Donegal Town; home to castles, the four masters, and our very own Tanya!

Hello again from the road team! This blog is a joint effort brought to you by Kelsie & Tanya!! This has been an exciting week for sure! We travelled to Athenry and back, Tim led his first retreat, we had two parties, did four retreats, saw two castles, and got to spend the whole week in Tanya's hometown of Donegal Town, Co. Donegal.

The girls have all been staying at Tanya's house this week, so to get a new perspective she joined me in blogging this week... She says, "It was cool to be home and cool for my family to get to meet my team. We even did a retreat in the secondary school I attended for the 4th year students. Before the retreat I was sort of scared because it's a lot easier to get up in front of people you don't know, and I had been at school last year with all the students on the retreat. But once we got started I felt fine, I shared with them about my own experience on my NET retreat last year and how I really came to realize God's love for me." Speaking as Kelsie now, I must say that Tanya did an amazing job and was so brave to get up in front of those young people. The most powerful witness is one that you know personally and Tanya was a great witness of God's love to the people of her town. She was also a great host and took all the girls on a walk through some fields near her house, on which Laura narrowly escaped a tragic encounter with barbed wire. But luckily she had her sisters with her and with just a bit of skill and lots of laughter we were able to successfully untangle her.


This week our team celebrated the "unbirthday" of both Matthew and Tanya. Because everyone's birthday doesn't fall during our NET year, we celebrate "unbirthdays" to make sure each person on the team feels appreciated and honoured. For Matthew's we headed for Rossnowlagh on the Donegal coast where some of the more adventurous ones walked on the beach and explored caves, while others were content to stay and admire the beach from above on the lookout hill. For Tanya's unbirthday we gave her the reins and she showed us around her hometown and all the touristy spots. Among the sites we visited were Donegal Castle, where we learned about the four masters and their manuscripts, and Lough Eske, where it was so foggy that we couldn't see the lake. Tanya said we probably thought she was making up that there was a lake since we could see no trace of it through all the fog. We also visited the old Abbey graveyard, where Tim & I decided to climb the ruins and Meg (our fabulous team photographer) couldn't resist the chance for a good picture. Matthew and Patrick are missing from the picture because they were back at Tanya's house busy cooking us a delicious unbirthday feast.


All in all this has been a brilliant week. All the groups we've had on retreat have been really respectful and we've loved spending time in Donegal. We're looking forward to Letterkenny next week and a full week of retreats all over the Raphoe diocese. Hope yous all are keeping well. God bless until next time,

Kels, Tan & Team One