8th Day, May 14: Skainos, Belfast City Tour

Today was another beautiful day in Belfast. The sun was shining as we ate breakfast and started our day with devotions.

Today was spent at Skainos, the East Belfast Mission, supported by the Methodist Church. We were greeted by Fiona the volunteer coordinator who gave us the list of jobs that were available:

Fiona then brought us up to a conference room to see a presentation by Andrew, another administrator at Skainos, to give us an over view of the work being done at Skainos.

 Mike gave Andrew a donation collected from last years team, in memory of Margaret Furgeson, who the team had worked with for the past 5-6 years.

After Andrew's presentation, we got a walking tour of the facility with Gary.

Because the jobs we would be doing were spread out in Belfast, we decided to have a slightly early lunch before heading out. We ate the cafe in Skainos. They had a very nice selection and high quality food.

Then it was time to work. We broke up into three teams. Three people stayed at Skainos to do dishes. Four people had a five minute walk to get to the Re:Store of Connswater. The last group of six took taxi's to the Re:Stores in Park Center Mall.

The group that stayed at Skainos as it turned out, did not do dishes. The cook really needed them to dice onions and cut peppers:

 They were so fast with the task that more tasks needed to be found. They had the fun of breaking down boxes which we are all sure was tones of fun.

 They toured the vegetable garden, helped 5th years students with their homework and cut out admission tickets and raffle tickets for an up coming fund raiser.    

The group that walked to the Re:Store were assigned the task of cleaning and organizing the store. One of the piles of stuff they needed to sort to be sold. A skateboard was found, cleaned up and displayed and within minutes it was sold for 6 pounds. There was also furniture that they cleaned up and fixed from the supplies at the store so the item would be sold more easily. They even improved a vanity table by changing the table top with a wicker item and adding shells to make it more presentable. They organized books and toys and cleaned and organized brick-n-brack.

The team of six worked in three stores. The Re:Stores were actually in a mall. One store was household, furniture and clothes, across the hall was the children's store with toys, clothes and books and then down around the corner was the bridal shop. Two people cleaned up and organized the bridal shop:

 Two people cleaned and organized the children's store

and two stayed in the home store and moved furniture that was sold, to the back room so it was ready to be delivered and then hung up clothes and steamed them without scorching our fingers.

The Re:Stores were run mostly by volunteers. At the mall stores, in the children's store and bridal store, our team was the sales people. The bridal store is only open three days a week because they cannot get the volunteers. The children's store sold some items by helping customers.

Tonight was dinner at Fratelli Italian restaurant.

 Our team got Judy to come out of retirement to give us a city tour in the evening.

No tour would be over without pictures of a few true Irishpersons in our group:

Submitted by Darcianne Leizer