Creative Expressions 2: Art Exhibiton

The summer has come and nearly gone, we're entering the last few weeks of August and here in Northern Ireland the weather is already giving us a preview of winter. Yet we keep our spirits up by drinking warm, fresh, tantalizing coffee in The Press; it's a pretty good consolation prize.

We reopened last weekend and it was a brilliant day! It was also the last Friday for our very special, most treasured intern Meredith. She will be sorely missed, even today we've been sharing our Meredith stories. So Mer, when you read this know your memory lives on in The Press, you will not be forgotten my dear friend!!

Moving onto the upcoming future of The Press Coffee Shop. About April this year I received a tip from a woman in the church that the Arts Forum in Dungannon was going to host another Arts Festival weekend and we're looking for potential venues. I contacted the necessary people and was able to get our coffee shop listed as one of the main venues. What an awesome God moment that was, I truly felt that God opened the door and was nudging me to walk through it. Now I'm excited to see how this helps our relationship with the community and see if we can stretch out our tent pegs and include even more people in our mission here to serve all of God's people equally and love on them.

The Press Coffee Shop will be hosting the second Arts Exhibition: Creative Expressions 2. This year we have three schools putting work in: The Integrated College, Drumglass High School and Sperrinview Special School. We have other work coming from people in the Peace Factory project as well as 7 other individual artists and maybe even a potter. I'm thrilled with the new variety of work we will have on display as well as the live music that we will have going during the evening sessions!! Overall it just feels like another chance to highlight the talent that God has given people to express this journey of life we all are walking together. It's also exciting knowing that the Council has given us free advertising through this event with 10,000 brochures being posted out to every home in Dungannon!!

So if you want to come and enjoy the arts and culture in Dungannon the details are below:

Creative Expressions 2 Art Exhibition

26th and 27th August at The Storehouse, Dungannon

10am-3pm and 7pm-10pm both days

Call 028 8775 2133 for more details and find us on Facebook.

The Cafe will be serving it's normal menu during the day but only cakes and coffee in the evening.

http://dungannonartsfestival.com/

day to day...

Today is Friday 18th February, 2011. I'm sitting at one of our cozy, orange couches in The Press. Jon Foreman plays in the background while the quiet chatter of customers resonates through The Press. My heart feels full and content. I wake up each Friday looking forward to the surprises of the day. I have steadfast volunteers who invest as much as I do into The Press and that moves me. What grabs the heart of someone and causes them to move forward in the role of a volunteer? My hope and desire is that it would be a vision. A vision of what The Press can look like, maybe not tomorrow or next week; but next year or five years from now. A vision that sees each customer as one of God's children who needs to be loved today which may turn into the action of making them the best latte we possibly can, or the best bowl of soup we can just to show them a bit of God's love. It's loving people consistently in the small things of life, day to day. Sometimes I have ugly days, where my heart is black and its those days when someone thrusts the love of God on me that it causes me to stop and ponder. It leads me to the Cross where I, the unloveable and unworthy, received the gift of life through the most major act of love ever known to mankind.

Last week I had the opportunity to meet with two people from our town who help organize an Arts week every year. I'm thrilled to say that The Press will most likely be one of the venues where art and music will be displayed for our small but great community. This makes my heart leap inside my chest!!! I love the arts and to have the opportunity to partner with our community to push this forward means that we're moving in one of the directions I've hoped we would. It's also a chance to express God's love to many more people and that's the purpose. We are a ministry, a coffee shop yes, but a ministry. So from day to day we come and bring ourselves as the resource to be used by God to love on people. What an exciting privilege that truly is. Thank you Abba.

We have espresso...I repeat we have e-s-p-r-e-s-s-o!

Yes, you read that right! We have Espresso!!!!!!!!!!! Does the amount of exclamation points behind the word give you an accurate idea of how exciting this truly is? Not a chance but in written form it is the best I can do for now.

Let me explain a little bit more as to why this is so exciting. If you walk into a self-proclaimed coffee shop and order a latte, you expect to get a latte, right? For the last 4 months we have had to answer that question with 'I'm sorry, all we have is filtered coffee'. In defense of our coffee supplier, the filtered coffee is of the highest standard as it comes from Ethical Addictions, but it still was not an espresso, cappuccino, or a latte. So for the last 4 months I have been frustrated and discouraged on many occasions thinking that the machine had been fixed only to find another problem dragging it back down to a broken state. But, and I say but Tuesday 18th January saw a new day dawn at The Press Coffee Shop. A coffee trainer from a local company here in Northern Ireland came and trained us on our newly fixed machine on the art of making espresso. Karen Chambers and I had the opportunity of being trained up and it was an incredible experience. I love learning from people who are passionate about their craft and this woman was! I think a bit of her passion leaked into us through the many espresso shots we taste tested throughout the afternoon and I'm still on that high.

Today we were open as normal for our Friday business but this day was different. It was the first day in our history to make coffee using a real, proper, authentic espresso machine and you could truly taste the difference. Plus, the satisfaction I get from seeing the crema pushed to the side of the coffee mug after pouring nearly perfect steamed milk into the mug is amazing! The pride I feel in serving a cappuccino with Ethical Addictions strong, not bitter, espresso shots and lovely, sweet foam is incredible!

Friday 21st January is truly a day to remember in the history of The Press Coffee Shop! Thought for the day: don't get distressed by the frustrations of life because when things do change, you truly appreciate the smallest fortunes for what they are...blessings!

The seasons are changing...

All around me the leaves are changing colour from burnt orange to a dull brown and I know that the autumn feel in the air will quickly be replaced by the frost of another Northern Irish winter. As the weather turns cold one thing has changed in The Press for sure, the use of the radiators, thank the Lord for the extra ones put in last spring!

Just as the seasons change outside, so do the seasons of life and The Press is no different. This September we started back into our normal routine after a lovely break during the summer months. The Press has been going well, yet we've been plagued by one major issue that is a core value of any coffee shop... that being our coffee machine. Since September when we re-opened our coffee machine has not been working so we have only been selling filtered coffee. And even though I'm a huge fan of our filtered coffee, mostly because of the amazing quality (compliments http://www.eacoffee.co.uk/), I still long for a frothy cappuccino or latte every now and then, don't you? Plus I know how incredible the Ethical Addictions coffee will taste in this form! Especially coming into the harshest winter months.

So since September I had been making phone call after phone call trying to chase down a man to come and look at our machine but with no success. These are the glamourous parts of running a small business venture! Then Vineyard Church Dungannon (vineyarddungannon.co.uk) held the Explore 58 Conference in October and we had a miracle take place. The miracle came in the form of one of the attendees offering to pay for our coffee machine to get fixed. Let me just say this is a very generous offer due to the cost of labour coffee engineers charge. So thank you A. for the gift of fixing our coffee machine!! I'm still buzzing from your generosity! We also had another donation towards equipment which is fantastic because recently our panini presses have been acting up, or more accurately not toasting.

I tell you these things to show the reality of following after a dream God has given you. I believe with my whole heart that God is on this venture. He's given me a whole lotta grace multiple times in the form of people's patience, prayers being answered in a timely fashion and in the form of some of the most amazing volunteers! Now I'm human like anyone else and things like a broken coffee machine can eventually drag you down week after week so when these two things happened it felt like a little stamp of confirmation that I am in fact pursuing what I'm supposed to pursue. Now has the coffee machine been fixed yet? No, but it will be very soon. Have we gotten a new panini press, no, but we have funds available now to invest in new equipment. I had been going through a season where the steam was running out, my leaves were falling off the tree and I wasn't sure if any were growing to go back. But just in time God stepped in, He touched things to change them because I could not. That's what the seasons are all about, watching God change things, where we cannot. So I'm thankful for the winter months coming up. I'm thankful that very soon I will be sipping a latte and eating a freshly toasted panini. My question is this: Will you come join me? Will you invest and invite your friends along? The Press could be so much more than a coffee shop but it will take you to make that happen and I hope in time it will be.

Happy winter days!!!

Moratorium meets The Press...

This past weekend The Press was exceptionally lucky to have NATHAN CHUD play for us. Nathan is my brother-in-law who currently resides in Boston, MA pursuing his degree in Education while his wife Marisa studies law. These two are not only family but good friends whom I love deeply.

It's been a dream of mine to have Nate come and play in The Press, but a dream I honestly didn't think would ever become reality. Yet with Nate doing a European pre-tour of his newly released album Moratorium (available on itunes and also at www.NathanChud.com ) he squeezed us in. Thanks Nate!

The night was full of original music, some great covers and even a song or two that Bryan and Nate's Dad wrote years ago. The atmosphere was buzzing and it was brilliant!

Lately I've started a habit I like to call mental snapshots. I pause in certain moments and attempt to memorize the feeling, the faces, the emotions tied to that space and time. Similar to the way a snapshot captures a moment in time. I realize this is not new but for me it's pure fun. I took quite a few mental snapshots on this particular night and was overwhelmed with how blessed I truly am. I think I've said it on here before but I'm living a dream right now. Some days I wish I could just go back to sleep but the fact is I'm living my dream wide awake. (side note, great book by Erwin McManus- Wide Awake) This dream is time consuming, energy consuming and sometimes I ponder just how we're going to make it financially but there are so many times where this job makes me stop, right where I am and shout out a simple 'Thank You' to my heavenly Father. This coffee shop is His, I'm His so it's nice to remember that sometimes.

If you are living out your dreams, remember to thank the dream giver and if you aren't, maybe it's time to start asking Him to dream over you. Pretty sure He's got some good ones left!

Hello Faithful Followers of The Press Coffee Shop!! You know who you are:)

The Press has been open for a couple of weeks again after taking a break over the summer to regroup and rethink things through and we're so glad to be back! The summer saw us make some artistic changes aesthetically to The Press which if I do say myself are pretty amazing!!! The place looks even more beautiful than it did before. Thanks Dave for making that happen!

We are slowly implementing some small changes as the weeks tick by but one of the things that hasn't changed is our music nights! We kicked off Sat. 14th of August with Paul Corrigan and Cedric Has a Name (Chris Steenson) and it was a brilliant evening of chilled out listening. We are also having live music tonight 28th August with Paul Haughey who is new to our list of musicians but is very welcome.

But what I'm really excited about is the upcoming month of September! We have some seriously sweet things coming up.

Saturday 4th Sept is our first ever Open Mike Night and we're hoping to get some new talent in that also includes poetry readings, short stories, stand-up comedy and whatever else people bring along with them. I hope this becomes a regular item on our calendar of events over the months. Then on the 11th Sept Doyle Mills and his acoustic band will be playing which should be a class night as well!

Now this next item is one to put in your diaries: Nathan Chud, my brother-in-law will be making a brief stop in Northern Ireland on his tour to promote his new album and he'll be playing in The Press on Saturday 18th Sept. I would love to see a HUGE turn out for Nate, I mean, he is coming all the way from America to play for us (and promote his new album I guess:) ). So if you are around at all and can make this night please do! Nate has been playing for years and has a huge heart for people, God and music plus he's a downright great entertainer! So come show your support people!

So to end this post, I would like to say thank you to my bosses Jason and Michelle Scott. You both believed in this vision and in me enough to let me run with this. Any success comes down to you releasing me, so thank you. I respect and admire you both so much!!!

Now see you all soon at The Press!!

Ahhh... Summmer!

June is coming to a close and July will be here tomorrow. I don't know where January-May went really but I am happy to be into the summer months and even a bit of summerish weather here in Northern Ireland. As for The Press, June was relatively quiet. When good weather hits a country normally drenched 8-12 months out of the year in serious rain people tend to not stay indoors but enjoy being outside which I applaud! Maybe it's the bit of Alaska in me that thinks good weather=being outside. I was not discouraged by this fact mainly because I think I anticipated it. Along with that anticipation The Press will be closed for the month of July to give all of our wonderfully faithful volunteers a much earned rest from doing things that they really don't have to do.

As I write this I am aware that The Press will be actively closed for the next month but it will continue to live and be active. Over the past few months I have been dreaming up the next stage of what The Press could look like, what I hope it will become and continuing to dream with the Dreamgiver about what He sees in it and what it's purpose is to be. Over this last year, it has not been so much about the coffee or food (which by the way are still excellent!) but it's been about the people. The people who come in only once, the people who come in every week without fail, and the volunteers whom I see so much potential in and only hope that I can partner with God in calling that out in each of them. So over the month of July I will be working on more of the unseen items of The Press, the practical items, admin, and hopefully getting it ready to step into the next stage of this dream.

Last Sunday a great guy called Alain Emerson spoke about 'enlarging our tents' and that's exactly what I feel like God has been speaking to me about in regards to The Press. It might be small and hidden from the majority of people, but I believe in time The Press will be a light in our town, it will be a safe haven for broken people and it will serve one of the best cups of coffee if not the best in Dungannon! Not all of those things have happened yet but that's what a dream is, something too big to do on our own that we have to partner with God and others to accomplish it and on my own I know I could never make these things a reality in The Press.

While our doors are closed my heart remains open to all that God desires The Press to be, who He wants The Press to reach, how He wants us to serve Dungannon and also the world. It's a pleasure and privilege to be living out one of my many dreams, and I want to encourage anyone reading this to ask God to dream over you and your life! You never know what kind of surprises He has in store!