Wine is an organisation committed to the support and growth of the local church. They hold an annual conference where thousands of members of many different churches come together to worship, to learn and to experience the Holy Spirit. St Mary’s and Sale West had about fifty people camping together this year on the Peterborough Show Ground.
 
The general pattern for each day is the same.  There are various worship venues to choose from, each hosting a main meeting at 9.15am and again at 7pm.  There is a wide range of seminars and meetings during the day.  Meanwhile there are children's groups for all ages running in parallel.
 
We all picked our own ways through the packed programme and I heard many amazing stories and testimonies from people who had attended the various seminars during the week.
 
We saw God move in some pretty awesome ways. The teaching was rich. There were many opportunities for prayer. We saw many come to faith. There were many words of knowledge received and given …. and received. There were many healings; for example, during one of the seminars people were asked to stand if they were in need of physical healing. One woman, Lisa, stood up. She was suffering with tennis elbow; she said the painkillers weren’t working. A couple of our church members prayed for her three times but nothing shifted; the pain was still there. After standing for a while longer one person felt God say that Lisa didn’t feel worthy of the healing, so a little awkwardly, they asked Lisa if she felt worthy. She wasn’t sure but declared out loud, “I am worthy of this healing!” After praying for her again Lisa was healed and had no more pain!
 
The weather was grim for the first two days, but it didn’t matter because, above all else we were family.  On one of the days we joined together as a camp to pray for two of our church members who were attending a difficult meeting in Liverpool; they had been waiting 18 months for it to be scheduled. We organised 15-minute time slots and allocated them to pairs of prayers. As we prayed the couple kept us updated and one expressed feeling surrounded by the Holy Spirit. There were many coincidences in terms of timing and in the words of knowledge we received for them. Everyone was blessed by the experience!
 
We truly looked after each other and we shared everything from tent poles to wine, from pizzas to waterproof tape. 
 
 What a blessed week; I would highly recommend it to anyone!
 
Carol Dodgson