Ireland Trip

wow!! well, as you noticed in the last short post, steph and I got back into the states late Saturday night. We mostly just rested up yesterday and caught up on a few voicemails and email messages. Today we are back in the office and working, trying to get the last few things finished up in preparation for the Belgium trip (which we leave for on Monday the 16th and will be gone for 3 weeks).
The last 2 weeks were great! Steph and I got to go to Ireland a few days early and visit some friends and do some sightseeing. We arriving in Ireland on the 27th of June, took a bus up to Dublin and stayed there with some friends. We walked around Dublin city and then some other areas in the "suburbs", visited some friends, and got to see alot of cool sites. It was so great to be back over there and also to get to take steph with me. Then on Fri. the 29th we traveled back across the country to Limerick, where we did some more sightseeing and stayed in a Bed and Breakfast.
Finally on Sat. the 30th, the rest of the team (Jennifer, Ronni, Taylor, Kristin, and Seth) arrived in Shannon to meet us for the camp. Also joining us from Ireland were Elton, Ngoni, and George. Overall, we had a great team and we all got along really well, and it was so much fun!! The first two days we went sightseeing to Killarney (Muckross National Park) and then to the Cliffs of Moher, and finally to Lahinch where we went surfing.
The main purpose of the trip was doing a basketball camp Mon-Fri. for 4 hours each day, and then to do outreach with the Shannon Evangelical Church. The basketball camps went really really well!! We had about 30-35 kids and they were very excited to learn and made great progress throughout the week. In the evenings, we had O-Zone (11-14) and JamZone (15-19) for the kids on Mon, Wed, and Fri. at the church. This is the youth group meeting (which is usually just friday nights, but this was a special week) and it was alot of fun. Not too many kids from the camp came to these three evening events, which was a little disappointing but we are trusting that God still moved in their hearts as they saw something different about our team. The other two nights, Tuesday and Thursday, we had sporting events. Tuesday was the Mini World Cup, where we had basketball games between a US team (ours), an Irish team, Filipino team, and then a Zimbabwean team. Also, Seth and I and Ronni sang the national athem for the US, needless to say it wasnt pretty because seth and i were singing. While we sang, steph and kristin had made up an interpretive dance to go along and it was super funny! It will all be on YouTube, so look for that soon!! (http://www.youtube.com/phatrhino13) Then on Thursday we had a night where we split up all the kids from the camp into different teams and they played each other in real games, and invited all their parents. Not many parents came, but it was a really fun night!!
That pretty much sums up our week. The only bad thing was it was too short. I wish we could have been there so much longer!! well, leaving work now. I'll post again soon.