Students Seek to Make Impact in Ireland Next Week

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For the past 13 years, Liberty Christian School has taken Upper School students on mission trips around the world. When Spring Break begins at the end of next week, Liberty Student Ministries will team up with the Liberty Chorale to take more than 140 students to southern Ireland. They will send five ministry teams through the cities of Dublin, Limerick, Waterford, Cork, Galway, and Shannon, performing an evangelistic drama, doing work projects, and singing in local schools, hospitals, churches, and orphanages. Chorale Director Ann Smith describes below how her students will reach out in Ireland next week and how their preparation began last year with their tour to New York and Washington, D.C.

 “To love another person is to see the face of God”
-from Les Miserables

Last year Liberty Chorale went on our first tour to New York and Washington D.C. When we sang at a homeless shelter in Washington, D.C., things changed for us. We interacted with the men of the shelter and that was new for us as a choir. It felt more like a ministry. It was extraordinary to see the faces of the men and the tears running down their face. Our choir and the men we sang to saw God at work.

This year Chorale is Team No. 5 in our mission trip to Ireland, and we will work alongside our host church with our work orders until mid-afternoon. At 3 p.m., we stop to get ready for our evening ministry concert. 

We are very excited about the music we will sing and about the opportunity to minister to the people of Ireland through God’s powerful spirit of song. We will never have this opportunity again with this exact group of people, which makes this week a once in a lifetime trip. 

This music was selected through prayer and the knowledge that the Holy Spirit would teach us how to sing it as it should be sung. We will interact with our audiences before and after the concerts. It is our hearts desire to have the music open up dialog with our audiences so that we may share the joy of Christ.

We will sing several gospels including “Witness,” “I’m Gonna Sing till the Spirit Moves in My Heart,” and “Jericho.” All gospels point to freedom in knowing Christ and in believing and trusting that He knows us.

We will also sing an arrangement of “Ave Maria,” “Danny Boy,” and “Amazing Grace.” We will also sing “Amor de mi Alma” (You are the Love of my Soul), and “Sing Me to Heaven.”

One of my students recently shared the Chorale experience and said, “We sing from our hearts, so that the word of God can be heard.”

Singing is very physical and mental. The stamina that a singer must have is enormous, and the mental capacity to analyze music and then sing it with meaning must be memorized, internalized, and believed.

Another student said, ““Not only do we have to sing the correct pitches, rhythms and dynamics, but we also have to know what we are singing and to whom we are singing.”

Thank you for your prayers for all teams, leaders and support personnel. Please pray for our compassion and boldness as we build relationships with the people of Ireland.