Our youth group at Whitehouse has done a lot this year. They have helped lead a couple of our Sunday services, did a fantastic job with our Christmas Eve play, and even prepared a Sadir (Passover meal) experience for Maundy Thursday. We’ve had movie nights with them, parties at homes, and a lock-in. We’ve taken them to youth rallies, bowling, pizza, and even a wild west themed church weekend. I’ve seen them grow together tremendously through our Sunday nights and Youth Alpha. But the past few weeks have been my favorite all year with them.
  
Since the beginning of May, we have been running a program for our youth on Sunday nights called Preparing Youth to be Peacemakers. It is a program made by the Presbyterian Church of Ireland that teaches youth about and deals directly with the sectarian violence and conflict in Northern Ireland and Belfast.
   
Every week the program gets our youth to talk about how the conflict between Protestant/ Catholic, Loyalist/Republican, has affected their lives, and what impact they can have on it. One week the youth talked about where they lived  and what their neighborhoods were like. It was encouraging for me to hear that many of them live in a mixed neighborhood and have Catholic and Protestant neighbors. They also spoke about different housing estates they would never go into. What surprised me was that even though all our youth are Protestant there are Protestant housing estates they won’t go into because they know those areas are full of violence and unsafe.

One week we got them to realize that we all have stereotypes of others by playing a word game. I would read out a word like “teacher, redhead, Muslim, or Irish” and they would have to immediately write down the first word they thought of. I think many of our youth were surprised at how mean some of the things they wrote down were. That same day we broke up into groups and they shared their own stories about growing up here. A couple of the girls talked about being stuck at a youth rally at a church in a Protestant housing estate because riots broke out throughout the neighborhood. Another one of our youth told the story of her cousin getting murdered at a bar because he was friends with a Catholic. I’ve known these kids the whole year and never knew they’ve had such terrible things happen in their lives.

We then got the youth to discuss what part they thought Christians should be playing in the conflict here. Most of them argued that working for peace was something all Christians should be doing, and you could see that for a lot of them it was something personal. They saw it as a challenge for themselves to be different, to not be divided, to get along and make friends with people who are different from them.

Throughout these weeks the kids have opened up much more than I expected and they’ve seen what part they can play in the future of Northern Ireland. A lot of them have talked about how glad they are that they live in a mixed neighborhood or go to an integrated school. I thought for many of them they would think the Troubles were before their time and don’t have an impact on their lives. Instead each one has talked about how it’s impacted their life. I know this course is for the youth and I’m supposed to be one of the people leading it, but every week I leave feeling that I’ve gotten more out of it than I possibly could have taught the youth. 

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.

For about 5 weeks before Christmas, Belfast has an international market in front of City Hall. It is full of crepes, bratwursts, and kangaroo burgers. Having a meal that isn’t centered on two to three different types of potatoes (which isn’t just a stereotype, every person here truly loves potatoes) has been an amazing treat for Christmas time. I must admit, Belfast is very nice at Christmas time. The city center is completely lit up (City Hall is amazing at night), every organization has a huge Christmas dinner, and we will be having our Christmas Eve and Christmas day services in a movie theater.

Since Whitehouse is still being repaired from the flood (it won’t be finished until March) and the owner of a chain of Movie Houses goes to Whitehouse, we won’t be in a traditional church to celebrate the birth of Jesus. The Christmas Eve service is especially important for me, because I am in charge of it. It is an actual midnight service, starting at 11:30 at night, and the cinema’s lighting and seating works great for it. Our youth group will be acting during the service as carolers. They’ve been extremely excited for it. The first night I showed them the script for Christmas Eve, they wanted to run through it over and over again. We won’t have much room for our skit (our stage is about 3 feet wide since it’s really there just for the screen) and we will have to get a lot of things ready that night, but I am really looking forward to Christmas Eve at the Movie House.

During Christmas time, the church members (especially our deaconess and elders) have been making a crazy amount of home visits these past couple of weeks. The couple of days I went out with our deaconess, I think I visited 15 different homes. It is still very difficult with some of the visits. But I am noticing now that I leave a lot of homes with my spirit lifted, especially ones I have visited a couple of times. I have really enjoyed getting to know those people better. And when I meet ones for the first time, they often talk about how much having someone from the church come means to them.

Our Girls Brigade had an indoor hockey (not ice hockey) tournament a few weeks ago. Even though I know absolutely nothing about indoor hockey, I had been working with them on hockey leading up to it, so myself and a few other officers in the Girls Brigade went to it. Our girls are incredibly good at hockey. A couple of them play on top teams in the area. So me and the other Girls Brigade officers were cheering for them as loud as we could in a small gym hall that only had about 30 people in it. I think we got more into the game then the girls did. We also may have annoyed the other teams (and the ref) as we were screaming our heads off the entire time.

The Boys Brigade went out last Thursday to play Air Soft. Air Soft is like paintball, but with just small pellets that don’t leave any paint. It is supposed to be painless, but I quickly found out that was a lie. Our team was dominating the first couple of rounds, and I usually hung out around the middle of the course behind the largest obstacle. Halfway through I jumped out behind it as the same time as one of the kids on the other team and he shot me straight in the neck from about 3 feet away. That hurt a lot. The whole night was pretty fun, though, until the last round when we were told it was every man for himself and we could change our guns from single shot to automatic. The kids on my team all promised that they were still just going to attack the other side. Stupidly, I trusted them and went near the front. Once the round began though, I was drilled with pellets from behind for a solid five minutes. I didn’t enjoy that round very much.

It is strange not being home for Christmas. I miss things like making seven layer cookies with my family and going out and getting a Christmas tree from Young’s. But hearing from a lot of my family and friends back home has helped and I have a great community here that cares for me a lot. I’m also incredibly excited for Christmas Eve to be here. I hope everyone has a great time next week. Merry Christmas. 

   Last month I gave my first sermon. It was on David dancing as the Ark of the Covenant was coming into Jerusalem. His wife gets mad at him for looking foolish and he just replies that he will be even more undignified than that. To really emphasize my point of letting go during praise, I did a small dance at the beginning of my sermon (which got less laughter or mockery than I had hoped). It was one of the most nervous things I’ve ever done.  I’m pretty sure I was shaking for the entire second half of the talk. But I got a great response from the congregation. I think they really enjoyed it and many of them came up to me to tell me that it was an important message for the church to hear.
 
The day after my sermon, we had our volunteer retreat to the Crom Estate in Fermanagh. It was a beautiful place and on our way back from it, we stopped at a Presbyterian Church in New Bliss, which is in the Republic of Ireland, marking my first time being in the actual nation of Ireland. What amazed me about stopping there was that the people there knew Whitehouse Presbyterian Church well because of the work it has done in the peace process and the fact that we host the annual Peacemaking Conference. It made me feel really special to be a part of a church that is known for its work for peace even in parts of the Republic.
   
Soon after that trip, I was able to visit Derry/Londonderry through a program called Preparing Youth to be Peacemakers I am hoping to run with our youth group in the spring. Catholics (who make up the majority of the population of the city) call the city Derry, but the government (and Loyalists) call it Londonderry. My favorite name for it is Stroke City for the stroke (or as we call it, “slash”) between Derry/Londonderry. Stroke City is actually a walled city from the 17th Century. During my trip there, we started with a tour along the massive walls that still surround the inner city.

We followed that up with by far the most interesting tour I’ve been on. The tour was called Free Derry Tours. I mistakingly thought this meant that they did not cost anything. Instead, the tour is actually a tour of the Bogside neighborhood where Bloody Sunday occurred. It was given to us by a Catholic man who was there during the protest and shootings, which led to 14 deaths. The man is still a very strong Republican, and it was a very one sided view of the event, but working in a deeply Protestant area, I hadn’t had much chance to witness any of the Catholic view on the troubles. I think until that day I thought the conflict in Northern Ireland really was people in Northern Ireland fighting people in Northern Ireland. But as our tour guide went on and on about the British government, I realized that many Catholics didn’t view it as them against Protestants who lived on the same land as them, but as them against the British government, located on a completely separate island from them. As the tour went on, Bloody Sunday reminded me more and more of the shootings at Kent State in 1970.
   
  

One of the things I get to do here in Belfast which I’ve never done before is make home visits to people who aren’t able to get out much. Most of them are older people in nursing homes or in their own apartments with family members looking after them. I was excited about doing it because I think that people need other people around them. I know how much I hate it when I’m alone for just an afternoon or evening. I can’t imagine going days or even weeks without having someone visit you.

Making home visits is honestly very trying for me. I didn’t know any of these people before visiting them and many of them don’t hear well or can’t understand much of what I am saying to them. Combining that with my natural awkwardness doesn’t make for very many long conversations. I’ve had to learn a lot of patience (which is something that, unlike awkwardness, does not come naturally to me) and look for small successes when visiting. For many of the people I visit, who have severe health problems, I feel helpless to do anything for them. But I was lucky enough to have Doreen, our church Deaconess, take me on my first home visits and introduce me to the people. She did a great job showing me how to relate to the people and find the positive behind each visit.  For many of the older ones, I’ve found that asking about their past – such as their work or their military service – helps get them talking and gives them some pride while doing so.

I’ve also been amazed by how much work some of their family members put into taking care of them. I’m normally visiting with a person for thirty minutes and, by the end of it, I am drained because it is so difficult to communicate. Most of the family members who are living with them have full time jobs, working at least 40 hours a week. Then they come home and spend the rest of their day taking care of their family member. I have no idea how anyone could have the strength to do it. They are just amazing people.

Two Fridays ago I began working in one of the local secondary schools, helping out the Religious Education teacher. I’ve loved it so far, partly because I’m not the one in charge, partly because I’m the new American who all the kids think is cool, partly because I now get to work with 60 more kids each week, but mostly because the classes are full of kids from my neighborhood who aren’t all avid churchgoers. I love my youth group. The kids in it are passionate about coming and incredibly energetic and excited when it comes to anything we do. But if I only worked with them, I would be missing out on meeting a huge percentage of youth in the community. Although most people here still identify themselves as either Protestant or Catholic, most of them don’t actually regularly practice being either. Like in the US, most youth will never be a part of a youth group. And they still need to be cared for just as much.

The first week I worked at the school, I was surprised at how open the kids were. I’m used to only superficial comments and questions, but the youth have been open about topics such as whether they go to church or not and fighting with Catholics in other parts of town. I couldn’t believe how many of them asked if I was a Christian or not. When I went to school, that would have been one of the last questions I would ask anyone. This past week I did a powerpoint presentation for them about my life and what I was doing here (it was actually the first powerpoint presentation I’ve ever done). I talked a lot about how important my college ministry group at Kent Prez meant to me and my past three summers with Youthworks. I never fully realized before the importance of having churches from any denomination working and worshipping together for a week. Everytime it came to my section on Youthworks I emphasized that both Catholic and Protestant youth worked together and that, when I worked in Davenport, it was a group of Catholic nuns that revitalized a neighborhood overrun with poverty, drugs, and crime. I don’t know how much any of it mattered to them, but as the year goes on  I’m hoping something sinks I’ve done affects the way they see their life and their community. Right now, it is just kind of nice that, since a lot of the youth live in my neighborhood, they recognize me and say hi to me when I walk by them on my street or when I ride on the same city bus as them.

One of the highlights of my year in Northern Ireland so far happened last Wednesday night while at Alpha. The group I’m in is made up of half people from Whitehouse Presbyterian Church and half people from a Catholic church in Portadown. I never thought that much about it, but about halfway through our discussion a woman interrupted with a very good point. She mentioned that when she grew up she never could have imagined something like this happening. Never would Protestants and Catholics have sat down together, especially not for a religious program like this. Others brought up their memories of walking home from school and having to take their ties off in certain neighborhoods because the tie could tell people whether you attended a Catholic or Protestant school. The discussion made me realize how special of an event I was really at.

I have to admit right now that I feel like I am being served more than I am serving others. Since this process of being a volunteer has begun I have been extremely
blessed with people caring and helping me. Those back home supporting me, praying for me, or even just sending me messages online and thinking about me, it really has meant a lot to me and has given me a lot of strength and comfort as I’ve been working over here.

And the congregation I’m serving at Whitehouse Presbyterian Church here in Belfast is constantly serving me. So far they have already taken me all over Northern Ireland to see Scrabo Tower, Cave Hill, the North Coast, and the Ulster Folk Museum. Every Sunday a different family at the church has been kind enough to have me over for a huge lunch. It is an incredibly friendly and caring congregation that is always looking for ways to make my year here better.

One amazing thing about Whitehouse is how hard people new to the church work to make it a great church. The church puts a lot of energy and resources to run a course called Alpha about twice a year. Alpha gets people from the community who don’t have a church background, don’t know what they believe, or flat out reject Christianity as completely false, and encourages them to talk about their doubts, questions, and concerns about the church. Through this course the church has gotten people to come who haven’t had anything to do with church for ten to twenty years. The people who have gone through the course don’t just attend Whitehouse, they have become a big part of the leadership of Whitehouse. We run an Alpha course on Wednesdays right now and the guy leading it, Derek, wouldn’t have had anything to do with anything church related until a few years ago when he went through the Alpha Course himself. Another guy at the church, Jonny, was called Whitehouse’s “resident atheist” for years before finally telling people earlier this year that he couldn’t run from God anymore.  Jonny now does more work for our youth group than I do.