This week Seth is helping with a youth summer camp run by MCC (Munster Christian Camps – Munster is the ancient southern province of Ireland). Last week several people from our church helped with the Senior camp for older teens, and this week Seth is helping with the Inter camp for younger teens. We all live in tents in a field on a farm for the week, so we’re thankful that so far it’s been pretty dry!
Last night Munster Bible College finished our week of Systematic Theology lectures with a free open lecture on “Why did God the Son become human?” You can watch it here:
Seth is busy this week live broadcasting for Munster Bible College’s Systematic Theology II course. The course runs in the evenings most days, with the exception of Wednesday and Saturday which are full days of lectures. It’s an awful lot to take in in one week, but the content is extremely good. It feels a bit like trying to drink from a fire hydrant. This time we have a record-breaking group of 37 students, with half a dozen joining in mostly by live video link. We have also had the joy of giving our students access to our new library for the first time! It’s been wonderful to see them checking out stacks of the books God so graciously provided for us.
Yesterday was a special youth-led service at our church, and the theme was Romans 8:28, about how God works all things together for good for those who love Him. Some of our youth illustrated this idea with a competitive cooking show in our kitchen…
Our last post was about the pergola we made for our back garden (yard). It’s a nice spot for the family, definitely, but last night it was also great to see it filled with youth who were here for our Youth Club finale BBQ (cookout). This is a yearly tradition, and we always invite those who will be going into secondary school (high school) in the autumn to come along and get a taste (pun intended) of the club. This year we had several new faces, which was exciting to see! It’s also quite fun to introduce new people to the joys of S’mores – a treat that is pretty much unheard of here in the Emerald Isle, but always greatly appreciated.
Recently Seth was driving to Dungarvan, about half an hour from Youghal, and along the way collected (picked up) a hitchhiker. He must have been in his early twenties, and when he got in the car, the first thing he said was “Any scandal?”
What would you say to that? Seth said “No… not really” and the conversation moved on, eventually getting into religious issues, Buddhism, and the Bible. Later, Seth asked a local friend and confirmed that “Any scandal?” is just another way of saying “How’re things?” In fact, in some places in Ireland, you can even shorten the phrase to “Any sca?”
So… Any sca?
A pastor who recently retired in Northern Ireland donated most of his library to Munster Bible College, which gives us about 200 more books for our new research library! It’s exciting to see how God is providing good resources for our students!
Easter camp went very well, in spite of the fact that what was a small cold at the beginning got bad enough to rob Seth of his voice half way through. It’s hard to lead singing with no voice, so someone else had to take over that job, but God was merciful and brought enough sound back for him to lead a morning Bible study/prayer meeting on the last day. The trend seems to be in the right direction since then, which is good news, because Seth will be preaching our Easter service tomorrow! We’re excited that Jessica’s parents have just arrived in Ireland, so they will be spending the week with us and celebrating our Saviour’s resurrection with us as well!
Schools are all out for Easter break (like Spring Break in America, but always at Easter) right now, which was made longer this year because it ran up against the shorter break for St. Patrick’s Day as well. This is one of the times in the year when our churches take the opportunity of a long school break to run three camps for different age groups of young people. Seth will be helping with one of the camps this week, in various capacities – organising clean up crews, playing guitar, a bit of teaching, camp photography and organising a big game of live Cluedo (if you’re in America you know it as ‘Clue’). Should be good fun!
We celebrated St. Patrick’s Day in what has become our usual way: With a church walk in the woods, and the Youghal parade! The day is a national holiday in Ireland, so most people are off work and all the schools are out. Plus this year we had the added benefit of a clear day and some company from that bright yellow ball in the sky, who only seems to make rare visits to Ireland, but evidently wanted to see the festivities. Here’s a photo from the church walk:
Seth and Daniel also got to participate in the parade, with the Youghal Musical Society, promoting the upcoming show. And it turned out that we won the prize for having the ‘best float’!
(Seth is dressed like that because he was being Bert from Mary Poppins)
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