Curry Chronicles
Summer 2008

Another school year is “done and dusted” as they say here. We’ve seen yet another set of secondary students through their “junior exams” and “leaving cert exams”. Now there is the long wait for the results in August.

We’ve also said good-bye to our three one-year interns: Scott Nelson, Cat Kelleher and Leanna Kelton. In addition, two of our Irish workers are also leaving this summer. Anne Buckley who directed our Bridges Program will be working closer to her home in another town, which will mean no more long commutes into Galway. Aine Daly is also leaving Galway to return to her hometown. We are already missing all of these special people. Each of them, along with the rest of the staff, has worked like crazy to accomplish a great deal this year. This was also our first year (autumn and spring) to have Ministry Experience students join us…three each semester. This enabled us to keep the café going at full speed (serving customers and retreat students), as well as facilitating a very full schedule of school events and talks.

We learned long ago that the work here is not to be about “numbers”, but about faithfulness to the direction of the Lord. Nonetheless, we were so busy that, just as it is encouraging to look back upon a plowed field to recognize the work accomplished, so it was encouraging for our hard-working staff to look at what had taken place this year.
Here is an example what the 2007-2008 school year looked like:

• We facilitated 23 Passion Retreats in various schools, offering a purity talk, drug and alcohol awareness classes, and a gospel presentation through testimonies, stories and teachings.
• Of the 461 students who participated in these retreats, 212 signed commitments to consider the truth of Christ for their lives.
• We ran groups in Lectio Divina (Meditating on scripture and praying) 13 times.
•  The Plugged-in Youth Café program was used 57 times in various classes.
• The program Amazing Gift was given in 4 classes.
• Tony Anthony’s life story and conversion called “Taming the Tiger” was shown on DVD in 2 classes.

Beyond the school work, we carried on teaching programs involving adults. We continued our evangelism training on various Saturdays, which was followed by “taking it to the streets” of downtown Galway. This looked like:

• Five guest speakers gave training on evangelism.
• Street evangelism was carried out on nine Saturday afternoons.
• Two guest speakers spoke in the café.
• Seven speakers shared in faith formation classes.
• Six opportunities for testimony sharing at Life in the Spirit Seminars.

This was complimented by the other ministries and outreaches.

• Our bookshop, was asked to supply a book table at numerous events, thus allowing us to get Bibles and study materials into many hands.
• The Emmaus Scripture School had 9 part-time students the first semester and 18 the second semester.
• Our Prayer and counseling ministries offered hope to many through prayer, counsel, and meeting with individuals for follow-up.
• The Bridges Crisis Pregnancy program reached out to young women through phone and personal counseling, ultrasounds and help with essential needs during and following pregnancy.

Please pray for each of us here that we never forget that the café is an outreach, first and foremost. We’ve had such an increase this year in “traffic” in the café, the bookstore, in programs and in the Scripture School that we are kept on our toes. We continue to look for ways to streamline the “work” so that we have more time to spend with individuals. We continue to ask the Lord to supply the workers needed for this harvest field.

Ministry Experience Students: Kelsie Hampshire, Ben Goller, & Ben Mattice

This semester in addition to our regular An Tobar Nua family, we welcome Orla Downey and Amanda Feeney both from Ireland; and Dean Shirley from Texas.

Serving a Very Faithful Lord,
Kelly, Susan, Natalie and Leah Curry