St. Edmund's College, Ware

Guess where the events of this post take place?

          

Hey y’all! So I decided to have a whole post over the school we just finished in London just because it was absolutely incredible.

                So we all pulled up to the school, and I think I speak for my whole team when I say that our jaws dropped. It’s such a nice school… just the grounds and buildings and everything were so beautiful that we were all impressed. Our contact person, Paula, came out and greeted us and we had a whole building for our retreats! Based on other retreats we’d done with just small rooms, it’s nice when we can go outside and separate a few groups. It helps with the noise level.

                The day continued and we had our next important segment: lunch. The food at that school was SO GOOD! Each day a few students took us down to the dining hall to where we would be eating. We had mac-n-cheese, roast, curry, and sausages among other foods and all of it was SO GOOD! Like so many of us just talked to the students about their food. They probably thought it was a bit odd, but that’s ok.

                One of the coolest things about the school itself was, well, the school itself. It was founded in the 16^th century when it was illegal to be Catholic in England. So they went to France and founded the school as a seminary for priests to go to and to be formed in a place that would be safe. Yet when it was done, they would go back to this hostile environment, and many of them were killed upon arrival. Then entrance of the school has the names of 30 plus priests who were martyred, and many are now Blesseds and Saints in the Church!! Then the school returned to England when things had cooled down, but France started its anti-Catholic revolution. As a missionary, it’s really cool to see how many people have come through this school with a zeal for the mission even though it was pretty much a death sentence. Like at St. Edmund’s in France and the British Seminary in Rome, graduating priests would sing funeral hymns during graduation because they knew going back home could certainly mean death. Yet they did it anyway. That courage inspires me, and I know still inspires the school today. They proudly wear this Catholic heritage, from relics in the chapel to images of martyrs on the stained glass windows on the chapel.

Half of the alumni martyrs at this school... at least the beatified/canonized ones

                It’s very interesting to see the students at a strongly rooted Catholic school in the midst of secular England. The entire team was impressed with the Catholic atmosphere of the school; many of us have attended Catholic schools that have not really remained true to their Catholic identity. Yet St. Edmund’s has… they even had an explanation for why Catholics don’t eat meat on Friday on their wall! Then the students were incredible. Whenever I started small group in prayer, all of them did the sign of the cross immediately even though I know many were not Catholic. They also were very good at taking initiative and opening small group in prayer when I asked them to. Every single small group that week was great, and honestly more than I was expecting. Please continue to, pray for them and for everything they have experienced just to grow!

                St. Edmund’s puts on NET retreats for the students from their first year to the year before the last, so five different grade levels got retreats. Sometimes we can think about how these teens are getting the same retreat each year, which yes there’s definitely similar elements to each retreat. We have similar dramas and games. But I think it’s like lighting a candle. Sometimes it’ll take a few tries to actually ignite the candle, but it’s worth it each and every time we try.

                Again, thank y’all for reading! As always, continue to pray for me and the teens we’re impacting! If you haven’t done so already, partner with me! Everything I do is made possible by generosity of people all over the world. I have the link posted at the bottom of this page, so go down there and join me this year! Next post will be about a series of retreats we’re doing in a very different area than any we’ve experienced so far. Let’s just say it’s been… TUFF……… For more details look on the NET Ireland Road Team Facebook page.

The small figures right above the tabernacle

Spiritual Warfare on the Road

               Well I can say I didn’t think I’d be writing this post so soon in… BUT….

                So on the NET Irish Road Team spiritual warfare comes in many ways. Sometimes it comes in us feeling down. Sometimes it comes in a difficult retreat. But this week, it has come in quite a few van troubles. So when we were driving from Cavan to Kerry, the clutch in our van decided to break and we were stranded right outside of Athlone for a short amount of time. At first we just stopped and our Team Leaders (who are amazing) got out, talked, and tried to get the van to work. We all prayed our rosaries, prayed over the van, splashed the van with holy water, but nothing. Thankfully, one of the NET Board Members was close by and he helped us get our van serviced. We still had to leave 3 team members back while the other 7 drove on to Kenmare for the next retreat.

Us unloading our van. We looked great on the side of the road.

               A little shaken from both hunger and the idea of leaving a portion of our team behind, 7 of us packed backpacks with basic stuff we needed for the next day and piled into our little black galaxy, which for those of us who do not know what brand that is it’s almost like a mini-van, and began the rest of our 3 hour drive.

                But wait… there’s more….

                We made it to Limerick where we were able to have a delicious KFC Dinner (Lucy’s favorite), but as we kept driving the check engine light came on. We were instructed whenever it came on to just pull over and stop the vehicle, reset, and then keep driving. We did that, but the engine light came on maybe fifteen minutes later. So we pulled over again. And again. Eventually it decided not to reset and the check engine light was consistently on. We were all a bit on edge and wondering if God even wanted us at this retreat.

                Rest assured he did.

                It was a very difficult retreat, but Jesus was working wonders. Some students said that their lives were changed. Overall, we all felt that we had a very effective prayer ministry. Which is very interesting because I felt about the opposite of the rest of my team. For me it was a very difficult retreat and I was not sure it made a difference, and that is hard to deal with when we’re all so tired and traveled all night to reach a destination.

                The thing I learned from that experience is that Satan does not want us to be here. He does not want us to put on these retreats, and if we have to fine but he wants each one to discourage us. He wants to bring us down. He wants to bring us down because what we’re doing is so incredibly important. We are bringing youth to Christ. Every single soul we are able to show Jesus to at the retreats is important, even if it is one singular soul. In the case of this team, spiritual warfare might look from anything as simple to car troubles to even individual team members feeling anxious about something. I can assure you that all of the above have happened.

                Again, thanks for reading. I think the honeymoon stage of our journey is over, so please keep all of us in your prayers!!

We all had a night out in Kenmare. PS: This is my team y'all!

              PS: I'm just going to have another quick update because I wrote this post about 2 weeks ago and it's just now getting published. Missionary life!! But thus far we've been traveling for two and a half weeks and have done retreats almost every week day. It's been incredible just to see the lives touched and it's only the beginning! Please continue to pray for us, and I'll write more about this in the future.