Meet My Friends, part 6

For the last two team members, we move to the north-eastern corner of Belfast, where the two Southern girls live. Elizabeth’s from Texas, and the rest of the team routinely teases her for her accent. She works in another town, just east of Belfast, so in keeping with the geographical theme of these posts, you’ll meet her properly next week. Her roommate, Hannah, is from western Virginia. Hannah got her degree in English from Mary Washington University, in Fredericksburg, VA. She has a passion for community work, especially for connecting churches with community organizations. She organized a Habitat for Humanity building team from her church here on Valentine’s Day. I joined in the painting-and-roofing madness, and it was loads of fun.

Hannah works with Dundonald Methodist Church in the Ballybeen estate. Ballybeen is a Loyalist government housing estate, similar to where I live in Seymour Hill (but much bigger). The community, therefore, is working-class – however, a lot of Dundonald Methodist’s congregation are middle class and come from outside the estate. The church runs Dundonald Family and Community Initiative, a community organization that runs quite a few family- and child-oriented programmes. These include an afterschools club and parents-and-toddlers playgroups.

Hannah and I have helped each other out on various church programmes. She came over and helped with my youth group’s lock-in a couple of months ago. I tagged along for her Habitat for Humanity build. And just yesterday, I was up at Dundonald Methodist helping out with a project at the afterschools club. Hannah and I share a love of the countryside and of hiking, so we went walking in the morning on our retreat. It was Hannah who came up with the slightly crazy (but really fun) idea of going wading in the ocean during the retreat. She’s the sort of person who always a smile and a spark of a fun idea ready.

Hannah and I, on the beach at our retreat a couple weeks ago. 

Word of the Day: Hoke. (As usual, I’m just guessing on the spelling.) This is rather an indescribable word. It kind of means “poke around,” but not quite. If a pie is stuck in the pie pan, then you have to “hoke it out.” If you’ve lost something, you’ll “hoke around and find it.”