What are we doing?

Hello readers! The past few weeks have been crazy busy, but full of blessings! For those of you who may be confused on what exactly we are doing here and what ministries we are working with, allow me to explain our exciting new lifestyle!

Dundrum is a small town situated on the east coast of County Down, Northern Ireland just 4 miles from the popular seaside resort of Newcastle at the foot of the Mourne Mountains. In the past 10 years, Dundrum has become a ghost town with littler or no job opportunities. In recent years however, the population has been increasing proportionally with the developments and is currently around 3000.

With Dundrum growing, the numbers of young people in the area are growing as well. Therefore, the need for youth ministry and the opportunity for kids to hear about the love of Jesus is also increasing.

Right now, Danielle and I are working with a community ministry called R.I.O.T. (Revival In Our Town). RIOT’s mission is to benefit the inhabitants of Dundrum by providing a welcoming community facility for all ages. Their overall goal is to improve the life of the community, and create programs for groups like: Mums & Tots, Suicide Awareness, senior afternoon activities, smoking cessation programs, ect. Every Friday night there is a high school drop in where kids can come to hang out in a safe and accepting environment. The point is to show that Christ loves and accepts them for who they are.

We are also working at the Kairos, which is a youth ministry very similar to RIOT, but located in Newcastle. (About 10 minutes outside of Dundrum) It provides after school homework drop in time, drop in hang out times, worship nights, and many other events. Kairos and RIOT partner together to reach the youth of the area. Danielle and I have the pleasure of volunteering at both ministries.

We are having a great time here and we are staying very busy! We have met so many people in the past two weeks and we are feeling very at home now. Our theme of this trip is to build “intentional relationships.” We have already formed so many relationships and friendships, and with each new relationship our goal is to show who Jesus is.  

We will be starting an e-mail newsletter on top of this blog that will contain some more specifics on what we are doing and what we are involved in. If you are interested in being on our e-mail list, e-mail us at ymi.jenna.danielle@gmail.com, with the subject “newsletter.” We will hopefully be sending our first newsletter out in the next week. 

The Pre Trip

Hey everyone! Welcome to Danielle and Jenna's first blog!

We started our adventure to Northern Ireland Wednesday afternoon with a delayed flight to Newark and an impromptu sprint for our transfer flight. But thankfully, we arrived in Seattle on schedule and had the opportunity to spend two days with the Townshend family. Though our first day was infamous, rainy Seattle weather, we got to spend a wonderful day as tourists of Seattle. We also got to meet some teens from Rob's youth group (some of which visit in the wee hours of the morning while we are still sleeping in the front room.) It was awesome to see the Townshends again. They are doing wonderfully and we are so thankful for them putting up with us for a few nights!

Saturday morning we arrived at YMI training and met our teammate Nick Getchell and our coordinator John Stiffler and his wife Rose. Training was an awesome experience; John and YMI did a great job getting us ready for this trip and we learned a ton in a short time about mission work! We experienced two host home dinners, an early morning Liverpool Manchester United soccer game, a scavenger hunt around Tacoma, and lessons on how to be missionaries.

Early Monday morning we boarded a plane to Chicago, had a 6 hour layover, and arrived in Dublin on Tuesday. The missionary we are interning for, Richie, picked us up and drove us to our new home in Dundrum, Northern Ireland. And now the adventure begins...

We would like to thank everyone who has supported us and is still supporting us for this trip! All the prayer, encouraging words, and donations have made this trip possible. We are so excited for everything God has in store for us here and we cannot wait to get started! Financial update, Jenna has raised all of her funds and Danielle only has $3,000 more to go! So if you would still like to donate, it is greatly appreciated! 

Thanks for reading! :)