Victorious Voyage Retreat a Success (with Dodgeball for dessert)

The parish team in Athenry held its second overnight retreat for
third years to leaving certs this past weekend (Feb 19-21) and it was a great success. There were 16 youth who attended at the nearby Esker Monastery Youth Village. The theme Victorious Voyage: Ransomed and Restored focused on the journeys and challenges that we face every day. The winds may come and push the sails around but if we let Christ lead our lives we will certainly have a good and meaningful course to follow.

The young men of Athenry continue to surprise the team as two-thirds of the participants was male. Athenry’s parish team had no choice but to call in the veterans to help out: Hugh McGloin and Tim Jackson, both NET Ireland Alumni came to the rescue.

Each day had amazing high energy activities, inspiring small group sessions, a main talk and presenter, and tonnes of fun! Despite an early morning on Saturday, some of the boys didn’t even go to sleep Saturday night (until 10 minutes before breakfast Sunday morning, that is!).

My favorite memory would have to come from Saturday night as the NET Team dressed up and served the youth a nice, fancy dinner. Okay, maybe it wasn’t even that fancy considering it was garlic bread, bagged salad and spaghetti Bolognese AND apple tarte! But we felt it important to let them know that they are important and special, not only to us, but to God as well. That’s why afterwards we moved into a blessed time of prayer.

The youth really seemed to enjoy themselves and we had great feedback from them (well… most would have liked to sleep more – including myself!).

We went ahead and had our Sunday LifeNight despite the three-day retreat ending that day. And let me tell you, it was so much fun! We played dodgeball with about 12 youth and it was awesome! The night had so much enthusiasm and energy that it made it even easier to sleep that night, not that we needed it! Everyone was enjoying it so much that we stopped only for a Powerade break halfway into the dodgeball mayhem. The NET Team decided to take on the youth towards the end. There was a fierce competition between the two sides and in God’s infinite wisdom and mercy, it was decided that it was better to let the youth win. Through this we could show them that we were truly humble and desired great things for them.

… or we just aren’t that good at a sport that none of the youth had even heard of before that night. So much for the cultural advantage.

Donegal to Kerry. Rinse Repeat.

After our long and exciting drive to Kerry last weekend we've come all the way back to Donegal and tomorrow just 9 days after the first time we are making our way again on the same road to Kerry. I feel slightly like I am having a severe case of deja vu, but nonetheless the team is glad to be going back to a familiar place so soon.
This past week in Killarney, Co. Kerry simply flew by for our team. We were staying all together in a hostel and it was exciting to get to get to cook for ourselves. All the brothers on our team are terrific cooks, and make sure to cook our food with plenty of garlic to make sure we get the vitamins and minerals necessary to live our busy lifestyle. Of course the sisters help out wherever we can, but most often we get the task of simply enjoying the food. We always feel so honored when our brothers cook for us, but next week we will be changing things up and cooking for them.
Our retreats were in both Co. Cork and Co. Kerry. The countryside there, like all of Ireland, is just breathtaking. It was much different to the rugged hills of Donegal, a lot less wild and more of a well groomed beauty. On Sunday we had a team day and were able to spend it in Killarney National Park. The girls went rambling around on a millions different paths and climbed huge trees. The brothers had their own adventure which involved a waterfall and also climbing trees. We were blessed with beautiful weather and much sunshine. In our wanderings we came to a cliff from which there was a beautiful view of lakes and mountains and it was just impossible for us not to sing, so all the sisters got together and sang "Praise God from whom all blessings flow". We may or may not have been exactly on tune, but it was still beautiful and perfectly fitting for the moment.
We also were able to attend Mass just down the road from where we are staying for the feast day of St. Blaise and got our throats blessed. With all the talking and singing we do, it never hurts to get an extra blessing on our throats.
On Thursday we made the long journey all the way up to Donegal, Matthew and Patrick were able to entertain themselves by creating a game in which we had to think of different countries and cities in the world corresponding with a certain letter. At first it was easy but after all the obvious ones had been used up it became quite a brain teaser. On our way we stopped for a quick visit in Athenry to drop Tim off with the parish team. Tim is temporarily joining the parish team because one of their brothers, Jacob, has decided to go home for personal reasons. Because we all love Tim so much and know how much of a blessing he is to our team, we are happy to get to share him with them for a little bit until their new brother, Alex Manderson, who served with NET Ireland in 2007-08, arrives from Canada. Although we do miss Tim already, we are getting by somehow and with the grace of God he will be back with us soon.
Since being back in Donegal, we've been staying in our home away from home Ballybofey/Stranorlar and we did a confirmation retreat in Dooish National School on Friday. As part of the retreat we asked students to act out one of the parables from the Bible; like the sower and the seed, the prodigal son, or the lost sheep. It was fun to see their imaginations come alive and to witness the certain dramatic flare that they added to the stories that we can become so used to hearing.
Yesterday we had a day to work on our ministry and get ready for another busy week next week.Tomorrow morning we make the drive back to Kerry, it will be a long drive, but we are fortunate that this is our longest drive. Often on our long days we think and pray for the teams in Canada who make drives that are twice as long, so there is a silver lining, and maybe we'll even be able to create a new game to test our minds and pass the time.
Until next time I remain your faithful blogger,

Kelsie
Team 1

(The photos are all from Killarney National Park. We had a beautiful day with loads of sunshine and took advantage of it by getting as many pictures as possible.)

New brothers, new ministries and more....

Hello. Nicole from the parish team here today. It has been busy for us in Athenry lately, a good busy of course but busy just the same. So much has happened that I hardly know where to start.

Ministry has been going great! Things really seem to be taking off this semester. It's hard to keep up sometimes. I can't believe that it is already February. Just last Monday we had our second Edge night for the first and second years and seven students came out to join us. I know what you are thinking seven students isn't that great of a turn-out, but this was a big jump from the last Edge night we had when only three turned out. Keep in mind though that numbers aren't everything. Plus, the students that came were truly amazing and seemed to be really excited about out program. They even requested that we have Edge nights weekly, instead of bi-weekly! Like I said, it's great to be busy and we still have plans to start up a few new ministries.

Aside from ministry, things have been changing a lot for our team lately. Unfortunately, our beloved brother, Jacob has decided to return home for personal reasons and will not be finishing out the year with us. While this has been very hard for our team, God blessed us greatly and carried us through this time.

Just this week we heard from our supervisors that we will have a new brother arriving in the next few weeks. His name is Alex Manderson. He served on the NET Ireland road team in 2007-08. I'll be honest I don't know too much about him, but am very excited to welcome him to our team. He is from Ottawa and was serving with the army. He recently turned in his resignation and is currently waiting on the army to release him of his services.
Not to worry though, Timmy has come to save the day. That's right...Tim Darwent from the road team has offered to come to Athenry for a few weeks and help us out until Alex arrives. In the meantime, we've all been having a great time with Tim. Just yesterday we enjoyed a team day together and finger painting was involved...need I say more.

God has been so good to us lately! Even so, we would really appreciate some hard core prayers from everyone for our team, our ministry and Alex. Until next time may the Lord continue to bless you and we'll be praying for you too!

Nicole
Athenry Parish Team

We survived the drives & ferryboat rides through middle earth (northern Donegal)

Even though we are the road team, our team got a taste of the life of a parish team last Sunday when we got to run a lifenite in Sligo! It was fun to see another side of ministry and also to see where last years (2008-2009) parish team spent their year. The night went well, there were 5 teens there, so our team actually doubled the number of them, but it isn't always about the quanity its about the quality. Even from just being there one night we could tell that these teens were really committed to trying to keep the youth program alive in Sligo, so we had a great night with them and are praying for their parish.

On Monday morning we moved to Letterkenny, Donegal and did one retreat in Letterkenny, but most of our retreats last week were in northern Donegal, so each morning bright and early we piled into the van to make the drive through the mountains to the northern coastal towns of Fallcarragh and Dungloe. Since we had to leave so early is was too dark to really see the scenery in the morning, but on our return trips our eyes were fixed on the windows as we tried to take it all in. The road was long and winding through the rugged mountains and segmented fields which were, of course, dotted with sheep and cattle. We even had to stop once to let a bunch of sheep cross the road and had to pause our rosary to laugh about it. The latest trend on our team is to read either the Lord of the Rings Trilogy of the Chronicles of Narnia, and I'd say this would have been the perfect week to start since as we drove on those remote winding roads it was easy to imagine we were in Middle Earth or Narnia itself. I kept expecting to be chased down by orcs, but luckily we made it to and from all our retreats without the van coming under siege.

On NET I've learned that every day has it's own small excitements, but this past Friday was especially exciting for our team because we got to do a retreat on the small island of Arranmore of the coast of Donegal. We were all excited to take the ferry there and back (and some of us were secretly hoping that we'd get stuck there overnight). Fortunately we were all sea-worthy and no one got sick. The island is only about 3 miles in diameter so it is a very small community, but as I said before it's not about quantity, but quality. Our retreat, which was for the entire secondary school, was about 54 students, but they were such a great group and we found it easy to get along with them and to chat with them. We were so well looked after too, some of the students even made us homemade bread and soup for our lunch. The generosity of people continually amazes me. Say what you want about society being egocentric, but there are good people too and it's important not to forget them.

On Saturday we made the 8 hour drive down to Killarney, Co. Kerry which was our longest drive yet, but we were well prepared with snacks and a Mo-Town soundtrack made by Patrick so we all made it through in one piece.
So far in Kerry we've been enjoying good weather and beautiful scenery and look forward to more great retreats! Until next time God bless!

Kels & Team 1

(The first photo is us fighting the wind on the ferryboat to Arranmore. The second is all the sisters enjoying a bit of sunshine in Killarney National Park. The third is more of us enjoying the ferry ride.)