Nikki McTaggart

Name: Nikki McTaggart

Age: 23

Hometown: North Belfast

Home Church: First Presbyterian Church, Ballynahinch

Favorite Verse: " The Lord is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness" Psalm 86

Inspirational people : Jesus, my niece, Sir Francis Assi, and Gandi

Youth work for me is: "about enabling young people to think about themselves and their life, empowering them to increase their confidence in expressing themselves, their needs, their desire, their fulfillment's"

"Wata bout ye"! Just thought I would give you a nice Belfast greeting. Its hard to believe that three months has passed since staring the position as 'Youth Minister' in the beautiful country lands of Ballinamallard. The past three months has brought huge transitions, moving into a new home, new job, new church community and meeting new young people. The transition wasn't easy, but having the support of a loving community, dependency on God and meeting the young people made settling a lot easier. Ballinamallard is the next chapter of God's plan and purpose for my life.

The young people have won my heart. They are a great bunch of young people, well mannered, respectful, open for a challenge and always up for a laugh. The one thing that blows me away about the youth group is the strong community element between them, they are open with one another and get on well.

I really look forward to journeying with the young people, through building purposeful relationships, fellowship, discipleship and establishing programmes based on their needs and feedback which aims to promote their personal, social, emotional and spiritual development. Not to mention..... all the BANTER that comes with this.

I want to finish with how blessed and thankful I am to God for trusting and giving me this opportunity to serve within the Ballinamallard community and I am excited for whats still to come.