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 :)