Milo’s Here??? Milo’s Here!!

It truly is a small world when a friend from high school comes with a team from Anchor Church in Tennessee…to Northern Ireland! Seeing Milo was the biggest shock I’d gotten in a long time.

I walk in to breakfast a little bleary eyed from having just woken up. I do my usual thing, grab some juice I’d bought, make my way over to the dining hall, stake out a spot at one of the tables and go to make my cereal; fruit and fiber mixed with granola and raisins. Then, I look up to see three new people eating breakfast. I knew they would be here because Renee and Mikael (my school leaders) said that there would be a group of six helping out with some local outreaches. They are from Tennessee, he’d said. I was just excited to have people who would be here who are from the east coast. But, when I look up and take notice of three of the new faces, one of them, was not so new. The more I stared at him, the more he started to look more and more familiar. He stared back at me as well. We had this staring contest for what seemed like hours. I opened my mouth to say nothing particularly intelligent due to shock, and he finally said “YES” very dramatically. It was Milo. From high school. Milo is part of the leadership group who has come to help out with some local community projects. It was the weirdest thing. It turns out, that he wants to be a Pastor and he joined a leadership school whose leader takes trips to my school in Northern Ireland a lot. What are the chances of that???

I don’t know, but it’s really cool. Milo thought so too.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

(These are a couple of the lucky ones who made it to Dublin for St. Patrick’s Day.)

St. Patrick’s Day Belfast was very festive. Many spent much of their time celebrating in pubs watching the big European football(soccer) game. There was also a parade in the town where St. Patrick is actually buried. I hear the festivities in Dublin was pretty exciting; some of the students had gone there, and then came back without any voices from all the celebrating! The fields here are incredibly green to begin with, and add that to the green decorations of the holiday made it for quite a green day!

There was also a local Barn Dance where much of the community of Closkelt came to. Because I am singing in the choir at a church down the road, plus helping out at Girl’s Brigade, I was surprised by how many people I knew at the Barn Dance. That just made it all the more fun! I never new square dancing could be so engaging as I found myself being swung around by farmers, grinning elderly ladies, and doing do-se-does with an adorable little boy looking very bewildered because he had lost his original partner. The children were very amiable dancers when they weren’t also busy finding great delight in throwing hay onto people’s heads.

Belfast: the Divided City

(Me and my bed)

I’d wake up and go to bed each day with the sounds of people talking. I found myself crammed in an area that begged to be a closet – I thought that’s what it was when I passed by it, looking for my room. Little did I know that this cozy closet-like space with four beds crammed inside would be my home sweet home in Belfast for four days. My school and I would be helping out with some local field assignments scheduled by the U of N.

(This is one of the few murals that speak of peace. It is actually painted on the Peace Wall itself.)

I saw for myself the murals everywhere that spoke of violence and anger between Protestants and Catholics. The Protestants feel that Ireland should belong to Britain and the United Kingdom, whereas the Catholics want to be a country all of there own. As a result and because of many other smaller factors, Ireland has virtually been split in two, where bitterness, violence, and paramilitary acts of terror have occurred. There is now what is called the “Peace Wall” that has been erected to help control the amount of violence and vandalism. To me, it is actually a wall of division that now more vividly symbolizes the bitterness felt in the hearts of the people. It’s looming, ugly walls of cold metal and wire serves as a reminder to people everyday of the differences that have caused so much bloodshed and heartache. I can’t imagine this place being my home, having to live either on one side or the other. I have spoken with a few who do live in Belfast and most of them are tired of the bitterness and fighting. People are wanting to work together to create a better future, but it is still very hard when religious traditions are so influential and so many family and friends have been hurt or died. But slowly things are improving. Money that used to be spent for means involving violence is now used to expand the city; construction is evolving all over the place into new buildings and apartments.

(We’re scraping the moss from the pavement with endless buckets of bleach water. It started to rain which actually helped a little. This is to be a play area forthe kids at a church.)

While my school and I were in Belfast, we joined up with some other Belfast students and staff and participated in various community projects throughout the city. This involved cleaning gardens, scraping off moss into bags, painting fences, walls and a mural. We did these things in places such as local churches and schools, both Catholic and Protestant. The idea was for us to show God’s love in an active way; instead of simply telling people about the gospel, we showed it. We wanted to help people want to take care of their city and to help bring a little beauty to it. The hard labor was also a break from our normal routines of sitting in lectures day after day. It was so satisfying to start a project, and then see the visible difference at the end of the day when we finished, also knowing that it would provide safer places for children to play, and more beautiful gardens to be enjoyed.

(This is a mural that one team painted for a local school.)

“A man can do nothing better than to eat and drink and find satisfaction in his work. This too, I see, is from the hand of God, for without him, who can eat or find enjoyment”(Ecclesiastics 2:24)?

Think of Me, and Look at the Sky

 

God is like the sky
Not as much in the day as He is at night.
Dark and mysterious, broad and wide
Is His countenance, this starlit humbling sky.

 

I suppose as well, He could be like the blue of day
But not today is His twilight array.
Not when my head spins all the time
Save when the moments I look at the sky.

 

I remember who I am and who I am to be
By looking at the sky and thinking of He
Who made it all, who even formed the tiny details of me.

 

God is not like a fence or wall, that bares the way;
Not like what we call peace
It’s really a division of corrupted play.

 

God is like the plants and and beasts and birds
He delights in simple things that find hope
In big things like beauty, love and sleep,
But burns inside for what we would count as high.

 

He is like a fire, the blue, red and orange,
Blazing like a furnace but not burning,
Just perfecting and correcting
And the blaze becomes like coals of glowing.

 

You can’t tear your eyes from Him
The light is all there is on this dark dark night
Consuming, but never using
The darkness to feed His light.

 

God is like an ocean,
Growing in waves mighty and small
It’s span cries out for the world of loss
In its tornadoes hurricanes, tsunamis and all

 

God is expressed like hands
In motion creating such wonders
That a million words could not describe
And describe it all again.

 

God is formed in the movement of a body
Slow and steady, weak and heavy
Light and graceful, meek or old
Unsteady and broken, trained and low.

 

God is not merely all of these
But He is so much more that these
He’s beyond the breadth of a million babies breathing their first,
and an eternity of deaths wishing their last.

 

God is the the One who is displayed in His painting
The One with the things like faith hope and love
You now the one,
where the sky rains drops of glass in the sun
Where the flowers bloom colors and tears every morn
Crying out with happiness for another blessed day
Where oceans surround us with ruptured life
Where the fall is like a canvas display
Too intricate to be seen from far away.

 

The painting reflects who the painter is
In every stroke is another breadth -
He’s not done creating, He’s not done painting.
We are still breathing His portrait alive.

 

And with every stroke He never gives up
So when at night we cry
When broken dreams grow dull pains inside
God says think of Me, and look at the sky.

(by Erica Pisarchuk)

 

The Sound of BagPipes Resonate Across the Green Hills of Closkelt

The sound really could be heard miles away. That’s how loud the bagpipes were. Me and another student from my DTS went to a Highland Concert at a small church in Closkelt, but the resonating sound of a multitude of bagpipes playing in unison was hardly anything but quiet. I can still almost feel the sound of them vibrating in my ears. It was quite a cultural experience to say the least. I was excited to go not only because I knew some of the girl’s from the Girl’s Brigade who would be dancing in the concert, but also because of the unique music. The girl’s I knew were so excited that I had come to watch them. The audience was packed and I took a ton of pictures. There was one incredibly amazing bagpipe soloist that nearly blew so much and so fast that his face practically turned the color of his skirt. It was pretty amazing.

See the video below to hear his song: