Ireland was fantastic and I learned so much! It was the perfect start to our race. We spent the month working with Dublin Christian Mission. They are the 2nd oldest mission organization in the world at 180 years old! Dublin has a very high unemployment rate and most of the children that DCM works with come from families on social welfare, and as a result, crime, alcohol and drug abuse are also high. Most of these kids have seen more tragedy and hurt than most American adults could dream of. Even though the country is predominantly Catholic and all the public schools are Catholic, the understanding of Jesus is very vague and the idea of a relationship with Him is not grasped at all. To most people, their only understanding of church is simply lots of rules and traditions, and for a lot of people the Church is associated with a lot of hurt.
The first two weeks we spent helping out at Dublin Christian Mission (DCM) doing miscellaneous tasks. We sorted through clothing, cleaned closets, painted, and did anything else they needed. There was a lot of dirty work, but we loved it and always found a way to make it fun! When we weren’t cleaning we were helping at their homeless ministry, preparing food and serving dinner to the homeless in the evenings. They start the meals off with a mini worship service and a short Bible message and encouraged them to depend on Jesus even in their hard times. Then we’d serve dinner. I became an expert coffee and tea server! (FYI, Irish don’t like tea or coffee with milk and sugar, they like milk and sugar with SOME tea or coffee. J) I got to meet a few of their success stories during the week, which was awesome to see how far they had come and how much this ministry does for them. We really loved the Lighthouse and their staff and can’t wait to see how their upcoming expansion allows them to serve so many more people.
While we were working in the city we stayed at a hostel nearby (for those who are like me who had never heard of a hostel, it’s a really cheap hotel where you have bunk beds and share a room with like 20 other people. It’s usually used by young adults taking advantage of the lower drinking age or backpackers traveling around the world). It turned out to be a great ministry site! Our first night there, a drunk 20 year old stumbled in on our feedback session in the hammock room and we invited him in. We started telling him what we were doing and he responded “oh ok, but just so you know I’m an atheist”. We got to know this guy, let him come with us to the ministry sites and hung out with him, answered many of his questions and a few days later he asked Jesus into his life!! It was so awesome! We got the opportunity to share with several more people there during our stay (apparently 8 crazy American girls with huge backpacks and Bible meetings every night really stand out in a hostel). We spent many late nights having conversations with random strangers about God and how much Jesus loves each one of us no matter what we’ve done. We feel like we got to plant seeds in several of these guys and God will do the rest of the work later.
Our last week we spent working at one of DCM’s many summer camps. We had the Junior girls camp which was girls ages 7-10 years old. This was probably our most challenging, yet most rewarding week. We actually had to camp in large tents with the girls (it was about 40-45 degrees at night) and had them for the whole week. I'll admit, I've never been been so unenthusiastic about being around kids as I was this week. My sweet grandmother passed away 3 days before camp, and while my family was back home dealing with the funeral I was trying to get excited about sleeping in the freezing cold tent with a bunch of unruly children. Then on top of that I got a pretty bad cold, so I was feeling miserable and was really struggling on getting my heart and energy into this camp when I really would have preferred being at home with my family. But with God's strength I managed to keep going and He showed up big time and showed me how much He wants me on this race. And it helped to know that now my wonderful, patient grandmother could now watch me this year and I could put into practice so much of what she’s taught me. It ended up being a pretty fabulous week full of good memories and good friends.
Our team and the other leaders and volunteers had to go up to the camp the day before to set up and prepare for the girls’ arrival. Our team decided to go around and pray over all the tents before they arrived and invite God’s presence in and cast Satan’s influence out. What’s awesome is that by the end of the week, half the girls had asked Jesus into their lives and all of them asked for Bibles! They said they’ve never seen anything like it at camp! We also had the opportunity to pray with the girls’ individually over different things and it was awesome to see how God shows his love to these little children. Like the first night, one of the girls was terrified of the wind (which was shaking the tents violently and had kept me awake the night before), Megan prayed with her, and there was no more wind that night, or the rest of the week! The second night, I noticed a little girl standing in the corner not participating in the activities and looking about to burst into tears. I went over and hugged her and after some time got her to talk to me and what was bothering her was that there were spiders in her tent and she was too scared to go to bed. So to ease her mind I sprayed regular bug spray around her tent and then prayed with her. She instantly relaxed and went to bed with no problem. The next morning I asked her how she slept and she glowed and said “GREAT!! There were no spiders!!” That night and every night after she came and asked me to pray with her and she never had problems again! Spiders and slugs were everywhere normally and I know that there is no way that spraying that cheap mosquito spray around once did that, so it was all God! It broke my heart because the last night I prayed with her I mentioned something about going home the next day and she seemed disappointed. It turns out her family life is really bad and it broke my heart to see a kid sad to go home. I continue to pray for her that she is taken care of and that she continues to seek the Lord for comfort and strength.
What I've learned from our month in Ireland is how much God is in every moment. I learned how he provides so many little opportunities to touch someone’s life and advance His kingdom and all I am supposed to do is seize those moments and do my small part to share his love. It may not always make sense to me, and it may not always seem important, and it may not always be convenient, but if I do my part he will take care of the rest when the time is right. From praying with a taxi driver, to staying up really late to talk to some random person in your hostel who wants to know why you would give up your life to go around the world helping others, to praying with little girls at camp for the scary wind not to blow or spiders not to crawl in their tent, to talking to people on the street who are curious to why you are carrying a huge, heavy backpack. God just wants me to do my part, to show his love and spread his message every chance I get. So Here am I Lord, all of me, take my life, it’s all for Thee!
Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power, that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen. Ephesians 3:20
