A Day in the Café

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to serve as a Mission Experience Volunteer (MEV) or Study Abroad Missionary (SAM) at An Tobar Nua in Galway, Ireland? 

The daily rhythm for MEVs and SAMs involves lots of prayer, coffee, secondary students, conversations, and games! Here’s an idea of what a normal day could look like:

You might wake up around 6:30 am with the seagulls and head down to the MEV kitchen to make some coffee and breakfast. You grab your raincoat (just in case) and take off to the beach, just a 5-10 minute walk from home through the historic Claddagh, to start your day with a  sunrise. Then you walk home to read scripture and get ready for the day. Just before 9am, you begin your short commute to the Cafe downstairs for team devotionals, or “devos”, with the whole An Tobar Nua team. This morning someone is leading prayer with a focus on one of Jesus’ parables. After meditating on Christ’s words, you end this time of fellowship by praying as a community for each student, customer, and team member on that particular day! After devos, the Cafe team begins to set up the building, by remaking signs with new food and drink specials, warming up the espresso machine, and preparing the kitchen to serve food. Somewhere in the kitchen, the baking team is baking cookies and making fresh scones, filling the whole Cafe with warmth and its delicious fragrance. 

At 10 am the doors open, and you greet the regulars wanting their coffee and scones, or perhaps a tired tourist in need of a hearty Irish breakfast. While serving their food, you chat about last night’s rugby match, different things to do in Galway, or someone asks what brought you to Ireland. There’s something about the prayers poured into the ministry, with its warmth and hospitality that gives the Cafe a reputation for being a lighthouse in Galway! Then a class of secondary students from the local school comes in with their teacher for hot chocolates. The Cafe is filling up with people and conversations. When it’s time for your lunch break, you make a famous An Tobar Nua spice bag to eat outside or curl up in the MEV kitchen on your break.  

Around 1 pm every day, a very excited and out of breath teenager throws open the front door. They just ran from school to get their favorite sprinkle cookie before it sells out. As the main room fills with students, some of them are studying for a Spanish test, some of them are chatting with their friends, or waiting to tell you all about what happened in school that morning, but all of them are hungry! One (or many) of them are eager to do a rematch of the chess game you beat them in the day before. Spoiler alert: you probably won’t win because they came prepared!  

After the student lunch rush, the afternoon might slow down, and customers linger for deeper conversations. They might even start with someone asking what they just witnessed, with all the delightful, though sometimes chaotic, encounters with secondary students playing games and sitting with team members. When school lets out in the afternoon, some of the students come back, since the Cafe is like a home away from home. They want to finish an earlier conversation or start on their homework, inquiring about staff expertise in Math. Within each rhythm of the day, there is always fellowship happening among the team. When someone comes to your section to get something, or to make a coffee, or to bring a dish to the sink, the day is filled with little moments of jokes and “how are yous?” This makes the Cafe, and the team feel like home away from home. In John 13:35, our Lord says that “by this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (ESV).  

At 5pm the Cafe closes. This is when someone queues up some classic Johnny Cash or Bob Seger while the team works to shut down the Cafe, usually dancing and singing! After work everyone heads home, and you do a quick run to Tesco to grab ingredients for cooking dinner with your roommates. You may watch TV together or head to your room to call friends and family before bed. God is moving in the ordinary things of the extraordinary life lived with Christ!