Prosit Neujahr

Right after Christmas, we the members of Team USA had a week off, so we decided to do some traveling.  Jo, John, and Edward took on Brussels, Bruges, and Amsterdam; Adrienne stayed local; and Miriam and I went to Germany.  It’s an interesting choice, I suppose, since neither of us speak German, but fortunately, we had a good friend who was willing to help us out. 

Amy spent almost the entire week with us, introducing us to some fine German food, villages, and friends.  She shared her home with us and showed us where she works.  Amy, the best part of the trip was without a doubt spending time with you, whether we were watching Betty und ihre Schwestern or eating meat off the bone at a medieval restaurant.  Thank you for an incredible trip.

My first view of Germany, courtesy of an Aer Lingus window seat.

We've been awake for almost 24 hours, but we're still
inordinately excited to see Gutenberg.

Castle Braunfels (and yes, Dad, this is the namesake of
that city in the Lone Star State that you are doubtlessly
thinking of right now)

We went to Köln for New Year's, and this is the sight that
greeted us as soon as we stepped outside the train station.

Inside the cathedral

And we thought there was a lot of snow in Belfast...

The Germans sure know their Christmas

and their ice cream.

Belfast under Snow

Christmas Lights Outside City Hall

Also around Christmas, Belfast was blanketed in white.  The snow stayed on the ground for an unheard-of amount of time—apparently, the city normally gets the “gone by morning” sort of snow.  But this snow stayed morning after morning, and it was beautiful against the brick houses and green fields; snowmen appeared in the gardens, and people were sledging (sledding) all across Stormont Park.  We even had a white Christmas.  Most of the time, I thoroughly enjoyed the snow…but to be fair, that’s probably because I didn’t have to drive in it.

Bathgate Drive in the Snow

My Skylight View

Snow in Ballybeen

Miriam Takes in the View

Christmas Day

View of Ballybeen Estate from the church

It has been a long time since I’ve posted, and I apologize.  I could blame it on my time management skills (or lack thereof), but you’ve all heard that tired excuse before.  I’ll just be honest and say that after things started back up in January, it’s like I blinked and here we are in the middle of February.  Maybe you feel like that, too. 

But while I’m at it, I’ll also apologize for the awkward cluster of posts that will follow.  It seems that I can’t just do one post at a time like a normal person.  To catch you up to speed with what’s going on here, I’ll also have to go back a few weeks…to, like, Christmas.  Yes, Christmas on Valentine’s Day.  The holiday magic never stops. 

Right, here we go.

I realize that I wrote a post about Christmas Day and another concerning my Christmas activities, but a lot of you have asked me what I actually did on Christmas.  Well, some of my friends here asked me to join their family for the whole day.  They picked me up at 8.30am, and right from the very beginning, I felt completely at home.  I helped wrap some last-minute presents, watched Home Alone on TV, and even curled my hair in the mirror in their front room.  We went to church together in the morning—it was a short service that mostly consisted of the kids showing off their Christmas presents and pieces of chocolate flying around the room.  Then we went home and ate a beautiful four-course Christmas dinner (thank you, Gayle, Wilma, and Kathryn!).  Later we opened presents and spent some quality time talking over the sticky toffee pudding and waffle berry delight. 

Later that evening, another family of friends asked me over for a little Christmas cake and a couple games of Perudo—a game based on probability that you might have seen in Pirates. 

Like so many other times this past year, people here have reached out to be both friends and family to me, and I really cannot find the words to say how grateful I am.  Over the last six months, God has continuously showed me His care by bringing these friends into my life—and by revealing that an important part of service is realizing that others serve you much more that you could possibly serve in return.

Yes, we are wearing paper crowns.  And yes, the general
reaction is one of disbelief when I say that the Christmas
cracker tradition has yet to take hold in the States.

From Friendship Circles to Whoville

The month of December was, quite honestly, a blur.  A beautiful blur, but a blur nonetheless.  I’m sure I’m not the only one who thinks so.  But now that Christmas is past, I have a bit more time to reflect on some of my holiday activities at Dundonald Methodist and DFCI, and I thought I’d share a couple with you.  But before I begin, a warning: this account contains an alarming number of Christmas dinners.  And by “dinner” I mean the whole shebang: turkey, dressing, potatoes, Christmas cake.  Thankfully, these dinners were not all consumed on Christmas Day—they were mercifully spread throughout the month of December.  It was like having five Thanksgivings in one month minus the American football and pumpkin pie.  Another turkey dinner might have killed me, but, let’s be honest…it wouldn’t have been a bad way to go.

Since we’re on the topic of food, let’s start off with the Friendship Circle Christmas Dinner.  Every week, I get to spend an hour and a half with a group of seniors/pensioners from the church.  The Friendship Circle (which has also epically been referred to as The Circle of Trust) meets on Tuesday afternoons to share conversation, tea, and biscuits.  There’s often a special speaker or activity, and there’s always a good hymn-sing involved.  Our last meeting of 2010 was the annual Christmas dinner, complete with turkey, Christmas crackers (thus the paper crowns), and a visit from Santa.  Oh, and I should have given this warning earlier: this account contains pictures of me dressed as one of Santa’s elves (who, if the hat is any indication, obviously has some relations in Whoville).  This is possibly more alarming than five Christmas dinners in one month.

Next came the Christmas Party for Sticky Fingers, the mums and tots group that meets at the church every week.  There was a lot of great food, some good laughs, and—you guessed it—another visit from the North Pole crew.  The Christmas magic never stops.

Me and Kelly, youth worker extraordinaire and reluctant wearer of
reindeer antlers.

Then there was the Christmas dinner with the Sticky Fingers mums.

And possibly another Christmas dinner with the DFCI staff.

We also did a couple of special Christmas activities for the afterschools clubs.  The first was a trip into the city to experience Follow the Star, an interactive version of the nativity story.  The kids got to knock on the inn door, listen as Mary and Joseph told their story, and watch as the wise men made their journey to Bethlehem.  We all laughed as the shepherds kept confusing us with their sheep, and some of us might have been a little intimidated by King Herod raging around his throneroom…until he appeared after the play with cookies and juice to share.

The second event was a Christmas activity afternoon, where we gave parents a chance to finish their last-minute shopping while we entertained their kids with games, cookery, crafts, drama, a DVD, and a visit from Santa.  I was on cookery duty for the afternoon (Some of you are laughing.  Stop it now.), so with the much-appreciated help of my fellow YAV Miriam, I spent a few hours introducing the kids to the American Christmas tradition of decorating the sugar cookie.  It was a bit of a sugar surge, but a general success overall.

The month came to a close with a couple of firsts: trying mince pies and Christmas cake for the first time, and joining my first Christmas choir. 

December may have been a bit of a whirlwind, and this Christmas season was different from any other that I’ve experienced, but I wouldn’t trade it for anything.  From laughing with the Sticky Fingers mums to eating shortbread with King Herod and a group of 4-year-olds, I am so thankful for the experiences I’ve had, the people that I’ve met, and the friendships God has given me here.  And I’m thankful to you for praying for me and following my (often sporadic) updates about my life here.  I am honestly really excited to see what the new year will bring.

Christmas Comes

Christmas Comes

Christmas comes every time we see

God in other persons.

The human and the holy meet in Bethlehem

            or in Belfast, Baghdad or Boston,

for Christmas comes like a golden storm on its

way to Jerusalem—

determinedly, inevitably…

Even now it comes

            in the face of hatred and warring—

                        no atrocity too terrible to stop it,

                        no Herod strong enough

                        no hurt deep enough,

                        no curse shocking enough,

                        no disaster shattering enough.

For someone on earth will see the star,

            someone will hear the angel voices

            someone will know peace and goodwill:

            the Christ will be born.

                                                                        ~Ann Weems

Sometimes Christmas seems to come unexpectedly—you’re surrounded by lights and ornaments and Christmas carols for weeks, but you still don’t realize that the day is approaching.  At other times, Christmas seems to come too fast, the day careening toward you, gaining momentum with every expectation and to-do list.  Sometimes, when Christmas comes, it doesn’t feel at all how Christmas should—the right people aren’t around, you’re tired, there’s an emptiness.

But Ann Weems’ poem reminds me that the beautiful thing about Christmas is that it doesn’t depend on me—my feelings or my preparations.  It is a far greater and more glorious thing than that.  The grace of God and the love of God—the things that we remember at Christmas—are here.  God is present and working, despite the fact that people are trying to stop Him, that others aren’t thinking of Him at all, that I don’t feel prepared or equipped. 

And I think the storm is all the more glorious and golden because of it.

Happy Christmas.

Depend Upon It

There are a few things in life that you can absolutely depend upon—and I’m not thinking right now about family, good friends, or the grace of God.  I’m talking about those little plot twists in life that take you by surprise and frustrate you beyond belief—until you realize that they’re not plot twists at all.  They’re actually the predictable parts of my life’s storyline.  For example: if I decide to grab a quick dinner while I’m out running errands, there will inevitably be a meal waiting for me at home.  If I forget my umbrella, the clouds will darken and the floodgates will open.  If I have more than enough time to style my hair in the morning, the result will be subpar (at best).  All of these situations can, of course, work in the reverse: forgoing Taco del Mar means that there will be no dinner at home, an umbrella brings the sun out in full force, and 12 minutes with the curling iron looks like an hour.  Those are the predictable plot-twists in life.

There is another dependable aspect to life—one that I like to call the Kia Sedona Phenomenon (KSP).  Here’s how KSP works: whenever you consider buying a new car, the scales will immediately be lifted from your eyes, and you’ll realize that nearly everyone else in the world has just purchased the exact make and model that you want.  No matter how obscure or unique you think your car is, the roads will suddenly be filled with them.  I’m assuming that the same rule applies to baby names and new handbags.  There’s no explaining it.  It’s KSP.

I’ve recently been experiencing a little KSP here in Belfast, but it’s been more of a sobering realization rather than the annoyance you feel at the sight of Subaru Outbacks clogging up the freeway.  You see, during my first week here, I saw a church with a wall around it.

But it wasn’t just any wall.  It was a wall with frayed metal spikes protruding from the bricks—it was the sort of wall you really weren’t supposed to climb.  There was a gate at this church, too, and as you can probably guess, it was closed.  This wall was guarding the squat brick church and twenty pristine parking spaces, their lines clean and stark against the pavement.  

Now here’s the other important thing about this church: its building, its wall, and its car park sit right in the heart of a government housing estate.  It is surrounded by rows of brick houses, unruly plots of grass, and crumbling sidewalks.  Some of the murals on the houses have been repainted to portray children holding hands and playing games—but others still show masked men with guns.

Now, this next bit is just me speculating, but…the fact that this church cradles its parking spaces means that its members don’t come from the nearby houses—they have to drive a distance to get to church.  Now I’m sure that these members are wonderful people, and when the gate opens on Sunday morning, they take their regular parking spaces and their regular pew.  And I’m sure they’ve wondered why so few people from the surrounding estate attend Sunday morning worship.

Now here’s where KSP comes into play: after that first week, I’ve seen churches with walls all over this city.  But then the KSP caused me to have an even more sobering realization: Belfast isn’t the first place I’ve seen churches with walls.  I’ve seen them before in the States…and I’ve seen them in me.  Now, these walls aren’t necessarily made of brick—they’re often made of attitudes, routine, and a focus on the things within.  And that sort of wall is even harder to scale than the sort with the frayed metal spikes.

I’ve strengthened this wall when I forgot that there are important ministries outside of those that take place on a Sunday morning.  I’ve fortified it when I said that my church needs to sort out its own problems before it can effectively reach out to the surrounding community.  And I shut the iron gate when I wondered why people weren’t taking the initiative to come through the church doors themselves.

Through some of my work at Dundonald this year, I believe that God is trying to teach me to be quicker to recognize the needs of the families that live in those surrounding brick houses.  He’s showing me that the church will never be perfect, but He is big enough to use us right now, in spite of our imperfections.  And He is helping me to realize that some people might never take the initiative to come in through the church doors…so we have to go out to them and meet them in the place where they are.

All this from a little KSP.

Of Hula-Hoops and Buttered Toast

Lest you think I’m spending all my time playing tourist here in Belfast, I thought I’d write a post about the activity that takes up most of my week: afterschools club.  On Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday afternoons, we open the church to the kids who live nearby, offering them a safe and fun place to spend a couple hours.  The activities we plan are many and varied—I’ve found myself playing relay games, baking cookies, making masks, and even writing poetry.  It all depends on the day.  Here’s a little sampling of what a typical afterschools club is like:

When the kids first arrive, they have some free time
to play in the Main Hall.  Here, some of the girls show
off their hula-hoop skills.

Paul is studying to be a Methodist minister, and he's
working with us on placement this year.  Here, he discusses
the finer points of hula-hooping.

Bill oversees an intense game of 10-pin bowling.

As the kids play, Heather and Gail start preparing the
afternoon snack: buttered toast and juice.

Paul and Kelly make sure that everyone has toast
and juice.

After snack, the kids go to different stations for the
rest of the afternoon: some to arts and crafts, some
to games, some to cookery, and some to drama.  I've
tried my hand at leading these different stations
...with varying success.  :)