It is hard to believe it is already the end of September. Recently Root Soup has been quite busy catering and hosting events. The crew hosted a fundraising cinema night at a 1950’s Tudor style cinema in Comber. The movie was great. The food was great. The turnout was great. We watched Radio and had old fashioned candies and popcorn! Doesn’t get much better than that!
Then, last Sunday, Root Soup catered for over 90 people at an after church lunch. A few people said they were expecting ‘just some vegetable soup’ but were pleasantly surprised by the 3 choices (spicy parsnip, potato and ham, and French onion). The guys from Open Door did a great job greeting people, serving soup and clearing up! It was another successful day even though the cooker blew its fuse and was off for about 30 minutes before we realized!
In addition to Root Soup, we have been busy helping to plan the 10th anniversary for L’Arche Belfast which is on Saturday. Lucy has been in charge of invitations, RSVPs and coordinating the food. Micah (and Root Soup) will make the soup for about 250 people as well as a light dinner for about 40. It will be fun to be a part of a milestone in the history of L’Arche Belfast!
The weather here has begun to be a bit unpredictable, but one day the sun was shining and it was just lovely, so we decided to bike on the Comber Greenway. It is a 7 mile path that we can pick up near to our house. We have been desiring to bike out to Comber for a while and we absolutely loved it (even though we rode into the wind on the way home!). It is always nice to get away from the loud traffic of the Ormeau Road!
One funny story from the Ember (where the core members live): Lucy was helping Jillian to phone her dad one evening and we didn’t get a hold of him so she headed up for her bath, but on the way up she kept saying ‘Larry out drinking. Larry bad boy out drinking. …’ It was incredibly funny! She is such a great woman!
In the midst of the busyness of this time, we were able to get away for a weekend down to Wicklow with Joy, Bobby and their boys. Our friend, Sam (who just moved to Russia) and his family own land in the mountains. They have a beautiful piece of land and were gracious enough to let us use their ‘hut’. It was a brilliant weekend of laughter, reflection and great memories. It is hard to sum up in words how beautiful and peaceful it was! Maybe pictures will do a better job!
In the next week we are really looking forward to celebrating the 10th anniversary of L’Arche as well as have 2 friends visit (Trent and Erin who Micah lived in Seattle with). It will be wonderful to show them a bit of our life here! A prayer request for us is that we find more volunteers soon. We have had 6 for quite some time but because of different circumstances we will be down to 3 at the beginning of October. It will be a tricky month so we would appreciate any prayers!
The past two plus weeks seem to have followed the theme of the summer, busy and beautiful.
We week of August 22-26 was the Root Soup Summer Activities Programme. It was a week full of food, fellowship, and fun. We had eight young men, ages 10 to 17, in the kitchen making soups, buns, wraps, and just about anything else you can think of. We also had other activities for them though out the week. Tuesday we made packed lunches and had a picnic in the park followed by games. Wednesday was our healthy eating day where we talked about healthy eating. Thursday we went out to Bangor to a community farm and learned about gardening. Friday we headed up to the allotment and celebrated the week with a BBQ . Overall it was a great week! Micah was absolutely wiped out by the end of the week.
Lucy went to Root Soup on Wednesday since everyone else was involved in the Summer Activities Programme.I can give you an outside perspective on what happens on a Wednesday in the kitchen. When we arrived in the kitchen, we began with some tea and coffee (typical Northern Irish style).There were 2 guys from Open Door Housing, 2 L’Arche people, me and Neil (another assistant at L’Arche).Then we began to cook cottage pie and flour-free peanut butter cookies.Everyone chipped in on the chopping, stirring, peeling and preparations.During the time we were preparing, a few of the other guys from Open Door would stop through.I heard several times that Micah and I look like siblings because of our smiles.I have heard that as you live with a person longer you start to look like them but it’s just been 2 years for us!Imagine us after 50!After the preparations were done we started on the cookies. I didn’t realize that peanut butter cookies were so American, but the guys thought it was really weird to make cookies with peanut butter. They were convinced by the end of the meal that it was a good idea!Throughout the lunch together, the conversation ranged from politics to films to favourite activities to job searching.My perspective of Root Soup was reinforced by being in the kitchen.It is an amazing project that connects people from many different backgrounds, capabilities, and outlooks through cooking and eating together in the spirit of growth and community.
The weekend following the summer scheme, we had a stay-cation (rather than a vacation).We stayed behind from a work-weekend at Corrymeela and church camp to spend some time relaxing together. We had nice food, did some errands and simply hung out.It was the perfect weekend of no obligations!
Our friend, Sam, had a premier for his documentary, Wannabes that showed on BBC.The documentary followed a band from West Belfast as they tried to ‘make it’. Check out the trailer for the documentary below! Beware there are a few naughty words...
Last weekend we had the chance to go to Scotland with Thomas. Thomas LOVES going on holiday so it has been about all he could talk about for a few weeks.The requests that Thomas made for the trip were that we flew in a plane, had burgers, had a road trip and stayed in a hotel.So once we checked those off we were able to be creative with the other things we did. In the airport, Thomas was in a wheelchair so he didn’t pass through the metal detector and had to be patted down.Afterwards he told us, ‘That man touched me,’ which is incredibly true, but wasn’t what we wanted a vulnerable adult saying in a public space! We flew into Glasgow airport and rented a car to drive up to Inverness. We stopped for lunch on Loch Lomond before continuing.Most of the way up was a national park which was gorgeous!There were many Lochs, mountains and heather (which was purple and beautiful!). By the time we got to our hostel just off Loch Ness, we were all pretty hungry and tired from the trip!
Loch Lomond
Loch Ness
On Friday, we went down to Fort Williams and had a delicious seafood lunch before having a boat trip on Loch Linnhe.We saw seals, salmon farms and just tons of natural beauty. The pictures will explain it better than me.After a bit of shopping we headed to a pub for dinner.
Hanging out on the boat.
A view of Loch Linnhe, that we took our boat trip on.
On Saturday we had our road trip up to the northwest coast. It was gorgeous but a bit too much driving for one day!Again the pictures will show our day better than anything I could describe.
A view from a lookout on the north coast of Scotland.
The amazing Scottish Highland cattle.
Amazing view over Loch Ness
Our final day, Sunday, we drove back down to Glasgow to fly home.We sadly didn’t get any pictures of the beautiful scenery because we were a bit short on time.By the time we were back in Belfast, we were all ready to be home, but we had a brilliant time in Scotland with Thomas.
Check out the poem below that we have been reflecting on today. It was written by a Northern Irish man.
