The Church & The Forest

We checked out of hotel and attended the 11:00am service at St. Anne's Cathedral, Church of Ireland (Anglican). We sat right in the front. The choir sang throughout the service. Their voices amplified by the echo lingering in the lofty cathedral ceiling. The service was worshipful with both a majestic and contemplative feel and clearly lifted high the name of Jesus. The congregation was very friendly. After the service, the dean of the cathedral and the bishop wanted a photo with us (for the church's website). The dean personally met with us to thank us for coming and gave us some background to the cathedral. The main part of the sanctuary was built during the early 1900's. This was when Belfast was a prosperous city due to the ship building and other flourishing industries. The stone carvings took one man 12 years. The four mosaics took two women 7 years.

After a quick lunch, we headed to Castlewellen Forest Park. We were there from 2:45 to 4:30. We hiked near a lake, and mansion on the property. Then we walked through the arboretum section (of course). This was beautiful! In fact I thought the evergreen section was more picturesque than Morton Arboretum. I was literally jumping up and down with excitement when we saw the Sequoias/Redwoods that had been planted over 100 years ago. I was privately pleased with the students taking so many photos in this part of the park. We also walked through the Peace Maze, that was formed by 6000 Yew trees. What a fun time we had in God's creation. It was a bit cold with the wind but no rain.

We drove to our new lodging location, Rock Lodge in Newgrange, arriving around 6:00pm. We were excited about our accommodations for the next four nights. It is a cozy Irish-feel place. It has nice common areas with literal rock walls. After our tasty dinner of Irish stew, we met together. After a fun time with the "sharing ball", we talked about the two worship services we attended (Saturday & Sunday). We ended by reading Psalm 96 and singing Be Thou My Vision.