A Long Journey Home

                As I said I would do I have typed up a full blog on the last few weeks before coming home and leaving the beautiful Green Isle. Here is the full adventure of our 2^nd to last week in the Village.

                Life in the village has been fun, and full of adventures. We have continued to learn the meaning of growth through challenges and the strength and unity that the growth brings for us as a team. God works in such amazing ways and we can truly see how we have grown since the beginning of the year. We started this week by going to all three weekend masses to hand out our Christmas Newsletter that Marie so graciously put together. The Newsletter came out very well and gave a very good summary of what we are doing and what we will be doing over the next few months. After the last mass on Sunday we headed home for some music practice. Our attempt to learn all 200 and some songs in the song book is going pretty well but it does actually require us to learn songs, which thus requires music practice. The next few hours of the day then was spent hanging out with a local young adult who just finished school to become a teacher. She is super nice and we really hope to hang out with her more in the second half of the year, she wants to take us to a pub, but she doesn’t even drink haha. After some dinner and Junior youth group named Awake we had a team meeting that was very good but went until nearly half twelve. We then went to bed for our day off the next day.

                Our day off was nice, spent basically just chilling around the house like normal, but we had a meeting with the parents group instead of a full day off which was a little sad not gonna lie. But the even sadder thing was that only two parents showed up so really no planning was able to get accomplished like we had hoped. Thus the life of a youth minister, you must learn to just go with the flow. The week carried on like normal, with the normal Tuesday routine of breakfast, personal prayer, mass, Team Service time/team leader meeting with Fr. Seamus, and etc. The one cool thing about this week was Marie and Rebecca did team prayer for the first time!!!! So Tuesday Marie led us in prayer and did a kick butt jobJ. That night the power went off right as we began to eat dinner at quarter past five and stayed off till nearly half seven. Which was an adventure not only for us but also our weekly Jam session still went on half of it in the dark. Again we as a team keep being taught how to role with the punches.

                That night we played some Team Sport which consisted of a new revised version of NERF gun capture the flag and we really enjoyed ourselves. Before heading to bed we made the decision to open our Christmas Crackers, like poppers that have prizes inside. We were opening them and teasing each other until I decided to steal everybody’s paper crowns. I went up to Rebecca and stole her crown, and she got really mad and began to chase me. As I ran up the stairs, one of those situations that could never be repeated even if you tried happened. Rebecca was chasing me up the stairs as her cross around her neck flew up and hit her in the mouth, followed by her had reaching to see what happened, all this happening in a split second while running up stairs. Which while she was reaching up to her mouth my foot came and hit Rebecca’s hand, which then hit the cross, which then hit her tooth and drum roll please . . . . broke her front tooth in half. I felt so bad and Rebecca was so sad at first and didn’t talk to him until the next day. This will always be one of those memories that we as a team will remember forever and will laugh about when we are all old. But we laughed about it the next day too, and yes she is getting it fixed over Christmas break.

                The rest of the week was rather uneventful, just another week of ministry and such. This week we had the normal planning plus our Mid-Year Report to compile. Our Mid-Year Report is a very organized official document showing what we have been up to the last four months; it is really useful to other teams, and to anybody who asks, “What did the NET Team do all year?” So that was fun and a lot of work but we finished it on time and the final copy was organized and compiled by me, Woot! We did have a girl from our youth group and her mom over for tea and biscuits on Wednesday which was actually quite a bit of fun. Our youth group that week was very good and really nice to just spend our second to last youth night with the amazing youth we have. Marie also led for the first time which was cool because after that night Rebecca is the only one who hasn’t led a youth event. On Friday we did a school visit and the other was cancelled and then had a very long and nice Hood time. The girls went into town for a movie and dessert, while Tim and I stayed back and made chocolate chip cookies, drank a hard cider, and watched two movies, Taking of Pelham 123 and The Matrix II. Both of those movies are really good, Tim and I really like movies that make you think and each time I watch the Matrix I like it better.

                Saturday was Tim and My day of Total Consecration to Mary according to St. Louis De Montfort, so we all went to mass and made our consecration. We then came back for some spring planning and lunch. After lunch we began team time, which was supposed to be Ice Skating but because a few of us can’t really Ice Skate we went with plan B. We drove to Blanchard’s Town right outside of Dublin and did Secret Santa shopping and dinner all together. It was really nice just to honor each other with gifts and just spending a nicer dinner together. Over all a very good week and it all hit us that just one more week and we are done with our first half of NET!

                The last week in the village was not very eventful other than our Supervisor Kristen, the Director of NET Ireland Tony Foy, and another member of staff Gareth McNulty came and stayed the night with us Monday after we did Christmas shopping. It was a very late notice visit but a lot of fun and really nice to see them. The rest of the week was pretty uneventful we just all were looking forward to Christmas Retreat and going home so it was hard to stay focused on the mission but we did our best.  Our Christmas Party with our youth group went very well and was rather sad to say goodbye for Christmas Break. Saturday before leaving for Christmas Retreat was spring cleaning which was not really fun but was much needed, and it left our house looking beautiful.

                Christmas Retreat was amazing! It was so nice to be back with everybody, and to have a weekend focused on having fun and preparing us to go on Christmas Break. We spent the end of Saturday and part of Sunday with the Youth 2000 retreat which was awesome to be with this Catholic Organization that focuses so much on the Eucharist and has adoration during every talk and major presentation the whole weekend. We also had a White Elephant Gift Exchange, a dance party, a replay of live Modern Warfare, which is basically capture the flag with shooting each other with pretend guns formed out of our hands… sounds dumb but is a blast. I truly loved being back with everybody and I left feeling so filled up and ready for Christmas Break.  

                I then woke up bright and early Tuesday morning the 18^th to begin my journey home. We left the retreat center at 7:15 and arrived at the Airport around 8:10, which then was followed by lots of waiting, waiting to check-in, waiting to go through security, waiting to go through customs, and waiting to board. The flight over the ocean was not too bad, long and hard because I didn’t want to sleep, to adjust to the new time zone as quick as possible. Also our flight attendants were not the friendliest which was sad for me because they were so nice on the way to Ireland. But overall not bad traveling long for sure but worth it to see my family! Merry Christmas to you all, and I hope you keep praying for me even though I am home. Also have a great Christmas and enjoy the time with family or where ever you are. Most of all remember why we have Christmas, and remember what we are celebrating!

Christmas Break!

Well guys here it is, last stretch for this part of the year, in 5 days i will be home with my family and back in the United States! I am very excited and really looking forward to all the fun I will have back home over Christmas break but I am honestly looking forward to coming back too and all the ministry we have planned in the spring! I love my team, and am really enjoying all the growth and challenges that God is facing me with. I will have a better post in a few days  about the last few weeks and my flight home but I wanted to let you know how appreciative I am of the support and help you are all giving in prayers and those that did support me financially this year. I was asked to write a entry for the Christmas Newsletter that NET Ireland is doing this year and I wanted to share it with all of you, in case you don't get a copy of the Newsletter. So enjoy and be waiting for a true update in a few days!

Christmas Newsletter:

                Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!  I hope all of you will be enjoying the Advent season and preparing yourselves for Christmas. I am really enjoying the work my team is doing and the awesome experiences we have had this far. I have been very busy and had a lot of fun, or as the Irish would say I have had some mighty craic. Team life is an amazing experience; we are five random individuals that come together to form a team that is given the mission to be witnesses of God’s message and love. We have had some great adventures this far; one of those was when we went to the ruins of Fore Abbey. Fore Abbey is an ancient Benedictine monastery founded in the 11^th century. We spent an afternoon exploring, taking pictures, and climbing on the ruins. We really just soaked in the views and environment that is Ireland. I have grown so much this year and can just see more and more chances for me to grow and for me to be shaped into, as Matthew Kelly says, “the best version of myself”. On NET we also commit to giving an hour of our day to personal prayer. This time has been very good for me and helped me develop my relationship with Jesus. Scripture has been a huge part of that growth; lately I have been reading Sirach which is full of wisdom and advice. This particular verse has stuck in my mind since I have read it; “Accept whatever happens to you. Even if you suffer humiliation, be patient. Gold is tested by fire, and human character is tested in the furnace of humiliation. Trust the Lord, and he will help you. Walk straight in his ways, and put your hope in him” Sirach 2: 4-6.

 Since being on NET I have learned a lot and seen God’s work in so many hearts; my favorite experience this far is when a man stopped by our house and talked with us for over an hour about faith and his life experiences. He was raised Catholic, but because of hardships in his family he fell away from faith, and ran away from home. He suffered many hardships but now is developing a relationship with Jesus, and wants to learn to read so he can read the Bible, and wants to go to school to be a counselor to help people like he was helped. I was so touched by his story and his courage to come into our house and share all this with us. He told us that when we waved at him a few days before he knew we were doing something good, and wanted to see what we were on about. It was a very powerful afternoon.

Hope you all are enjoying this Christmas season.

May the road rise up to meet you! God bless, you are all in my prayers!

Benjamin Record

 

This is a picture of my team jumping on one of the many hills at the Hill of Tara. On the left side is Amy, Me, Tim, Rebecca, and Marie. We had a lot of fun that day.

Fighting the good fight, and keeping the pace!

            Life has been good in the Village and we have been very busy, which is becoming more and more the norm. On November 18^th (Sunday), all the NET Ireland teams got together and celebrated the first annual NET Thanksgiving of Ireland. We, the Delvin team, had not really seen any of the other teams since we left from training so we were all so excited and just couldn’t wait to hang out with everyone we missed dearly. We arrived that morning with 2 apple crisps, that Rebecca and I made, and a salad, minus the dressing, to share with everyone else. We were the last team to arrive, so it’s true save the best for last, haha just kiddingJ. So we spent a good part of the morning just talking and hanging out with our very much missed friends. There was sooo much food, it was a glorious sight to see all of the desserts and side dishes just sitting there waiting to be eaten. The main course sadly was not turkey but P.J. Ross, the team leader of the Adventure Retreat team, was cooking up a copious amount of barbeque chicken for us to eat. After gorging ourselves, we continued to hang out in various rooms of the house, listening to crazy stories of both recent and past adventures. The best was hearing all the pranks Josh Hagert did as a young lad. The day was the definition of pure class I have to admit, and I was so happy it worked out to see all the teams. Before we told to head out our separate ways, we had a very powerful praise and worship session. Mark our supervisor played guitar and lead the time of prayer, while we all kneeled in front of the Blessed Sacrament, Jesus Christ in the true presence of the Eucharist. After about an hour of singing and praising God, we got up hugged everyone and left feeling so filled up and on fire once again. I have found out how much hugs mean to me and it was so nice to get so many hugs that day, I felt truly loved.

            That evening after arriving back home we quickly got ready and left for our first night of Awake youth group, the new junior youth group. We were all prepared and ready for Crazy Olympics, but only one youth showed up. We had a good night hanging out with her and prayed that the next week more would show up. Since we had not had dinner we ate Chinese food from the local take away. It was over all a great day, we all enjoyed seeing the other teams and truly love all of them.

            Monday, which is normally our day off, was not our day-off because Fr. Seamus asked us to go to a meeting that night so we decided to post-pone our day off till the coming Saturday. We did our weekly cleaning and shopping on that day, and did some preparation for that week’s coming youth nights. It was a good day but very weird not having our day off like normal. The meeting that night was not anything like we thought it would be, it was a presentation about another Christian youth ministry organization called Scripture Union. They do a lot of retreats for youth in Ireland focusing more on relating the scripture to youth with outdoor activities. It was a pleasure to make another contact with people doing work like NET is doing. We really hope to do some kind of work with them in the future.

            Tuesday was another day that was full of prep and planning for the coming youth nights. We had a good day but the best part was by far our jam session, and hanging out with youth. The jam session this week was more organized for the final prep for youth mass the coming Sunday, but it is so cool to just see all these talented musicians play away. We have a few youth that stay every youth night till like ten just hanging out laughing and about anything and everything. They are some of our favorite youth in our youth group; I will miss them when we leave for Christmas break.

            Wednesday was busy, we did drama practice in the morning lots of prep but then had a nice relaxing lunch and hang out time in our hoods as we call it, guys and girl time. We had some good chicken strips and fries for lunch, and watched movies. Tim and I watched The Italian Job which is one of my favorites and Tim had never seen it. That night we had a really good youth group with the Clonmellon youth and sadly it is coming to an end for this part of the year. Thursday was pretty normal with preparations for that night’s youth group and we went to Saint Patrick’s primary school doing a session on Mary the Mother of God. The youth group that night was a lot of fun with the youth acting out the story of Samson. We also played one of our new favorite games, Newspaper Hockey, with them and even had a show down between two youth which was very fun to watch.  Friday was a good morning with a sleep in and a school visit to Saint Tolas primary school. That afternoon was Team Time! We all hung out together making CDs of our favorite music to share with each other during car rides and we had a Nerf gun battle which sadly Tim and I lostL. Then got some food and watched some Chuck it was a great week over all, we earned our day off. The next day being Saturday, like I said was our day off, we pretty much just all hung out and did our own things that night watching some more Chuck. I cooked some steak from the butchers and had a very yummy dinner, with mashed potatoes and gravy included. It was a good day off.

            Life has been good since that week keeping busy and really enjoying my time on NET, the youth are such a gift to watch and I can see myself growing and being challenged by the ministry we do. I got my first hair cut in Ireland on the Monday following that week and it turned out very nice. I just buzzed it all off, which is colder but so much nicer in the morning. We have seen some more of Ireland this month including a place called Hill of Tara which is a gorgeous hill that was the place where the high kings of Ireland used to meet in the 4^th and 5^th centuries. On the hill you can see supposedly ¼ of Ireland because everything is so flat surrounding it. Truly gorgeous, I do have pictures up of it on my Facebook. We also went to Galway this last Saturday and walked around the town, going to markets and shops beginning to buy our Christmas gifts for the family back home. Galway is where the Claddagh rings originated in Ireland Rebecca, Tim and I bought one because we all think they are so cool. If you don’t know what they are, look them up, they are very beautiful. The cathedral in Galway is beautiful I took lots of pictures which will be up on Facebook eventually. I am excited to come home and I do miss my family, but honestly Ireland is an amazing place and I am so glad I am here doing the work I am doing.

           

Keeping busy, Ministry is Pure Class

                Well the first few weeks of being in the Village and complaining about not being very busy, have brought us to this week. We had three youth nights, went and visited two schools and spent hours planning and preparing for each one. Our ministry is different than the road team in the way we don’t put on retreats every day, but we are doing just as much work but in different ways. All of our youth nights so far have been pretty much our idea, meaning we had to come up with all the resources we used and such. Lots of work but so worth seeing the effect it has on the youth and those we encounter.

                This week started nice and early on a beautiful Irish Sunday, we woke up had a nice breakfast, and then headed to Clonmellon. This weekend we were speaking at the masses in Clonmellon about the youth nights we were going to have over the month of November in their town. We had Saturday mass down but still had the two Sunday masses. Before mass Tim, Amy, and Becca downed a cup of tea, while I sat back and smiled, I hate tea. It was a good morning but after we got back we were all feeling pretty tired. That afternoon we were asked to go to a Soccer Awards ceremony in the Village. We were told that a bunch of youth from Clonmellon would be there and it would be a good chance to meet them and get them to come to the youth group. Amy and Marie were not feeling very good or up to the adventure so Tim, Becca, and I went to it. We walked in and it was very awkward, it was at a pub and there was a bunch of parents drinking with a ton of youth and other people we had never met. The person we were supposed to meet was not in sight so we went and stood in the corner for like 10 minutes. After a bit she came over and directed us to the youth she wanted us to meet. We had some good craic after that, and we got excited to start the youth group on Wednesday. To finish off the evening we went to Olive Powers for dinner to watch the Eucharistic Congress final mass, she had recorded it from last year. Since Amy still wasn’t feeling up to it she stayed home and Olive came to pick us up. The evening consisted of watching American T.V. shows, The X-Factor, Friends, America’s Got Talent, Pizza, Pop, and even a glass of wine. We began to watch the Eucharistic Congress the last hour we were there and we fast-forwarded a lot of it. It was really nice to relax and spend time hanging out with Olive, she has become like a grandma to us all.

                The next day was our day off like always and it was very nice to just relax, and catch up on our families and everything back home. Tim and Becca were supposed to be picked up to go to a prayer meeting with some older ladies from the parish but they never came. Other than that it was a pretty uneventful day. Tuesday was another early morning but we are slowly getting more used to it. Joe Tynan the Chaplin for Athboy secondary school stopped by our house with Fr. Seamus. He wanted to meet us and talk about setting up a time for us to go to his school. We really enjoyed meeting him and we are looking forward to getting in to his school. To end the day we had a Jam Session with the musical youth of our youth group, that basically means most of them so many are talented. We had a good night and got to get to know Shannon and Zach a lot better, Zach stayed till 10 teaching Amy and Tim Little Lion Man by Mumford and Sons. Over all a great night!

                Wednesday was a nice morning with Team Sport, which consisted of walking around town exploring areas we hadn’t gone before. The rest of the day consisted of planning for the Village youth group, and last minute prepping for Clonmellon youth group. We also had guy and girl hang out time, the girls watch Black Hawk Down, and the boys watch the Matrix, Tim had never seen it!!!! After dinner we left for Clonmellon, and set up for our first youth night with them. We really had no idea of who would come or how many would show up, we just prayed for Fr. Garland’s sake someone would, Fr. Garland the priest of Clonmellon was so excited and looking forward to the youth group. Twelve youth showed up and the night was full of craic, as the Irish would say, “It was pure class.” We played the NET version of Jeopardy and they were much better at the song lyric category then the Village youth group. We all left super excited for next week’s youth group.

                Thursday was a good day busy but went very well. We went to a school on Thursday and talked to the 4^th, 5^th, and 6^th class about who we are and what NET is. We played games and had a lot of craic, we will be doing some sessions with them like religion classes. Sadly we could only invite the 6^th class to come to our youth group, we felt bad for the other classes having to hear about it even though they couldn’t come.  That evening we had a Youth Night about Genesis and the first three covenants God made with his people. It went ok but was definitely a harder night. But we got to build boats out of foil for the Noah station that was fun. On Friday we were down Amy, she was sick and not feeling up to going to mass or to the school. But the day went on and we really enjoyed going to another school and meet with all the 6^th class kids. The rest of the day was fairly chill preparing for next week and letting Amy rest so she could get better.  Saturday we were supposed to go to Galway but Amy was not feeling good still, so we cancelled and had a nice sleep-in. We spent the day at home hung out and played our new favorite game Bohnanza, which is about bean farming, may sound dumb but we had a lot of craic. Rebecca won the game by two cards, her and Tim tied for points. After the game Becca and I went for a walk to the local diner called Netties for some lunch. Shockingly it was closed down! Netti is an awesome lady and we will really miss getting to eat her food and talk to her at the diner. She is renting the space out to a Roma’s Italian restaurant. For dinner we made homemade pizzas and spent part of the evening looking at each other’s photos. The night ended with an episode of Chuck and craic was had by all.