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| The priest at the parish appreciated us so much he took us to see Monastery Ruins!! Visiting Monastery Ruins is probably my main love language ;) |
Well
the Irish Road Team is up in Donegal. We just had a visit with our supervisors
which included some very interesting team building games involving survival,
fake broken legs, and Irish hills. ANYWAY….
This
last week was very different. We were brought into some parishes in some of the
rural areas of Ireland where the priests thought their parishes needed
revitalization. After all we are the National Evangelization Teams, so we
evangelize! It ended up being a 1st Week of Advent Parish Mission.
Yay! So, we arrived at the town and learned our schedule: 6 school visits and 5
parish mission nights in 5 days!! Easy time, right? Well the first twist was
that 5 of the 6 school visits would be at Primary Schools. For those of you who
don’t know, Primary School is the equivalent of Elementary School in the United
States. Further twist: some of the schools were so small that there was only
one class for every student aged 4 to 12. How do we evangelize to such a
diverse group of maturity levels at one time? The next twist was one we’d have
no idea about until we actually arrived about the missions each night, but we had
no idea who was going to show up. What age would our crowd be, especially with
talks aimed generally for 13-year-olds? We ended up have a crowd of almost
entirely older churchgoers, so it was an adjustment to make sure our program
was age appropriate.
Now the
mission went very well! Fiona, one of the team leaders, enjoys doing
Evangelization with younger students and is really good at it! She was able to
take the lead most of the time at primary schools and make the visits
successful. We taught the kids games, introduced songs, and just showed them who
we are. Sometimes the best witness we can give is just showing that there are
people out there who love Jesus. Then each night of the parish mission went
well. People showed up, which is of course the first challenge, and there was
good feedback after each night. When the parish offered tea afterwards, most
everybody stayed and talked with us. Different aspects of the mission were
received well, and the contact priest said that he saw life in the parishes for
the first time in a while. I think he had a hard time watching us go when the
week was over, and the feeling was completely mutual.
All of
this is good… and amazing. We loved our time there even though it was
challenging and different. However, that segued well into the visit with our
supervisors. During the week, we started having a lot of the typical questions
of what are we doing? We’re youth ministers… we’re not equipped for this. Why
are we doing this? Why are we here?
That
was the main theme of this visit. We were challenged to look at our motivation
for being here. Our motivation for getting up one more morning and say prayer,
and then to go to that new host home and change beds for the third time in the
week. The thing I never did grasp until I actually joined NET is that
Missionaries are human. It sounds silly, but think about it: often we think
about people who have given their all to Jesus and think they must have
superhuman power to do it. I can assure you we do: His name is the Holy Spirit.
But since it’s the exact same Holy Spirit every other Catholic has it’s not as
though we’re extraordinary human beings. So in that sense we have all the
struggles any of you think you’d have during the year. We even have struggles
that none of us anticipated. Yet we are called to get up in the morning to do
ministry.
So why?
We went back to the basics to try to discover why each of us individually is
here. A lot of us concluded that no matter what we do, we can’t run from God
forever. He wants each and every one of us here on team. No exceptions. I know
I have experienced that personally. I thought about NET for two years, but it
never left my heart. I think Jesus was going to bug me in the most loving way
possible until I gave in and did it. Thankfully, I do want to be here. I love
it. I tend to be very mission oriented, and my mind goes in line with the
Newman quote at the bottom of the page. We all have our mission. We may not
know it in this life, but we’ll find out in the next. I really believe my
mission has to do with conversions of youth. With helping to bring teens to Jesus,
perhaps especially here in Europe. I’m not sure exactly how, but I guess that’s
partially where faith comes in for the moment. Either way, I’ll know when I get
to the next life. Let’s just hope that I’ve fulfilled it, and lived life to the
full, when it comes.
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NETTERS from 3 different teams in unity. This life is hard,
but if this isn't living life to the full I don't know what is.
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