ST. PATRICK'S DAY!!

Hey everybody! I know it’s a few days late, but Happy St. Patrick’s Day from Ireland!!!! The team and I had a great day in County Donegal; it was just a special day. I remember 3 years ago to the day I was in Sunday Mass in England and that was the first time I felt called to be a Missionary in Ireland. I just felt so certain about it, and that eventually prompted me to do a little research on organizations I could work with. That was how I originally discovered that there was NET in Ireland. The Lord works in mysterious ways.

This year it was so cool to be celebrating this feast day in the country that was impacted so much by this Saint! They do a really good job showing the impact in Mass, and I could see it just looking at all the people dressed in green in the pews. Like Mass wasn't just full, but there were many young families. There were children running around, teenagers with their families but who seemed engaged, and of course the old people whose prayers are probably making work for people like me possible. I’m not sure if every St. Patrick’s Day Mass in Ireland is like this, but I have been to way too many empty Masses in this country. This one had so many families that they were able to gear it towards children. The altar boy was dressed as St. Patrick, with a staff and everything. Before the bringing of the gifts, children presented multiple items that represent the impact this Saint had in the world. The two I remember would be a Gaelic football and hurling stick, which are both crucial to Irish sports here. Then at the end, before the final blessing, some more students came to the front and presented an Irish dance performance.

There’s a few things that stood out to me from the Mass, and I’m not sure if it’s what people were aiming for or if it’s just me, but here it is:

                During Mass, they incorporated all those elements of Irish Culture. But what’s more, they attributed it to St. Patrick. While I’m about 90% sure St. Patrick didn’t invent hurling or Irish dance, the point is that he shaped the Ireland that developed each of those things. He brought the Catholic faith to Ireland in a way that people have never seen before. He brought it in a way that changed their lives. Faith isn’t supposed to contrast with the culture; they’re supposed to be complementary. If that’s not happening, something is wrong.  

Following that, we did go to the pub and to a parade! Yes, the parade which had a few familiar faces in it. Which is good because here in Ireland, one of the most important parts of St. Patrick’s Day is the family. Even with a country where drinking is one of the most notorious stereotypes, spending time with family is more important. While it may be in the pub, it’s not an excuse to go out and get drunk.

Yes America, I’m totally calling you out on that.

Anyway, thank you all for reading!!!!! I’ll update soon, but in the meantime please pray for me!

Spiritual Warfare - Physical Health

             

Hello from Donegal!!!!! Good to see y'all after a while!!

               Good afternoon everybody! So today I’m going to write on something very dear and near to me: my nose.

                Ok I’m going to talk about having a cold, which took a solid month to go away, but it was the strangest thing. So I had a cough all during Christmas break, but then right after January retreat we went to do a series of retreats in County Kerry. During that time my cough turned into a cold and I felt sick those retreat days I still went, but it was not comfortable. Ironically enough, those were the best retreats we have done yet. God was really working through each and every one of us, and I believe that there are some teens that genuinely encountered Jesus for the first time.

                Then we returned to County Dublin and County Donegal and during those times I began to recover. I began to physically feel better and I even felt confident enough to go off my cold medicine. I even had a day off just to rest. However, we returned to County Kerry at the end of that week and everything came back full force. I began to actually feel bad and my body hurt. I was still needed for retreats so I still went, but it’s been two weeks since that and I still have the residual cough and runny nose. And I was not the worst on my team. Several other girls started getting sick around the same time I did. One girl even just had to go to the doctors for an infection. All of the men have had coughs and one has even felt worse than I believe most of us did during the retreats.

                Part of it is just the business of our schedule. Part of it is the physical aspect of many of us are from warmer, dryer climates and we’re here in Ireland with the cold and the rain. But I think there’s also a spiritual aspect of it. When you’re sick, it’s so much easier just to cruise through the day and not invest. I think the devil would like nothing more. He doesn’t want us to have any impact on these teens. He wants us to roll in and just run through the motions of the day. He does not want energetic missionaries on fire for the Lord; he wants missionaries who want nothing more than to lie and bed and to act like it.

                The key word in there is “to act like that”. There were many days during those times that me and my teammates wanted nothing more than to stay in bed and sleep. However, we decided to push back the sickness. We decided to push back on any sense of feeling unwell and to give the youth every ounce of ourselves.  We decided to sacrifice. And that’s what Jesus wants. Things are going to go crazy. Sickness happens, no matter what directly or indirectly causes it. It’s our response that’s important. We can either choose to give in and to feel bad and feel sorry for ourselves. Or we can choose to sacrifice and to go through with it. And the sacrifice helps unite us to Jesus, and it reaps rewards from the youth.

                I would say there are direct results. Like during our retreats we have a time of prayer where we ask the youth what they’d like to pray for. I’ve had more teens accept prayer than refuse, and I think that’s always a victory. Then some have prayed for things that would blow your mind away. I don’t want to go into too many details, but it’s the kind of things that show you that they’re paying attention to the retreat during the day and are absorbing what we have for them. Then I have had one teammate report that she had a youth thank her for praying with them. Then each retreat we’ve had confession, most the teens go!! While I’m sure that most would still have gone, the question is: if we weren’t sacrificing, who would not go? Which young person would not encounter Jesus in this way? Or even any way at all? That isn’t something I want at all.

                So I’ll take the stuffy nose. I’ll take the runny nose. I’ll take the sinuses being thrown off. If it helps somebody get to Heaven, I’ll take it. I hope everybody, whether you’re on my team or just reading this blog, feels the same.

Some of us overlooking the Ring of Kerry

MGM

                Hello everybody! I’m back! This is our second week back in ministry after two weeks of Christmas break. So yes. I like to do everything in twos. Which is why now I’m going to talk on something that, biblically, Jesus told people to do in twos. In scripture, he told his disciples to go in pairs and to spread the word.

                Which comes to my title: MGM

                Wait Courtney, you might be saying, why are you throwing me random letters? And some of you might be asking me what a movie company-sounding title might have to do with NET and Youth Ministry and such. Well on NET we like to deal with acronyms, and MGM stands for Meet, Greet, and Mingle. Which at the beginning of the year, we were consistently doing in twos. Maybe that's stretching the biblical metaphor, but just go with me here.

                Basically, this means going out at the beginning of the day and just talking to the youth as they walk through the door. You have the basic questions such as what is your name? Do you have any pets? Are you super excited? It starts out as small talk, then the retreat begins. Maybe you'll be lucky enough to end up in a small group with that teen, and you have some sort of basis to talk with them. If MGM is a success, it'll be a successful retreat day. You see, NET is a relational ministry. This basically means that we try to get to know the teens and help them to encounter Jesus in that way. Once they know we’re normal people with similar interests to their own, and that we respect them wherever they are at, they are open to us. Then they may be a little more open to what we have to say. Then they might be a little more open to Jesus.

                It’s not rocket science, but it’s not as easy as one might believe. Maybe some people find it easy going up to strangers, regardless of their age, and talking. I personally do not. Even though I usually enjoy the conversations I have, it’s still hard to muster the courage to actually start them. However, it’s still one of the more important things we’ll do in a day. It’s just as much a part of the ministry as any of the dramas, talks, or prayers. In fact, without this portion of ministry, the teens will completely write off all the rest.

                So as you go on out into your everyday life, just remember NET and MGMing. Then the next question is: what will you do about it? Who is there in your life that you could just talk to? Have a friendly conversation with? Show that you’re actually a living, breathing human being as well as a practicing Catholic. They say that people don’t care what you know until they know you care, so find that person and show them that you care.

A Week Like No Other

               

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 1^st 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.

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.

United Arab Emirates - Sharing the Faith

              

Hello everybody! Here's a quick little picture of when we went to the Grand Mosque in Abu Dhabi! The scarf is mine, but the rest is a little outfit they gave us girls to cover us.

             And just like that our time in the Middle East is over. My team and I just returned to Ireland a few days ago, and we’re happy. Like we like being back here and some of us even missed the rain and cold. Still, leaving for me was a very heart-wrenching experience. We had the chance to meet so many amazing, inspiring, and generous people. We were all inspired by the communities who have been persecuted Catholics for generations. We were spoiled by many of our contact people… like one lady even took us out to the Dubai Mall and the Aquarium!!!! The generosity we’ve experienced in general has been absolutely astonishing, but we saw it in a whole new way in the Middle East. Then of course, it was incredible hosting a retreat for 800 teens and showing them what Mercy and Love mean! Based on the number that flocked to confession, I know they were impacted in an amazing way. And we even had social media there in the form of Evangesoul! Look them up… they’re great!!!!!

                Yet we faced many logistical challenges just being in a Muslim country. There’s the obvious one of not being allowed to talk about the faith outside church compounds, and so needing to host TUFF at a church. The thing is, I think we could have filled a larger facility if it was legal to do that. Furthermore, which I only realized this after talking with family, friends, and the team yesterday, but we had a lot of days off. Why? Well the weekend in the UAE is Friday and Saturday. So obviously, we could work with catechism classes and have a crowd. Or we could have a retreat and expect people to show up. Other than that, we were working on the church grounds on week days and nights, which did work. We had great turnouts at night. However, in Ireland most of our ministry is based in Catholic schools. For obvious reasons, there are not as many Catholic schools in the UAE. And even if there was a Catholic school to go to, even if a school could hold a mini-retreat for the day, they had to have an alternate activity for non-Christian students. As in there would be government troubles if they did not.

                What a completely different perspective from the United States! While we’re not supposed to have too many religious functions at public schools, most states let us have them. Then schools of any religious affiliation are allowed to have events that are specific to their own faith without being forced to go through hoops.

                I imagine most people reading this blog live in a country where they can speak out about Jesus. We’re allowed to talk about him on the street. So, why don’t we? It can be scary. Like sometimes I’m afraid to do that. We’re afraid of offending somebody. The thing is, I just came from a country where we could not openly grace ourselves before meals in public. Jesus is the best thing we can possibly talk to people about, and we should be doing that! We have the freedom; we have the liberty. We need to do it with gentleness, probably more in context of describing a reason for our joy than just narrating the events of the gospel, but we need to do it!

                How can we start? Let’s just start saying grace before meals in public. Like when you go out for lunch, pause and say a prayer. Make a Sign of the Cross, especially if you’re Catholic. It’s very small and very simple, but it’s something I’m so thankful to be able to do again.

               Again, thank you for reading!!!! If you haven't yet, I invite you to follow the NET Ireland Road Team Facebook page. We're a bit better at updating that than I am at updating this blog. However, don't forget to follow this blog! You do that by scrolling all the way down and typing your email in the provided box. As well, if you haven't partnered with me yet, consider that too! It is through the generosity of everybody that all of this is possible!!!!!

That One Time in Muscat

                Sorry for the delay in posting. I know I left the last post in a suspenseful note, so hopefully everybody made it over to the Facebook page to see what’s up! However, now it’s time for an explanation:

                TUFF stands for Teens United For Faith. It’s a 2-day Catholic Conference that’s put on in the Vicariate of Southern Arabia. Yes, you read correctly: Southern Arabia. I’m in the Middle East! I bet you didn’t think we’d be putting on retreats around the world, did you? It certainly didn’t cross my mind until I found out I was on the road team. It's something I've been excited about since I found out it was a reality, but I've been holding it back to announce specially right now!!

                Anyway, our first TUFF took place in Muscat, Oman. It’s safe for us to be here, but we’re not supposed to identify ourselves as missionaries. Evangelizing to a Muslim here is actually a felony. Disclaimer: we’re not. We’re putting on retreats for people who are already Catholic because that’s what the New Evangelization is. The New Evangelization is when we step back and realize that sometimes we Catholic need someone to tell us about Christ. So knowing that, I’ll continue.

                We had a few days before our first retreat to prep and then it was time to go! I’ll tell you, it was incredible just to seen the hundreds of teens come in and start taking their seats. So far I think our biggest retreat has been 120, and there were at least 350 here. I placed myself at the door and pretty much just started saying hi to them as they all came in. It’s a pretty simple job, but it was a good place for me to be. We started with our opening songs, which I love and were cool but the teens were pretty quiet. The day continued and we had several talks, dramas, testimonies, and just fun things. I finally got to give my talk over Pope Francis, and it’s so incredible to give it to over 300 teens! Even better, they were opening up more throughout the day. I distinctly remember being backstage waiting for a drama and seeing teens dance to the music onstage. That is something I have not seen since back in high school. It made me so happy, partially for nostalgia and partially because you could see the teens responding. It was all for Jesus!

                That was the first day. The second day was a little hectic with some scheduling stuff, but the teens didn’t notice anything was up. They simply enjoyed the day, and let everything coming their way sink in. I’ve had conversations with some of them that I do not think I would have had in any part of the world. The faith is already alive here, I’m just hoping in some small way we’re able to make it more personal. I think that did happen. At the end of the retreat, teens from each of the parishes involved came up and spoke about what happened to them. A few teens during the course of the retreat talked about an internal change, and how they felt a relief that was new. Then others had a whole new perspective of what retreats would be. One young man in particular said that he was expecting it to be a boring weekend and that they’d be sitting around doing nothing most of the time. Just with my own experiences, I find it very sad that anybody would think a retreat would be sitting around and having a classroom-like atmosphere. For me, and this is what I learned in high school, retreats are a time where you get a little closer to Jesus. It's almost like a little extra charge to get through life.

                That’s one of the things that changed my own life as a teen. The first time I ever went to a Catholic retreat, I was not looking forward to it. I thought it was going to be dumb. But the second I walked through the doors and heard the praise and worship music, I knew I was in for something good. Now, I feel privileged to be a part of a team and community that does that for others. We are able to do so much, but we’re doing it all for the love of Christ!

                We still have a lot of ministry to do, so keep praying for me and hopefully I’ll be able to update soon!!!!!

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