Hi Everyone, sorry this blog comes late, we have been at
Coleraine, which is 4 hours north of Dublin, for a week now and I’ve been
taking some time to digest everything in the past couple weeks; from leaving
home, to an intense launch week, to living in constant community with 30 other
squad mates and ministering in different areas, to absorbing the sights and
culture of Ireland. Just want to share with
you what we’ve been doing and what’s in my heart while processing.
Ministry Life:
We’ve been working with the Causeway Coast Vineyard church
and working in different ministries. In
the mornings, we are helping to run a day camp for kids age 4 to 11. The kids are a breath of fresh air and they
are finding as much amusement in our North American accents as we are in their
Irish one. Today 6 kids who didn’t know
Jesus, asked for us to pray for them to know Him personally. In the afternoons, we have been doing outreach
ministries to the community which included asking local businesses if we can clean
their toilets, handing out lightbulbs and picking up litter on the streets of
the city. At first, I wasn’t sure what would
be the bigger challenge – walking up the street and going into each store
asking the shop owner if we can clean their toilets, or the actual cleaning of
toilets. By the end of the first afternoon, after many rejections for free toilet
cleaning with some pretty creative excuses (Insurance reasons, they have
contracted out to cleaning companies and cannot accept any other service from
others), I found myself less and less apprehensive approaching store owners to
ask them if we could clean their toilets. . When they gave us funny looks, we
just said, “it’s free, no strings attached, we just want to bless you”. Sure we
got stared at, I would too if I saw a few people holding buckets and sponges with rubber gloves on, on
Yonge street walking into each store. Even if one store owner remembers our simple
gesture of kindness or questions why we did it, it was worth it.
We also visited a seniors home and sang and chatted with
them and today we walked around a low income neighbourhood handing out energy
efficient light bulbs. Next week, we will be picking up garbage off
the streets. For a beautiful city, it’s unfortunate that litter is everywhere.
Not as bad as what you may think in third world countries but definitely
unexpected for a first world country. This
morning we went with the Vineyard Healing team and watch them do their healing
ministry. It was healing that I had
never seen before. Stay tuned for my
next blog about Healing.
Community Life:
and prophetic words for each other. We lived at a campsite
our entire squad. We are now living in a
complex very similar to dorm style living. There are 4 teams here for a total
of 28 people living together. It’s clean
and spacious, we have electricity, a shower and a bed – 3 luxuries we weren’t
expecting to receive all at once. Even
our squad leaders tell us it is the best accommodations they have seen. We are indeed blessed.
individuals who realistically, still barely know each other is at its formative
stage. As excited as we all are to live and grow together as a community, the
reality is that we are all still adjusting to have just given up a lot of our
personal space and comfort to be living in this community. We have certainly gotten to know each other
at an accelerated rate and I am excited to know my teammates at a deeper level.
Living in community is HARD work!! Maybe
it is less of a challenge for the more extroverted squad mates, but it
definitely is stretching this little introvert who is all about confining
herself to her circle of comforts before the Race. Living in community is about being symbiotically
intentional to be relational even in the midst of deprived personal space and
comfort. I believe that the community as
it was in Acts2 can be achieved but it is not as easy as I thought it would be,
even here in the World Race. I previously presumed that it was an easy task
given that we are all believers, but we are all flawed humans with different
dynamics. I certainly appreciate now how
difficult it can be to live out true community when we are at home. Everyone will default to their comforts at
their tolerance threshold, which will take away from building that community
up. I’m thankful that we are in a
situation to persevere through our thresholds, in order to build up our teams. I
do desire that community for Joholo but we are not there yet, but that is not
to say that we will not get there. Joholo
is in our ‘honeymoon’ stages of being a team and we are learning each other’s
dynamics and how that fits into the team, but we are still working on personal
connections. But for 7 strangers to come live together 24/7 in peace and harmony
speaks volumes of our common focus and I am excited to see how Joholo will move
into a Norming stage as each of us find our niche to the group and solidify our community.
