An end and a beginning

Last night marked the end of week 1 of Fused. We had an evening of celebration where the kids brought their parents along and they got to experience a little of what we've been doing this past week. The teamwork on the first week has been nearly seamless, with our small group of seven blending in with the Northern Irish contingent with only an accent to differentiate us. It's been great to get to know the older students. Each day we started with a time of fun and Bible study, in which they participated much to the surprise of the local leaders. In the afternoons we alternated service projects ("windie" washing at the Special Needs Home and Murlough) and fun time (Castlewellan Lake and the paddle boat swans). In the evening we had a program that included crowd-breaker games, video, teaching, small group time, and worship. It was an amazing week. It's exciting to know that we have another week with these older students, as the program that the rest of our team has arrived to pull off is geared at the same students we've already gotten to know a little bit. In the past, at this point, we're ready to leave and all we can do is wonder if there will be any follow up later. This time we get to be a part of at least one more week of investing in the lives of these teens.

On a side note - Murlough has also been hosting three French teenagers who, for the first two days kept mainly to themselves after discovering that they came into a group of nearly 50 who didn't speak French and they only speak a few words of English. After trying a few times to talk with them myself, I began to notice that people started to shy away from them until they were sitting alone at their own table at dinner one day. I deiced to sit with them anyway. As we ate, it occurred to me that maybe they spoke German. Their eyes lit up as Matthew said, "Ja!" Another Irish leader sat down with us at that point and we proceeded to have a conversation that began in either French or English and ran through a German filter. The funniest thing at that meal, though, was when Jonny Heenan dug deep into his past - way back to French class in school - and tried to tell them that he really liked the chicken that we were having for dinner. What he ended up saying, however, brought uproarious laughter to the French. His botched French came out, "I love you, chicken."