tomtate: Mid-lecture phase Outreach

Last week, as you may or may not have known, we spent four days in the West of Northern Ireland in Londonderry/Derry. Amazingly I had never actually been here before, and for some reason, wasn’t really expecting much of it. I was therefore surprised to find myself falling a little bit in love with this small city.

Everywhere we went, I seemed to enjoy the atmosphere, the surroundings and enjoy the people that we met and the ministries that we were involved in helping out with.

It was a week with a lot of stories that could be told, but maybe I’ll just share the one with you!

We were working in this community centre that’s been up and running for about 35 years, and they were having a visit from a government minister the following week (today, as I write this actually!) and so, we were just helping out to get the place looking good again, washing windows, floors, and even walls! To be honest, it didn’t feel like we were doing much in the place! We were just there to try and serve a bit in the community, but the lady who was in charge of the centre couldn’t get over the fact that these 17 people were willing to give their time to help her out for free (or at least, for some ham sandwiches at lunch time!). She watched us for these two days with an odd look of delight and confusion.
At the end of our time there, we were all just sitting around, and Erin asked if we could pray for her. She agreed, and so we proceeded to pray.

We finished and when we opened our eyes, she started to cry and said “The work you’ve done has been great, but I have never had an experience like that before”. Now, I’m not sure where she’s at with God, I don’t know what she would call herself, a Christian or not, but I think that the exciting thing in that moment was that God was clearly moving in her.

And THAT is what makes all that cleaning worthwhile.

Here’s a few photos of our time:

The view that greeted us when we arrived..there’s not much better!