For the past few years, Whitehouse has been running the Alpha course. It is a ten week course done in the middle of the week where people who don't have much to do with church, have lots of questions, or just aren't sure about their faith can come and have a meal, listen to a short talk on an aspect of Christian faith, then freely ask questions and discuss in small groups without having to hold back anything. Whitehouse has had tremendous success with running this course in the past, not just with helping people understand the Christian faith more, but leading people to a much stronger relationship with God and committment to their faith. Most of the younger leaders in Whitehouse came to Whitehouse through the Alpha course.

Because of that, as soon as I got here last September, the church was hoping I could lead a Youth Alpha course for our youth. I have to admit, I wasn't particularly excited about the idea at first. Evangelism has never been the area I've been most passionate about or which has came easily to me. And I didn't know anything about running a Youth Alpha course. I helped out a little bit with our Alpha course in the fall, but Youth Alpha is very different, and I had never seen even one session of it before.

So I went into Youth Alpha feeling very unsure about it and wondering if we should be running it at all. The one thing that really convinced me that we should do it was our minister telling me how much she wanted the youth to at least know the basics of the faith. I personally have met so many Christians who can't explain their basic beliefs and understanding of the Gospel that I shared that interest. I realized I didn't want our youth growing up in church and youth group witout knowing why they were there or what the point of it was.

Since the very first week, though, I've seen the rewards of going ahead with it. The church community really helped it go smoothly. Every week, we had a different group from the church making us dinners. We had lots of people praying every week for the course to make a difference in the lives of our youth. And the youth themselves took huge initiative by inviting as many friends as they could and opening up to a lot of ideas that were very new for many of them. Our youth group that averaged about 10-12 in December blossomed to over 20 the very first night of Youth Alpha. The youth were inviting friends who didn't have any associtation with any churches, but who were intrigued enough to come along.

For most of the time I believed many came just becaue their friends were there, but as the weeks went on, I started to realize they genuinely wanted to hear more about the Chritian faith. During our group discussion times, they would ask incredibly good and important questions, many of which I had trouble figuring out answers to. And other youth would continually chime in with answers when one or more of them had trouble understanding something. During the first couple of weeks, it was obvious most of them weren't comfortbale opening up, but by week three or four, it seemed like all of the youth were opening up, asking questions they honestly were struggling with, and talking about very personal parts of their life and faith. Even youth who never spoke the entire fall and early winter, invited friends to it and started talking to everyone much more, not afraid to share what they felt. As Youth Alpha has gone on, I've seen our youth become much closer and more open with each other and more passionate about their faith. It has been an incredibly encouraging experience for me.  

    There is an organization here in Belfast called Beautiful Feet, that every Tuesday night goes out giving food, clothes, and coffee out to the homeless in Belfast. After a couple of people from my church went along one Tuesday night, I wanted to check it out myself. The Tuesday before Christmas I went down with another member of my church named Jonny. After making sandwiches beforehand, we joined up with the rest of the mostly 20-something year old volunteers at a church downtown, packed up our bags to take with us, and had a deep prayer before heading out.
    I had done some work with homeless people in the past, but in situations where they came to us, like in soup kitchens or shelters. I had never gone out to find them and help them out on the street. The truth is that I actually had no idea what to do when I met a homeless person on the street. I usually just completely ignore them and walk past when I see a homeless person sitting on a sidewalk. Going out and actually talking to one while offering food and clothing was going to be something very uncomfortable for myself.
    The first person we met that night was a man named Thomas. He wasn’t sitting down and begging for money, as I assumed all homeless people we were going to meet would be doing. He was just walking down the street like anyone else. But one of the other volunteers with us had seen him walking around downtown a lot in the past weeks and thought she should finally meet him and see if he needed help.
    When we first approached Thomas he was very quiet. Every question we asked him, he answered with a single word or not at all. After he found out I was an American, though, he started telling us a story about how he went to Florida, wound up wearing a space suit, climbed up the ladder on the side of a space shuttle, got on board, and then traveled to the moon. After he told us this story, I wanted to leave him immediately. That story, combined with his unkept beard, poor clothes and his eerily quiet demeanor made me believe that the guy was just crazy. I thought he would never understand anything we said to him or be able to say anything that made any sense, and that trying to talk with him was pointless. Also, he didn’t want any of the food, coffee, or clothes we were offering. As the others chose to stay there and talk with him for longer, I thought we were just wasting our time on Thomas.
    But the more we stayed with him, the more he opened up and started trusting us. He stopped trying to freak us out with fantastic stories of going to the moon, and began being honest with us. He let us know that he was from Dublin but didn’t know where his family was now. Thomas had been in Belfast for the past month, just walking around most of the time. He didn’t have a place to say, but also didn’t like the homeless shelters he had been to. After talking with him for twenty minutes, we invited him to join us as we walked around downtown Belfast for the rest of the night. I don’t think he ever said yes or no, but as soon as we started walking, he came along with us. And as he came along with us, he opened up even more. He accepted the coffee, sandwiches, and soup he had turned down earlier that night. He laughed at our jokes, and especially my strange accent. And I found out that he likes to sing, especially to “Eye of the Tiger.”
    One moment in that night sticks out a lot to me. We had ran into another homeless man named Davey, who also joined us and walked along with us. It’s our policy not to hand out any money, so when Davey asked for some money, none of us offered. But Thomas, a man without a home, who ate up enough sandwiches and soup to make me believe he didn’t get food very often, and who only carried with him the clothes on his back, reached into his pocket and handed Davey some change. It wasn’t even a thought for Thomas. Someone else asked for something that he could give, so he gave it, and he gave it with some joy on his face. This same man who an hour earlier I had dismissed as crazy and unworthy of my time, was joyfully giving away his money, even though it might have cost him a rare meal or worse.
    I've been out most Tuesday nights since then with Beautiful Feet, handing out whatever food and clothing we have. It has been amazing the support we have gotten since we've started. Once we let the rest of Whitehouse know what we had been doing, donations of clothing and blankets came in faster than we could hand them out.  It seemed like half the congregation has offered to help in some way, whether it has been coming out with us, donating clothing, or preparing the food for us to give out. It has been amazing for me to see our community become so passionate about helping those out on the street.