Actively Waiting

I have gradually been introduced in the past two weeks to the staff and programs of Dundonald Methodist Church, and am still discovering my role and place in the community that I have been place. On a weekly basis I am in and out of the church for a variety of youth and fellowship activities that include not only the members of the church, but also the surrounding community. On any Monday or Thursday afternoon I am busy helping to coordinate the PAKT (Parents and Kids Together) program. The program is primarily geared for children from the community between the ages of 4 and 10. It offers a drop-in half hour of table games and homework time, and then an hour of gym games, crafts and cooking classes. Nearly 35 children participate in the program. Monday nights I help assist John, Dundonald's associate pastor, with the PAKT+ program geared for community children ages 11-14. On a typical evening John and I take the kids on outings in the community and invite them into the church to play football (soccer here) and to play games and do crafts. (In the next few weeks we plan to take them swimming at a local club - I'm super excited about this!) Wednesdays I assist Heather Woods, Dundonald's family worker with the Sticky Fingers program, which is geared for young (often single) mothers and their toddlers. The program provides an opportunity for the mothers to socialize and to bring their children to a safe playing ground in the community. I find myself interfacing with the mothers, asking them about their weeks, and, of course, playing with the kids (they are precious!). We also serve the mothers and their children toast, juice, coffee and tea which makes the visiting time extra special. Wednesday afternoons I help to coordinate Kidz Klub, an afterschool program geared toward 4-10 year-old children which provides table games, crafts and gym games. This program serves as a recreational alternative for community children. Belfast is a city with very few recreational spaces and facilities, and the churches are opening their doors as a playing venue to keep the kids out of the streets and out of trouble. Wednesday and Thursday nights I help assist with the Guides (the equivalent of Girl Scouts) and Scouts (the equivalent of Boy Scouts). Both groups are filled with kids from around the community, and from the planning meetings I sat in over the past week, I have the feeling that I will be going lots of places and doing lots with both groups this year. Sundays are comprised mainly of church-related activities. I lead a Bible class for 11-14 year-olds in the morning, and assist with Youth Fellowship (for 11-18 year olds) on Sunday evening. And, somewhere in the interim I do a bit of admin work in the church office. So, I am anything but bored, and am feeling very welcomed by the church family at Dundonald. I cannot begin to count the number of people who have asked me for Sunday lunch or who have invited me to their home to welcome me to Belfast. It is truly amazing the amount of welcome I have received. David Campton (the minister) and Sally (his wife and community coordinator) have been wonderful in helping me to get acquainted with the church and the programs, and I've enjoyed, among other things getting to know them and their two children Cairan and Owain (whom I have "child-minded" on two occasions and thoroughly enjoyed). All in all, I've found that my first two full weeks in Dundonald have been predominantly comprised of waiting. I've been waiting for these programs to start, waiting to find out what my role is in each of the programs, waiting to get to know and develop relationships with the kids. Waiting, however, I've found can be active. Waiting, I think is one of the hardest things for any one to do. As an American I am inclined to thing that if I'm not constantly moving and doing something then I am somehow inefficient or out of place. My greatest challenge over the past two weeks has been responding to that cultural train of thought. Somewhere in the midst of clearing out game closets and putting together bulletin boards for the many community programs that Dundonald runs weekly, I found myself thinking about waiting and what it entails. As I was stapling and cutting and clearing I realized that in many ways waiting is about preparation, quite like the preparation that I was doing for the upcoming community programs. As preparation, waiting is really anything but stagnant. Waiting , rather, becomes a response to the knowledge that God is continually molding and actively shaping us into the people we are to become for Him. Understanding that God is moving in every second, minute and hour in our lives with compassionate grace, we realize that the "waiting time," or so we dub it, is anything but insufficient or unproductive. Waiting provides us moments to listen deeply, to look critically, and to love more fully on those around us. It is precious time embodied in alphabet bulletin letters and Monopoly pieces. Psalm 130:5-6 - I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I put my hope. My soul waits for the Lord, more than watchmen wait for the morning, more than watchmen wait for the morning.

Belfast Beginnings

I'm here! At last! After a week of an amazing orientation in Louisville, Kentucky, we arrived in Belfast, jet-lagged but ExTrEmElY excited! There are eight of us YAVs working in Belfast this year. Alex Creager from Ohio, Joel Pier-Fitzgerald from Michigan, Emily Wilson from Ohio, Jessica and Kevin Crossan from Pennsylvania, Megan Buff from Washington, Elizabeth Cluff (my housemate) from Texas, and myself make up the team. Elizabeth and I live in Dundonald, a district in East Belfast, a predominantly loyalist section of the city. We have a very spacious apartment, and are already getting to know our neighbors - many of whom consist of single mothers with children. Alex and Joel live in North Belfast not far from Kevin and Jessica. Megan and Emily are in Lambeg more towards the West side of Belfast. The past two days here have been full of rain, but also full of Doug-Baker-led orientation. Doug (our site coordinator) has had us up and moving about and has done a terrific job of introducing us to the city. Each day he has taken all of us to our placement sites to meet our supervisors and to witness the extent of the church's response to the underlying hostilities and past violence of the Troubles. Cross-community work is key to the peace-process. Not only does it involve bringing Catholics and Protestants together in a variety of environments, it also stresses relationship-building among its workers. The church has an evangelical role, but rather than focusing solely on the need to convert non-believers, cross-community work emphasizes relationship-building as key to developing opportunities for sharing the Gospel, but most importantly for sharing the love of community that God calls us into. Doug put it this way to us: Jesus said "Go therefore and make disciples." He didn't say believers. Disciples are those who seek to continually grow in Christ and who seek to imitate Christ's commands. The greatest commandment is found in Matthew when Jesus is questioned by a Pharisee and states that the Pharisee should: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and all your soul, and all your mind, and love your neighbor as yourself." Essentially, our greatest commandment as disciples of Christ is to love God, and in a reflection of that love and understanding of grace to love others so that we might live in the community that God has called us into. In the Good Samaritan story that follows, Jesus breaks down the walls of politics, ethnicity, race, and just about any other human categorization to suggest that our neighbor is anyone and everyone. I've discovered in the past couple of days, that the tension underneath many Northern-Irelanders revolves around a question of identity. There are physical (wired fence) boundaries that haunt the streets -markers of the deliberate separation of Catholics and Protestants. There is constant talk about Nationalists and Unionists, Loyalists and Republicans. And one cannot help but notice the giant murals of paramilitary groups hovering over the city streets. I learned in our tour of different community centers today that a good majority of the lower socioeconomic sections of the city face high suicide rates, teenage pregnancies and drug and alcohol abuse. This stems in a large part from low self-esteem, again, a factor of a blurred identity. A lot of the problems are by-products of paramilitary violence as well. Single mothers are often in their situations because fathers have not returned from prison for the violent crimes they have committed to prove their allegiance. Youth turn to alcohol and drugs as a means to alleviate their misunderstandings of themselves. But again, the work that is going on here is phenomenal. There are so many people that are living for the community. They are sacrificing their time, energy and financial security all for the sake of Christ. I hope that in the weeks ahead to begin developing relationships with the Irish people that will open my eyes to my own identity in Christ and how God is alive and working here.