The end of summer...

..... is now taken over with the Youth Ministry Summer School run by the Presbyterian, Methodist and Church of Ireland Youth departments in Ireland. This is the 3rd year of it's existence but it seems already to be "the norm" for me. So tomorrow morning, bright and early, I'll be leaving Rob and Stewie (and Boomer - my sister's hamster who we're looking after while she's on holiday) to look after themselves for a few days while I swot up on youth ministry once more.

This year Marv Penner and Kenda Creasy Dean will be the keynote speakers. I'm quite excited to hear from Marv about family ministry as that's part of my role in Bannside and something I really want to develop more. Mind you I'm also real excited about meeting with other people who love working with young people too.

I'll be back in a few days but I'm sure I'll be way too tired to post for a few days!

You spin me right round....

...though maybe not with this worship. Yes I'm sure God is pleased with this worship, but I'm not sure I could praise by singing this and being able to focus on God too.



HT to me in my small corner

I'm such a wuss for puppy eyes

I've mentioned before how fond I am of my wee pup (yeah he's a fully grown dog now but he still acts like a pup): I've made him Doggie Treats and Birthday Cake. And spoiled him with other treats like bones, pigs ears and toys and even little bits of bacon buttie. He gets great big long walks and lots of mad fetch. He is a spoilt wee boy who has taken over our sofa, well not only the sofa but the whole house and garden, and often takes over ownership of my lap.

I've become such a sucker for big puppy dog eyes and it turns out it's not only Stewie's eyes I fall for. In the past I've fallen for dogs who've been lost and followed me like "Mustard" and Digger who I couldn't help but try to get back to their owner. In fact I did the same once about 12 years ago when I first had a dog (a cute and chubby little Jack Russell called Mutt) and an old english sheepdog pup followed us home one day - my sister and I loved this wee dog but couldn't help but try and get them back to their owner again.

Today I was driving home from the holiday Bible club and almost ran over a little Jack Russell. I had to pull over and see if I had and if he was ok. As soon as I got out of my car this little dog came running over to say hello. I didn't see anyone around and I couldn't find a tag for a name or number on him so I decided to take him to the vet to see if he was chipped or anything. He was so cute and tiny and kept trying to sit on my lap (I don't think he liked the smell of Stewie on the passenger seat).



It turned out he wasn't chipped, the vet couldn't take him in and the dog warden wasn't answering the phone so I decided I'd bring him home and call the warden later after lunch time, but I ended up driving past where I had found the dog again and found someone who knew where the dog was from. I couldn't help but like this wee dog, he was so friendly and sweet and I admit I did ponder how Stewie and Rob would react to this new dog, but then I remembered how spoilt Stewie is and I'm not sure he would cope with the competition.

Mega Quest

This week our church is running the annual holiday bible club for primary school kids. The past few years I've always felt a bit panicked about it and rushed about prep at the last minute. This year for the half hour before we started on Monday I stood in the middle of the hall and couldn't think of anything else that needed done and it made me panic that I may have forgotten something. The thing was that this year I was much more organised than the previous 2 years. Maybe it was experience or maybe it was that I have become better at planning my time but either way my lack of last minute panic made me panic anyways. Funny isn't it? Perhaps next year I'll have learnt from this and won't be panicking.

We've been using a resource called Mega Quest which we've mixed a little with Desert Detectives. Monday we covered the story of creation, Tuesday we looked at Moses receiving the commandments and today we heard the story of Jesus' death and resurrection. Tomorrow is the disciples on the road to Emmaus and Friday is about what heaven will be like. We're basically covering the Bible cover to cover - something which some of the parents have really appreciated this and how a couple of the kids have been asking where other Bible characters fit into the story. A couple of the younger kids are experiencing worship led by a band playing songs they know for the first time and they've been excited about this - one was asking his mum "will the big boys and girls be playing the fun music again today?" It really excites me that kids are engaging and are excited about what we're doing and it excites me to see what God is doing through our club in these kids' lives. Another thing I'm excited about is how our young people are getting involved and gaining leadership experience through it all too. I need to work on ways to continue developing and using the talents they have and finding ways they can serve God more.

I came across the cartoon on Geek and Poke and couldn't help but add it in here.

1 year blogaversary!!!!

OK so I've been a sucky blogger the last couple of months but hey I'm still posting occasionally so I think I deserve to celebrate my 1 year blogaversary!!!!!! It's been one year today since I made my first post and I don't think I've done too badly this is my 248th post too which would be an average of about 21 posts a month so I'm happy with that.

I've wrote about my life as a youth and family worker, blogged some youth work resources and childrens addresses, talked a LOT about my wee pup Stewie (yeah he may be 19 months now but he'll always be my wee pup), posted some videos that have amused or inspired me and also about my food blog (Ruth's Kitchen Experiments).

To mark this occasion I spent part of yesterday baking (predictable eh?) some Chocolate Cupcakes with Strawberry Chocolate Ganache



Cute eh? And very tasty!!! I took them to youth group tonight and with only 3 of us there tonight we ate 9 of the 12 between us then Lynn took the rest home to her family to devour so I'm sure they're long gone now!

Animation

Well Tech Camp is over now for 2008, but there's still a couple of little things to do before I can say it's officially all done for this year.

It was a fantastic camp and I'm surprised it went so well seeing as I was organising it this year!!!!! You should head over to the PCI Tech Camp 08 blog to see what all we were up to.

Anyways about a week or so before the camp we leaders headed over to NI Screen to learn more about animation and here's the little video Rob and I made on the day - wish we had more time for it but hey not bad for half an hours work!

If people were like fonts....

I'm posting this geek type video because I'm in the middle of Tech Camp and feeling the need to extend the sharing of geekiness to my blog. Someone (sorry can't remember who) Twittered about this video. So very funny, a lot of thought went into this.



It's day 3 and we've been having a great week so far at camp. On Monday we did some filming and editing and went out on a photo scavenger hunt round Belfast - you can see the photos from that on our Tumblr Account. Yesterday we focussed on the internet. We reviewed some church websites and discussed what was good and what was bad about them, then we set up the tumblr account, set up a uStream and a Tech Camp Blog. And today we're working on some animation and making little cartoons which I'm sure will appear on the blog at some point soon.

I'd better head on now though and get some juice and biscuits sorted for break. Ciao!

Tech Camp

I can't believe it!!!! Tech Camp starts on Monday! For the past week I've been sorting out little bits and pieces for it but still feeling that there is loads to do..... like cleaning out my car for a start! I'm really hoping and praying that it all goes well this year, it's my first year organising everything whereas in the past I came as a leader and helped out in whatever way I could. But I'm really excited about what we'll be doing, which I don't want to reveal here for fear it may spoil it for our campers but I promise there will be a Tech Camp 08 blog which I'll add a link to during the week.

I'd best get back to getting this prepared!!!! But keep the camp in your thoughts and prayers please!!!

Different busy

When I get to May/June things seem to slow down that little bit as the young people are doing exams or enjoying the sunshine, more people are heading off in their caravans for the weekend and organisations are closing for the summer time. I enjoy this time in youth group because we don't plan anything really and just have the time open as a drop in and decide what we want to do when we're there.

July is when the busyness all kicks off again and a lot of people in the church don't understand and think surely all the organisations have stopped, what exactly do i do with my time? But this is a time when I'm cooped up in the middle of planning for the Holiday Club for the children, running weekly events for our youth, planning for a youth camp called Tech Camp run by the Presbyterian Church in Ireland as well as preparing for Autumn (and even next summer!) and this year preparing for our minister retiring in September. There really is a lot to be getting done

I have to confess that this must be my favourite time in the year because I love the change in pace, the change in the attitude people have over the summer and the fact that I get a little time to myself to think through and plan properly for everything, whereas the rest of the year I feel so rushed from running between one meeting and the next.

However I'm sure once I'm in the middle of September with all our organisations starting up again I'll probably be at the point where I'm glad to have the structure back again! In the meantime I'm just loving the summer!!!!!


Photo sourced from SXC

Multilingual

How cool is this kid! He talks all sorts of languages: French, German, Italian, Japanese... so much more! I'm sure his vocabulary is somewhat limited though but impressive nonetheless





Amazing Kid - Speaks 13 Languages - video powered by Metacafe

Recently with exam season just being over a lot of our youth group had been conversing in French or Spanish to practice for their oral exams which led to arguments about how to pronounce words or if they were using the right words. I haven't studied Spanish before and it's been almost 10 years since i did my GCSE French so I'm quite rusty, but it was fun trying to remember it all and have little conversations.

A wedding to remember

A few months ago on twitter a comment popped up from marramgrass saying "So many people keep asking me to shoot weddings, I'm starting to wonder if I should stop saying no out of hand." and a brief twitter conversation began where in summary I suggested he get a youth group to pose as a wedding party and then link it into a Bible study on Christ as the groom and the Church as the bride. A few days after suggesting it the cogs started turning in my head and I thought....

1) I could make a whole series of wedding related Bible studies out of this
2) There's bound to be some children's address potential too and most importantly.....
3) This could be a great end of year bash!

So about a month later after all this thinking I fired an email off to Mr Marramgrass who was keen to give it a go too. We set a date and the next time I met the youth group I announced it and had volunteers to be the bride and groom thus unofficially engaging them to be married in 4 weeks time. Now a lot of people have laughed at me for having had a brief engagement myself and trying to plan a wedding in such a short space of time but thankfully there wasn't as much planning for this one given that we already have a church, have halls for the catering etc, the date was set and I was ready to just wing it. The bride got a little carried away in the planning and had gone to the props department in school to try on about 12 different dresses out of the 30 or so they had (the local wedding dress shop had donated them all) and picked one and nearly each time I was speaking to her since there were conversations about how she would do her hair etc. In contrast most of the guys were wondering what food there would be lol.

Well the big day rolled round and pretty much everyone had a job, there was the bride and groom, the "minister", the organist, the father and mother of the bride, bridesmaids, best man, dj, father of the groom and me the caterer who also doubled as the mother of the groom. It was all pretty thrown together with "vows" written at the last minute and the praise and reading being sorted about half an hour before we began.

It was hilarious, the most surreal wedding I've ever been to. Well it's just funny when the bride and groom give each other jelly shaped rings vowing:
"With this ring I promise to make your finger sticky, I promise to laugh at your jokes in your speech when no one else does and I promise to eat your share of the cake"

After all that craziness we posed for some photos then went to eat and dance the night away! It was a fab day which they've been asking to do again ever since! I think I'll wait a couple of years to plan another one. in the mean time enjoy some of the fab photos Mark took for us.







The guys all waiting on the girls.... what else is new?


Here come's the bride at a million miles an hour!


This is one really casual minister...


The bride and groom....


.... you would think they actually liked each other!


Hitting the dance floor


The Wedding cake I made that was devoured in a matter of minutes


Everyone together


The plan is to prepare a series of Bible studies for the group over the summer so they will be ready in time for the Autumn when we start back again.... and maybe sneak in a few children's addresses about it over the summer.

Better than Wii?

Hey... I'm shocked because I haven't posted here in over 2 weeks!!! Sorry folks, have had a busy time of it. I do have lots going on that I want to blog about like our big end of year bash for the youth group (which I promise I will soon) and PCI's Youth night and Kid's Praise Party last weekend or maybe even just some new children's talks and youth Bible studies. For now though please accept my apology and enjoy this video. I think this has loads of potential

10 optical illusions

Another great video courtesy of Marko

10 optical illusions in 2 minutes....

Our first anniversary celebrations

I've been really bad and not blogged this sooner, but I hope you'll forgive me for the tardiness of this!

It all kind of started on the 19th April (day before our anniversary) when we took a bit of a road trip with Stewie and his belongings up to Conlig because he was going to stay with friends for the weekend.

We traveled home via Belfast and decided to stop into the Odyssey to get some food from the Indian Ocean. It was delicious (as usual) but the dish I ordered reminded me more of Chinese than Indian food, besides the point though, because we had a lovely meal then headed home to get tucked up in bed to watch a movie and eventually fell asleep.

We got up the next morning after a long lie in, which is very strange for me seeing as it was a Sunday and that's usually the busiest day in my week. We got up and packed our overnight bag and headed down to Newcastle for our overnight stay in the Slieve Donard Hotel. Neither of us had been before (at least as far as we can remember) and as we drove towards the building I think both our jaws dropped. It's a stunning hotel built right beside the sea with a beautiful view of the Slieve Donard, so it was a great place to go away to and relax.

The Slieve Donard Hotel


We walked up to the door and were greeted by a doorman holding open the door for us... I felt all posh already! We walked in and I was breathless at the beautiful reception hall. We got all checked in and headed to our room - we dumped our bags and headed straight for the spa to enjoy the swimming pool with an incredible view and the heat experiences. This was sooooo relaxing! We hadn't booked any treatments but this seemed to be enough on its own.

When you visit Newcastle, it seems like a law that you have to get some ice cream - after all you are beside the sea! So we headed into Newcastle to get some Maud's and couldn't help but get their top selling flavour known as "poor bear" but used to be (and still is in my eyes) "Pooh Bear" because it's ice cream with honeycomb through it. It's such a delicious treat and something we try to make ourselves at home but it's never as good as Maud's version.

We walked back to the hotel and up to our room, then watched a little tv while we waited for the time to head downstairs for our evening meal. A very posh affair indeed!!! As soon as we were seated the wine waiter introduced himself and took our order, as soon as he left a waitress offered us some bread rolls, then shortly after that we were asked for our order from the menu. And what a menu it was!



I ordered the barberry duck with rhubarb chutney and potato gratin and Rob ordered the fillet of beef. Both very delicious dishes! And came to the table looking rather classy too....



Then for dessert I went for the hot dessert of the day - sponge pudding with custard.



We had brought our top tier of wedding cake with us so Rob skipped dessert and had some of the cake where as I was a pie and had both!



I can't believe it has been a year where we've gone from this:



to this:


And it's a shame we didn't get to have any of the cake a year ago at the wedding because I would imagine (well I hope so anyway) that it was tastier than the top tier was after being frozen for a year and defrosted. The marzipan kind of "sweated" through the cake making it all taste of marzipan and it was also quite a hard cake (and yes it was defrosted fully!) so we didn't eat very much of it at all. Still we had a beautiful meal and were well looked after.

After what I thought was a great night's sleep on a really comfy bed (Rob wasn't fond of it and thought he was getting a sore back) we woke up and headed for breakfast with almost everything you could want for breakfast, the option of a cooked one, cereals, fruit, cheeses, hams, toast, bagels, croissants... and much more. It was a lovely relaxing breakfast in a dining room while some guests read the morning paper and sipped their tea.

I was sad to be going home so soon after this but we had an incredible time there and I'm pretty sure we'll be back, if not for the night at least for the spa!!!! We had a fantastic time celebrating our first full year of marriage and we had a fantastic first year together. I'm excited to see what the future will bring for us and what other things we will be celebrating together.

Free Youth Bible Study 2 - Clay Pot

As we're coming into the summer and the tone and speed of youth group slows down due to the warmer weather, exams, families going caravaning etc I decided to take an idea that Duffy Robbins had shared at summer school last August. He spoke about a youth worker (whose name escapes me but if anyone knows please fill me in!!!) who took a large clay pot and broke it into lots of pieces, gave a piece to each of the young people in his group to decorate then glued it all together again.

When I handed out the pieces they were rather confused but loved the idea of expressing themselves also once we'd finished decorating we got to play some rounders outside in the sun.

I took all the pieces home and spent all of the following week gluing it all back together again but it turned out real well -











The following week we had a relaxed casual Bible Study and used the pot as a prop.

Click here to download the Bible Study

If you're using this please get in touch. I'd love to know where and how it's being used - just because I'm curious.