I promise we'll be working...

I have been trying to think of what to write about all day.  I have about a bazillion and one emotions running through me right now.  I could write about my new baby nephew that was born hundreds of miles away, that I won't get to meet for a little while.  I could write about how my baby brother got married and drove off into the sunset this morning with his new wife.  or I could write about how I am having some major mixed emotions about moving overseas in less than two days. 

Instead I'm going to hold off my freaking-out nature for a few more posts, and write about what we'll be doing at Corrymeela in Northern Ireland, and more about this big change in our lives in general. 

First of all - a bit about Corrymeela.  It is a Christian Center that focuses on promoting peace and reconciliation in Northern Ireland.  It's a cool place, and if you want to get more details you should swing by their website, www.corrymeela.org.

I worked at Corrymeela for half of a semester that I spent in Northern Ireland during my junior year of college.  I obviously loved it, but I can't seem to remember why.  It definitely wasn't because of this....

our future view from our backyard

or this...

Corrymeela from the road.

and this almost makes me NOT want to go...

Ballycastle - the closest town.

Basically we'll be providing leadership in 5 major areas at the center.

1.  Spiritual Life
2.  Pastoral Care
3.  Resource Areas
4.  Community Life
5.  Cover

A bit of defining for those of you that need it:
Spiritual Life means that we will be in charge of things such as leading a short worship regularly, forcing other people asking other people to also lead worship, and identifying resources to support worship.  Of all of the areas, this one terrifies me just a teeny tiny bit.  I think we'll be fine at it once we get in the swing of things....I mean we are no strangers to standing in front of a room full of people that only half believe what we're saying...we're teachers.

 Pastoral Care means that we'll meet with the long-term volunteers (ranging in ages from 20ish-olderish) to discuss their well-being, among other things that sort of all relate to that one task.  When they interviewed us for this position, they said that this was the one area most couples were least comfortable with.  We are excited about it though.  You can't be a high school art teacher and not spend your days talking with students about their well-being and mental health.  I, my friends, am well seasoned in this....and not intentionally.

Resource Areas refers to the resources the center will use for school and adult groups that come and learn through us.  We will be brainstorming with the volunteers to build up resource areas (such as crafts, audio/visual, and recreation) and make them even more awesome than they already are.

Community Life means that we will be working with staff and volunteers to improve the day-to-day efficiency of the Center and the quality of the community life.  Since we will all be living as a community this should be fun and challenging all at once.  One of the tasks under this description says that we will be in charge of coordinating on-site recycling and encouraging energy conservation, which got my environmentalist tree-hugging husband all excited.  We'll see how excited he is when he has to haul five giant over-stuffed garage bags of sticky soda cans down to the city center three days a week.

Cover basically refers to one person that is sort of the "go-to" person in the case of an emergency at the Center.  We will be in charge of not only "doing" cover, but also training the long-term volunteers to do it and then scheduling them for the cover schedule. 

So there you have it.  If you're still reading then you were way more interested in what we were doing than I gave you credit for..... or  you were just trying to figure out what kind of suckers would leave everything behind to go to a terrible place like this......