Open Mic Night in Gorey!

Today was another awesome day in our lovely town of Gorey, Ireland.  We just finished our first of two open mic nights for the trip.  Tonight we mostly let the Irish teens perform as they wanted, and next week we will be having a similar night before we leave with a few performances but also a message about why we are here and what we believe.  All the performances were great today!  Right now we are running the drop-in center out of the Gorey Methodist Church, so as I am typing this most of our team are moving pews back the way they were and taking down all of our Empire equipment in time for church tomorrow, haha!  We will be setting it all back up on Monday to continue the drop-in next week. :)

This marks (about) half way through our trip here.  The time seems to have gone so fast, we feel like we all just got off the plane in Dublin!  I expect the second week to go just as fast, so we are encouraging our kids to soak in every moment they have here and to not take the time we have with the Irish teens for granted.  God seems to be blessing The Empire immensely this year, bringing out so many new teens and building awesome relationships with our kids.  Praise Him!

Tomorrow we will attend church here at the Methodist and then have a relaxing time at Steven Foster's house for a BBQ with some of the Irish student leaders.  After that, of course we will be watching the World Cup final with some Irish teens, woo!  Monday is going to be the well-deserved day off for our American teenagers, where we will have some time to spend with each other as a team and end the day with a worship night to rejuvenate our energy and remind us all of our purpose here--to serve our big and wonderful God! (We will probably put up another post Monday night or Tuesday morning to let you know how it all went!)

Thank you all so much for your continual prayer and support, God is good!!

Amy :)