It's in the little things...

It's the young girl who's so excited to be going on her school SU weekend, after her saying at the beginning of the year that she "doesn't go to SU, because she doesn't believe in God".  
It's being able to hang out with a girl and provide a distraction for her when she's struggling with trying to do the right thing and her friends are pulling her in the wrong direction.
It's our Romania team raising over £1000 over our massive (£3,400) target.
It's the guy who was the first person to offer to pray for me when I was feeling down, and then got his mentor (my team mate) to come pray with him for me.
It's the primary school kids who get excited when they walk into the hall and realise we're taking assembly today, and the happy whispers of "Pais team! Pais team!" that go around the hall.
It's the young people who just drop into the office when they're in town to ask us questions about faith, or even just to hang around and spend time with us.
It's the guy who came along to our week-long prayer space at his school and let us pray with him and his friends, then started coming to the lunch club and after-school course about exploring faith, and is now being mentored by one of the team.
It's being able to take 2 young girls to 'Beautiful' weekend and helping them learn more about how much God loves and cherishes them.
It's being a part of Exodus' Saturday night events all year and meeting all the amazing young volunteers who have a massive heart for God.
It's the fact that in just 5 days I'll be taking 9 young people to Romania to work in the local community and show God's love.


It's been a roller-coaster year that's had its ups and downs, but you know what they say about roller-coasters... it's not about getting to the end, but enjoying the journey! It's the little things like this that have made this year so worth it. I've had a lot of fun, made amazing friends and learnt a lot... but most of all I know that God has worked through me, and used us as a team to bless others in so many ways. And in return he has blessed us abundantly.

A blast from the past!

Today I got an email from myself that I wrote a year ago and sent on futureme.org. It was so weird thinking back to where I was a year ago writing it and where I am now. I didn't write a lot but made me feel slightly emotional reflecting on where God has brought me in the last year. Here's some of the email...

"I wonder where you are right now reading this... because now, 07/05/11, I have no idea where I'm going to be in a year. I keep trying to trust that God has a plan and he knows what I'm going to be doing, but it's so hard not knowing! Since the PGCE and Pais fell through I haven't even thought about it. I really thought God wanted me to do Pais. I hope things have panned out right and that you have learnt to trust and obey God in everything. I don't really know what else to say, except I'm sorry for messing up your degree! I've just given our dissertation in and I know it was terrible :( I hope the essays and exam went a lot better!"

Right now, on 07/05/12, I again have no idea where I'm going to be in a year but it's so encouraging to look back on that and remember how God was at work and how his plans came into action. The reason I thought Pais had fallen through was because I found out I couldn't go to do Pais in Texas. I was so confused and upset about that, but it must have been at some time in just the next 3 weeks after writing this that God brought a girl called Kelli McFarlane to me and we got chatting about Pais:Ireland. I just remember wondering why I hadn't thought of it before and next thing I knew I was applying! Now here I am, a year later, living in Northern Ireland and currently in the car on our way to the Pais:Ireland retreat in Newcastle, County Down. This email came at the perfect time to remind me to keep relying on God's plan and trusting in him!

And the other funny part about the email... I didn't mess up my degree!! The dissertation wasn't great, but not as bad as I thought and some of those last essays and exams were my best in the whole 3 years of uni! I somehow managed to get a 2:1 in my degree and graduation day was full of pride, relief and thankfulness to God for getting me through!!

P.S. I think futureme.org is amazing and I'll definitely be sending myself another email soon!! I recommend giving a go!

...and here's a wee graduation picture for you!

Swapping Passion...

Back in February the team and I went to Burnley, England to the Swap conference. Swap is run by Pais and aims to allow Pais apprentices, schools workers and youth workers to come together to share ideas and experiences. We had four days of teaching from the Global Director and Founder, Paul Gibbs, as well as other Pais directors and partners, and collaboration with each other. We spent the week sleeping in a local church along with all of the Pais:GB teams and I absolutely loved the community we had there and the opportunity to get to know each other. The Pais:Germany teams were also there at the conference and it was amazing to see so many people all working to advance the Kingdom of God.  Sometimes I get bogged down in the day to day work, especially when we're in the office, so it really helped me to step back and see the bigger picture. Talking to the other Pais people about how we came to join Pais helped me to remember why I did and how God brought me here. I'll be honest, I went with low expectations and wasn't really excited, but I actually think that helped because it meant the week was always going to surpass my expectations - and surprise me it did! I had a fun week where I learnt a lot and made some great friends! I then went off to Manchester for the weekend to meet up with some friends from uni and church there, before flying back to NI.

Like I said, I made some great friends at Swap and one of these was a guy called Luke. Soon after we got back he started telling me about a worship night he was planning in his home church in Oswestry. I realised it was going to be during the Easter holidays when I would be back in the Rhondda so I decided to drive to Oswestry and go to 'Passion Pais'. It was lovely to see some of the people from the GB teams again and we had a lot of fun! The worship evening was amazing, the band played really well and Dan brought an inspiring message about letting God's light shine! I then stayed overnight with a family from the church, and the next morning at church I took Sunday school with 2 of the guys on Pais:GB. While we were upstairs, Pete Baker, the GB national director, preached at the Sunday service and the worship band played again. I heard some fantastic reports afterwards about how it had gone and many people from the church were asking Luke if they could get an Oswestry Pais team!

It continues to amaze me the amount of people I meet in my life! I love that God has blessed me with the ability to make friends easily and am so grateful for the people he continues to put around me. The only downside to it is missing people... I miss my friends in Texas, my uni friends, my Audacious friends... so so much and it's so hard not knowing when I'll next see them. That's not including my family and friends at home in Wales who I get to see every couple of months and still miss regularly. This is why I LOVE Facebook!! (and blogging/email/the internet in general!). I get to keep in touch with people I meet, even those who I'm not sure if I'll ever meet again and especially fellow missionaries. I met this one girl in Texas, just by coincidence, who is a missionary in Africa and somehow ended up on her mailing list (probably through Facebook friendship). I haven't actually spoke to her since we met and will probably never see her again, but I enjoy getting her email updates, seeing the work she's doing and being able to pray for her! This post has gone off on a complete tangent, but I guess what I'm trying to say is... if you're reading this, then thank you. Thank you for caring about what I'm up to, thank you for supporting me and thank you for praying with me!!

Two lovely views at two lovely weekends

A few weeks ago I had the amazing privilege of waking up to 2 amazing views and these are my favourite photos from each. From countryside to seaside in a week (not forgetting I then went back to the valleys a week later!) sometimes I'm just reminded to step back and thank God for this crazy life he's given me!

Two residentials in as many weekends! First I took my Romania team to Carrowmena, just a short drive south of here. The team has come together amazingly, after lots of fuss and both gaining and losing members. Just that weekend we were welcoming yet another member into our team and the lovely Nicole fitted right in and completed our little puzzle. We now have 8 girls and 1 guy on the team and we're all really excited for what the next 4 months will bring! We took them away on residential to get to know each other better and spend some time hanging out and having fun. It was so great to just be in the middle of the countryside where there was a lovely sense of peace over the team, and we were really fortunate with the weather so got to go out on a walk. We had a great weekend full of banter, laughs, sunshine and God and it started to feel like we're a family :)
The following weekend I went to a conference for teenage girls in Whitepark Bay. It's called Beautiful weekend and is run by an organisation called The Big House who specialise in helping teenagers with self-esteem problems, eating disorders, depression, self-harm etc. I took 2 girls along (1 from youth club, 1 from church) as it seemed like a really good chance for them to really find out who they are in God, that He made them beautiful and loves them unconditionally. It was a fabulous weekend in an absolutely gorgeous spot right next to the beach! The views were perfect for admiring God's great creation and letting His presence move among us. The team were fantastic, openly sharing their testimonies with the girls and using practical things to help them release the negative thoughts and feelings. I was so grateful for the ways in which they poured into my girls and showed them so much love and I'm so happy to say they both got a lot out of it! One had been struggling a lot recently with feeling unworthy of God's love and had a great breakthrough where she let Him back in and accepted His mercy and grace, and the other made a decision to follow God for the first time and told me she felt like she'd been lost but was now found!

Weekends like these remind me of how lucky I am and how thankful I should be for the privilege of pouring into young people's lives. My prayer for the next few months is that God would continue to use me and I'd see more young people come to know God, to know who they really are to God and to deepen their relationship with him further. I pray that God would give me the words, boldness and love for the people I meet, and I ask that you would join with me in prayer :)

Because You're Loved blog from Jan

This is the team blog from Jan, summarising our last mission week - Because You're Loved, Dared To Love :)

During our second encounter week (Pais:M4 Mission) we started the movement of “Because You’re Loved” once more. This time our mission was to equip young Christians to pass on God’s love through acts of kindness. 1 John 4:19 says that “we love because He first loved us.” As you know actions often speak louder than words. Therefore every day of the week had a different theme as a practical challenge. We dared the students to demonstrate love through encouragement, action, invitation, compassion and generosity. More than 60 young people representing more than 15 schools came along to the Launch gathering that we held in Exodus. It was a great night of worship, sharing and encouragement. Students formed groups to come up with creative ideas for special things they could do together in their own school. During the week the attempt to change community became reality. With our information packs in their bags it was great to see so many young people getting active for our Lord Jesus. Partaking youth groups gave out free tea and coffee in Tesco’s and invited passers-by to an evangelistic event in the area. A girl from our youth took 2 friends to church and they became Christians! They already connected to many people and want to go to youth fellowship :D. On the website www.becauseyoureloved.com you will find more information and a great collection of stories posted by students.

Check out the team Facebook page for more team blogs!

Team Romania 2012

As you may already know, this summer I will be taking a group of 9 teenagers on a mission trip to a small village called Zalau in Romania. There we will be leading a children's club, doing practical work in the community and taking food parcels to local families. Our aim is to spread God's love simply by serving the people of Zalau and getting to know them, all the while exploring a different culture and what we can do to help those in need.
Our weekly team meetings have been going really well so far and everyone has bonded well as a team, especially during our residential last weekend. We have also started our fundraising planning and have a few events coming up over the next few weeks. As a team we need to raise £3,400 before we go! All funds raised will go towards the work we will be doing out there, particularly for materials such as toys for the children's club, paint or bricks for practical work, or anything else we may need.
You can donate to us at www.justgiving.com/romaniateam24, or you can simply text 'TMRM94 £(?-insert amount)' to 70070.
All support is greatly appreciated and every little bit will go a long way to helping us to make a difference!
Thank you,
Lauren & Team Romania x

Here we go again... Who Loves You?

It's a long time since I wrote on here... so please accept my apologies! The craziness of February has also left the Pais: North Coast's facebook blog has also been neglected. In order to catch you up on all that's gone on I'll start by posting Tamara's blog about the 'Who Loves You?' mission week. She says everything I wanted to say, but writes it better than I do (how sad is that... a German writing better than me!). Enjoy! - Lauren x

Hey folks!

The Pais team is back with a blog after a truly exceptional week of “Who Loves You?“.
Not only did we visit four schools in the area, doing assemblies, lunch shows, lessons and prayer spaces, but also closed the week in two spectacular events with DJ Jarva Knight, a non-alcoholic cocktail bar and two poignant messages, communicating the gospel to the young people.
During the week we really learned again to appreciate and use the power of prayer and we want to thank all of you who supported us in their prayers. Every person who came to the prayer meetings in our churches during the week really encouraged us and we are sure that each prayer made a difference.
The overall topic was – surprisingly – God’s love and it was so great to have the opportunity to tell around 2000 young people of the unimaginably great love God has for them. When we asked the students in several RE lessons who loved them a great amount of them wrote down God and/or Jesus and we really pray that this knowledge might change their hearts and lives. During our “Love or Hate”- lunch show we learned that it is inevitable to not make decisions and that the most important decision of our lives might still lie ahead.
On the nights of the events 7 young people made a decision for living their lives with Jesus and many were interested in taking away more information. We are very excited about starting a follow-up study on what being a Christian really means on Wednesday afternoons in Exodus.
A really amazing and encouraging story reached us when we heard of a girl who was giving out ice-cream to people in Portstewart, following the motto of “Because You’re Loved”! And this is actually the perfect opportunity to get excited for the Dared to Love-mission in March – we are expecting great things to happen and lots of love to be shown.

Thanks for reading our team blog once more – watch out for more and be blessed!
Tamara

The latest team blog... from me!!

Just before Christmas it was my turn to do the fortnightly team blog for the Pais facebook page. Unfortunately, I got bogged down by all that was going on, starting writing it and then forgot to save it to dropbox when I decided not to take my laptop home for Christmas. So here is the latest blog, at last! Read, enjoy, and don't forget to find us on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/paisninorthcoast) and Twitter (NCoast_PaisNI) (and for those of you who don't know... social media is my role in the team so the more followers I get - the better!).

Hey guys,
Welcome back to our team blog! We hope you all had a great Christmas and enjoyed time with friends and family, as we did. We are now all back on the North Coast feeling refreshed and excited for the new term! We also have the pleasure of the company of Annette and Kristin from the Cork team for a few weeks.
First here’s a quick catch-up of what we got up to in those last few busy weeks before the holidays…
As you read in our last blog, we had to postpone December’s high school encounter week until January due to the schools being busy with exams. Instead, we took the opportunity to host a prayer room at one of the local high schools. We set up the room to make it inviting and appealing to the students, getting them to explore and discover the concept of prayer. We had several different stations representing different parts of prayer; a ‘please’ board, a ‘thank you’ board, a ‘pray for the world and the news’ wall, a ‘sorry’ activity station, an ‘identity’ reflection station, a reading space, and a comfortable quiet corner. We were open before and after school, break times and lunchtimes for three days.
Over the week we saw at least fifty students come through the doors to check out what was going on and it was really encouraging to see some of the same students coming back each day. We spent a lot of time chatting to the students and getting to know them, and got the opportunity to pray with a few of them. One of the team prayed for a girl who regularly comes to our lunch club as she had a sore wrist after spraining it and the next day she came back and said it was hardly hurting! Another team member prayed with a group of boys who were coming to hang out every day. After school they were asking around about when the prayer room was coming back, and have been coming to the lunch club ever since! It’s really exciting to see how open the students were to coming along to such a relaxed space and chatting to us and we can’t wait to host another prayer space there soon!
On the last day of term we had a big ‘Christmas Extravaganza’ event, in conjunction with a local primary school and one of our churches. The children came down to us when they finished school early where we did a talk/sketch on the real nativity story, played games as a big group and then split them up into age group to do various activities, including decorating gingerbread snowmen and making Christmas crackers. It was a great success and a fun time was had by all!
Next week (16th-21st January) we will be having our encounter mission week that we had to postpone back in December. We will be in a different high school every day for the week where will be giving assemblies, hosting giveaways and lunch-shows, taking over RE lessons and having prayer rooms. The week will culminate in two big events that we will be inviting all of the students to, one in Coleraine and one in Portstewart. The theme is ‘Who Loves You?’ and we’re hoping this simple question will provoke deeper thoughts and answers within the young people. Please join with us in praying for open minds and hearts, that students might find faith in God’s love and that the week runs smoothly.
Thank you for your support and prayers, and we wish you a very happy 2012!

Lauren :)

One Matters! Romania 2012

I have some exciting news... In July 2012 I'll be leading a mission team to Zalou in Romania! The mission trip is part our partnership with Exodus, a youth discipleship organisation based in Northern Ireland. In Coleraine they have what we call a Christian nightbase, where they run Saturday night events every week, ranging from UV parties to acoustic nights, for local teenagers. The Pais office is in their building and we volunteer at their Saturday night events and other things they do and we promote the events in schools.
Every summer Exodus run mission trips to various locations, and the teams have weekly meetings in the run up to trip as part of the discipleship programme. There are four courses to choose from depending on where the young person is at in their faith; Explore, Exchange, Express and Extend. Pais agreed that we would take one of these teams this year and the staff thought I would be best suited to lead the team, with Raffi as my co-worker.
We'll be taking an Explore team which will be made up of approximately 10-12 young people, some who are Christians and many who aren't. It gives them the chance to make a difference locally and globally, to explore the issues of life and experience the challenge of another culture. In Romania we'll spend a couple of days at Bush Camp, and then be doing practical things like running a children's club and feeding local families, all the while building relationships with the people in the community we come into contact with. Over the next month we'll be looking for teenagers to invite onto our team and receiving applications. We're really looking forward to seeing who God has lined up to come with us! We'll then start the weekly meetings mid-February until we go in July. During this time we will also be fundraising as a team. If you would like more information on the fundraising or want to donate to the team please email me on laurenfry@hotmail.co.uk.
Every year has a different theme, with this year's being One Matters. It's about these young people having one chance to go on this one team, united for one cause to go this one summer and make a difference.
Ephesians 4:4-6 "There is one body and one spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all."

To find out more information or apply for a team visit... http://exodusonline.org.uk/small-groups/teams/2010-team-details.php
And you can check out the promo video here...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrYYxtSR9eU&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Lauren :)