As The University of Sheffield finished exams last Friday, our team is slowly transitioning our focus from English students to international students. This past week has been making final follow-ups with the English students who will be heading home for their summer.
Birmingham
Monday of this weekwas a little different for us. We took a day trip to Birmingham in order to look at a few different possible Universities for the Campus Outreach expansion. At the first campus we looked at, we got personal tours from students who attend the school and are also apart of the local church. The campus was beautiful. It was located in the city but once on campus, the city feel vanished. We found out that at most campuses there are many societies students can join depending on their interests. Freshmen halls seem to be very similar at many of the Universities. One thing we have found that is different from the states is that each person has their own room and only shares a kitchen and living room with other students. Students are always very surprised when I tell them that I have never had my own room before. This was a fun filled afternoon getting to learn more about the college life and how Christian ministries can function on the campus. In the evening, once we arrived back in Sheffield, we had the honor of watching America’s first football game in the world cup at a family’s house from The Crowded House. They invited the whole team over along with two other Americans who have lived in the UK for a few years. They asked us to bring stuff to make s’mores because they had never had one before. We ended up putting the marshmallows in the oven in order to cook them, which turned out to be a great way to cook many in a short time. Our team was extremely grateful for their hospitality and felt very welcomed. We were also proud to be American as we beat Ghana 2-1.
Dublin
As was mentioned earlier, the English students have finished up their final exams and many are going home for the summer. The international students are also on a little break right now and many are doing some traveling. Our team is taking this time to travel a little bit ourselves with the purpose of a little team bonding and possibly looking at other Universities for the CO expansion investigation. We are currently in Dublin, Ireland. Wednesday we spent the night in the airport in order to catch our 6:30am plane. We didn’t get much sleep but managed to enjoy Thursday for all that it offered. We walked around the beautiful city and saw a few old cathedrals and museums. We are staying at a University about thirty minutes outside Dublin, which is extremely gorgeous! We were told that a building from Harry Potter was based off of the building we are staying in. We will be going to Cliffs of Moher tomorrow, which many have said is a must see. Saturday we will be heading back to England. We hope that this little get away will be refreshing as we see new parts of the world and so far it has been!
We cannot thank you enough for allowing us to have this experience of seeing what God is doing over in the UK.
Prayer requests:
- Safe travels in Ireland
- That we would find out information about the Universities we are investigating for the expansion
- Team Unity during travel
- As our schedule is a little different this next week, pray that we could find time to spend with the Lord each day as that can be harder when schedules are changing.
-Lindsey Oawster