A Genuine Monday

Today a group of 9 of us went Christmas Caroling in a low-income community in New Castle. It was a different experience than the caroling in the States that we are used to. The people of Northern Ireland are a lot more closed off and guarded than the people we are used to in America. We experienced much rejection and many slammed doors. There were a few people mocking us and cursing at us. Our group could only guess that the reason for all of this was because the people of Northern Ireland must still be well guarded because of the war that just recently ended. However, there is still much fighting and underlining religious tention. There is still a presence of war and heavieness here and the people definitely have there guard on all the time. It was pretty discourageing to attempt to simply spread the love of Christ and get rejected for it. But, the group kept our spirits up by remembering that Jesus was also rejected many times. Although it was a rough expreiece, there was one woman who made the it well worth it. Very discouraged and distraught from the rejections of the other homes, we decided to knock on one more door. By the look of the decorations it seemed like this person would enjoy a Christmas carol. As soon as the older woman came to the door and we started singing we could see the emotion in her face. The woman began to cry while we sang to he "Joy to the World." I remember going into the second verse of the song and singing the part that says "the glories of His righteounes and wonders of his love," and praying that this woman and her household would indeed know the wonders of Christ's love. The woman was one of the few people that let us carol for her, but we were also blessed by blessing her and sharing a little bit of God's love with her. All in all the caroling experiece was stretching and humbling. We didn't feel like we got through to many people or that we were being very efffective, but sometimes God works in ways we do not understand. Even if this one woman was the only one we got through to, the bible says that the shepherd will leave the 99 to look for the one lost lamb. So, that one woman obviously was very important to God. We believe that God rejoiced, and so did we, because of the love that only recieved by one.

- Brittany Pavilonis


"It's not black ink on white pages- it's the living God." - John Moxen