The Gifts You Sent

Good times in the kitchen during afterschools club.

Well, today is the final day for my year of raising support, and I just wanted to take a moment to say thank you.  When I received my last fundraising report, it not only showed that I had met the fundraising goal for the year—my supporters had given over and above the required amount. 

There is no way that I can thank you enough for everything you have done for me this year.  Thank you for giving so generously of your finances, and thank you for remembering me in your prayers.  Thanks for keeping in touch with me over these months, and thanks for even taking the time to read my (often random) entries on this blog.  I appreciate each and every one of you so much.

I’m so grateful to God for giving me this year in Belfast, and I’m so grateful to you for helping to make it possible.  I’m looking forward to seeing you again—it will be so good to tell you more about my experiences and to hear how your year has been, too.

Thank you again.

A Triumph

Some hard-core athletes.

Well, here it comes again: Allison’s odd jumble of blog posts.  This whole blog-writing thing seems to come in spurts for me—and, let’s face it, they could definitely be more regular.  However, I sometimes like to think that I take the Dr. Who approach to blogging: always random and often unexpected.  You never know when I’m going to show up to take you on a spontaneous journey through time and space.

Today, I want to take you back to May.  May 2^nd, to be precise.  The day of the 2011 Belfast City Marathon.  Yes, my friends, I was there.  But at 8:30 that morning, it honestly didn’t feel like I should’ve been there.  I was standing near the starting line in Belfast city centre, watching the runners all around me.  They were stretching, fastening their numbers to their shirts, and staring hard at absolutely nothing.  Tension was thick in the air, and I found myself thinking again how I really didn’t belong here.  I felt out of place with all the intense athleticism—I mean, I didn’t even have the coordination to play a team sport when I was a kid.  I felt like I should be standing over with their families and friends—the ones who were there to cheer enthusiastically, take a few free samples of the new “Ulster Fry”-flavored crisps, then go to Starbucks for a much-deserved coffee.

This is my "what the heck am I doing here and where's my coffee?" face.

Now, I know what you’re probably thinking, so let me clear this up right here and now.  Did I run the Belfast City Marathon?  You’re having a laugh.  Did I run a relay leg of the Belfast City Marathon?  Absolutely not.  Did I walk the Belfast City Marathon?  Umm…yes.

The all-star American team consisted of Miriam, Doug, and Allison, and it took us a grand total of 7 hours to walk all 26.2 miles.  By the time we reached each water station, the water was lukewarm in the paper cups and the half-empty Powerade bottles were scattered across the road.  By the time we reached the nutrition stations, it looked like an entire orange orchard had exploded, leaving nothing but peels on the pavement. There were, however, a surprising number of people cheering for us and the other walkers—some cheered from the sidewalk, while others cheered from their lawn chairs with a hamburger in their hands.  At one point, a boy saw us and shouted, “You’re the last ones!  Everyone is in front of you!”

How’s that for encouragement?

In closing, I would like to point out that the random boy was mistaken—we were not in last place.  We actually finished behind the last runner—the guy who had eaten an entire Ulster fry for breakfast that morning.  I would also like to point out that we ourselves ran triumphantly across the finish line, and were awarded accordingly with a medal, a bottle of water, and a bunch of bananas.

Win for Team USA.

At the finish line.