The long long long overdue blog.

So here I am, my first day back home after the official end of the SU summer internship. Sad times! Let me apologise from the offset for the serious lack of blogging this past while. Things got extremely hectic for me (Susie) as we drew closer to the issue of leaving cert results and it got harder to find a spare minute to blog on here - let alone a spare minute with internet access!
So lets jump back a while - I think the last time I wrote it was about family week 3 - a brilliant week where I was working the 6-9’s, Barry with the 10-12’s and Orla was in Arklow doing a kids camp there. I think it’s safe to say that we all had a brilliant week, met even more brilliant people and enjoyed ourselves immensely.
From family week 3 we were scheduled to help out at13-15’s camp whilst a border counties camp in Ballinagh looked like it may not run due to a lack of leaders, so off we set for cavan for this camp - a wake up call to God’s plan not always being ours if ever there was one.
Ballinagh was crazy! That’s definitely the first word that pops into my mind - 150 children during the day, teens work during the evening, it was crazy but good. At the start of the summer I told myself I would work with older children, never with the 4-6 year olds because I don’t have enough patience, so upon arrival in Ballinagh when I was asked to be with the 4-6 year olds because they needed another leader I almost cried! Luckily, God is in control and he knew what he was doing - I survived the week, gained patience and even learned that I actually can work with the youngest age group, it just takes an awful lot of games, and more games, and more games!
The teens work at Ballinagh went well, I really liked it. If you remember what I said about wanting to be at 13-15’s because I want to be more involved with youth work it worked out well anyway as I was entrusted with the absolute privilege of doing a talk on the lion heart of God one of the evenings, Being trusted to speak God’s truth into the lives of these searching young hearts is something I will never forget.
From Ballinagh we were scheduled to go to another border counties camp in Donegal - Convoy, however we had a day free so on we hopped to a train and set out on an adventure to Bangor and Belfast - the intern big day out! We had a great time hanging out with the team from Ballinagh, going for a meal in Nandos and then heading to the cinema to see Inception - what a movie! A huge thanks to Jamie for letting us stay, being our guide up north and for organising it :D
Convoy was our last camp as leaders (sad times!) and took a slightly different format to the other border counties camps. It was Doctor Who themed and anyone who knows me knows how much of a fan I am! We all got stuck in helping out at the camp. Orla and I were working with the 11+ teens group (it was awesome to see teens coming during the day too hungry to learn more about the God we serve) and Barry was with the 8-10’s who I know had a great time all week too. A highlight of that week definitely had to be when one of the teens became a Christian praying with one of the guys.
From Convoy the lovely Ray-Bow drove us all the way down to Ovoca manor for the last of our camps in the internship - RAW. Well, where to begin?! RAW was incredible. The theme of the week was ‘are you awakened’ to your situation, for the situation around you and to your faith. We got the opportunity to live out our faith practically on two of the afternoons helping out around Ovoca Manor and gardening and painting a fence at the local driving range that a lot of camps use. We also had an awesome opportunity in being able to support Jo Heaney, a young photographer, in her ‘post-it prayer’ project by taking our own post-it prayer photos. Damien was our speaker for the week and each and every night he challenged us in a different area - love, integrity, faith. I don’t know one single person who wasn’t challenged in one way or another. There’s a vicious statistic that says only one in ten of us will take our faith seriously. As a camp at RAW we challenge that, we want to change that statistic, BE that change. Anyone who wanted to serve on the worship team was given the opportunity to. Orla got stuck in on the saxophone and each and every night the worship resounded from the mouths and hearts of about 70 young Christians seeking after our God.
RAW flew by unfortunately. The start of the week spent in tents being ‘survivors’ seemed like weeks ago by the last night, and with the end of RAW came the de-brief for our internship - a bitter sweet time. I still don’t think it’s fully sunk in that it’s over and I’m back home in the ‘real’ world. That’s the bitter part, but being able to just sit down and digest all that has happened with Barry, Orla and Ray-Bow was good. We made a ‘thank you’ wall and were able to pray over people, places and thank God for situations together. We were able to look back at what we found our gifts to be and how we used them, able to see if we achieved our goals, how we’ve grown and what we learned.
I think all that is left to say is a huge thank you to Rachel Bow for organising this internship, Scripture Union for having us as interns, each and every camp leader who organised and headed us each camp and to you too who read this blog and kept us all in your prayers. It has been the summer of a life time and, as cheesy as it sounds, I know each of us interns is forever changed.

Border Counties

Sorry for the delay everyone... we are still alive!!

Family Week
So after CSSM we went to Ovoca Manor for Family Week Three... Well Susie and Barry did, Orla volunteered at the Arklow Bible club in Arklow town.
Everyone had a great week. Susie and Barry worked with the kids at Family week and met loads of great people!!

Ballinagh
After FW3 we were supposed to stay on for another week at Ovoca Manor for Summer 2... but there was a big shortage of leaders in |Ballinagh, Co Cavan so were were chauferred up to Cavan for a week of fun!
We got to see Jamie again (who ran Glaslough) and meet some great kids. ABOUT 150 OF THEM (so we were very much needed!!!) Orla did the talk on day one and the teens were amazing- Susie did one of the talks for them one night. Amazing!!

Time off
Well we had a fab week off staying with Jamie and went to see Inception! Orla went home for her debs & got a bit lost but she's ok!! I'm sure she'll have fab debs pics up on her facebook soon!!

Now
Now we are in Convoy, Co Donegal for our FINAL WEEK OF SERVING THE LORD ON OUR INTERNSHIP!!!!
Convoy is a small town and we have about 30 kids and a super team to work with, mostly from Bangor.

Next week

We are off to Summer RAW as campers next week. We are looking forward to being fed spiritually and seeing friends :)
Keep watching for more news!!

CSSM is over :(

‘You put the pre-rinse in here, you get to wash-up in here, and then you post-rinse in here and you can dry up with these!’ Oh yes, the words to the now immortal ‘wash-up song’ will forever remain in my head with the ‘unique’ wash up system that was in place… I didn’t realise how much I love industrial dish washers until today at family week when I was on duty and didn’t scald my hands in the post rinse!
Anyway, wash up aside, CSSM is over :( I had an incredible 2 weeks - I fell in love with Greystones, beach services, the sofa in the shark team room and even the early morning meetings! Not to mention the incredible team that I had the privilege of practically living with for 2 weeks.
Orla left us on Wednesday for a short while to go do another camp in her home town, I miss her already! It was strange going from having 2 leaders for our small group to leading it solo, but I guess it did help me to grow more and push the boundaries of what I thought I could do. I probably said this in my previous blog, but I loved my small group, we had some really good discussions. I loved how open and honest the girls were able to be with us - vulnerability is a hard thing for anyone.
There are so many memories I am taking away from my first CSSM (yes - my FIRST cssm… by no means my last!) Ferris the architect, happy pears, Rebecca, Rachel and cups of tea, shanaynay… there are just so many that I get SO TENSE thinking about them all!!!
I must not neglect to say a huge thank you to the families that put us up during the past 2 weeks (or should that be ‘put up with us’?!). After a week on the floor at Glaslough a bed was hugely appreciated, as were the conversations, banter and cups of tea from you all. thank you, thank you, thank you!
I know there is so much more that I could talk about regarding CSSM, but I am wrecked, and I promised that this blog would be short so I will sign off and try to blog again when I’m not struggling so much with writers block (a very strange occurrence, I usually have lots and lots to say!).
Susie.