I am absolutely loving it here in Northern Ireland. It is gorgeous here! I am in Ballyclare now with my team and they are awesome. So far we have done two afternoon clubs in the Grange Estates (projects) and one evening youth club. We have a lot planned and it’s really exciting to be here. Today, one of the boys became a Christian. Jess, my leader, has a pretty good relationship with him and she talked to him last night at club about why we do this. He said he went home and was thinking about it and talked to Billy in our group today and accepted Christ. It was such an encouragement to us! Praise God!
So many things to tell already, but we are at someone’s office and have to go and get showers at someone’s house.
If I can write more later- I definately will. Thanks for your prayers. Please keep praying because as we saw today, God definately answers them!
Love you all-
This is the news from Dawn’s team “in the hood.” Awesome things seem to be happening all over the countryside. God’s love is being shared and young people are coming to Christ. Does it get any better than that? Speaking for myself, I have never seen such a people who are so friendly and also so open to talking about Jesus. Last nights drop in center went incredible! We had 25-30 students there for our first “real night.” Not only were there lots of people there, many were asking questions about Christianity and even asking for prayer. I spent a lot of time with the same types of students I hang out @LF. I tend to talk to those who are “good kids, lots of problems.” [Translate: Adam really likes them because they talk a lot and can take a joke well.] We played a soccer game that involved kicking the ball against the wall. I have no idea how it really works, but I always lost! The game ended when Dale lit his ball on fire after soaking it in hairspray. [Don’t tell Jon D that this happens!]
Team troubles and celebrations. Yesterday was a good day for our leadership team… if you forget that they led a food fight during dinner and insulted the cooking of a church member. I was royally made about their stupidity and… so I wouldn’t scream at them… volunteered to do all of the dishes! That calmed me down, then I went and sat under a tree for a while, and finally calmed all the way down when I talked to Kristen for a little bit. Megan apparently likes to rip my heart out when I talk to her when she tells me, “Daddy, I really really really want to play with you.” Ugh.
Over the weekend as I got to know some of my teammates. In the course of talking to them two of them told me that they felt “held back” in their walk with the Lord since they haven’t yet been baptized. I told them, “If that’s what’s holding you back… let’s go do it now!” They just looked at me, completely shocked at the offer. I let both of them know that if they wanted to that I would baptize them in the lake near where we shower. Well, this morning at breakfast they seem ready to take the plunge. We are tentatively planning on taking this step of obedience on Sunday. In other news of similar celebration, a few people expressed to me that they’d like to fast before beginning our final week of outreach. So beginning this Sunday after lunch through Monday at lunch our team will fast. None of the 10 other teammates have fasted that long but they are very excited about it. Will you consider joining us as we pray and fast for the work here in 5mile?
A few times my Irish brothers have gotten up at the ungodly hour of 6:30 to do our quiet times together. [For the Northern Irish, 6:30 is a good time to go to bed, not wake up!] We’ve been waking up and reading a passage of scripture. Then, as a reminder, we write the word or phrase on our arms that we want to meditate on all day and take off for a walk. This morning Dave wrote on his arm “teach me” since the passage he read from Dueteronomy didn’t make much sense to him and the passage included the remark, “if you don’t understand this, ask me and I will teach you.” So we walked and just chatted a little as we explored some neighborhoods. We saw that there were some woods that needed to be explored and started over that way. As we got into the last yard before the woods we started across the lawn. Out of the corner of my eye I could see an old man hobbling towards us. I figured he was going to yell at us since we had just gotten finished with a huge round of screaming “hey, cow!” at the ladies in the field enjoying some morning hay. But instead he was just stopping us to tell us that we shouldn’t do in the woods since it has a huge swamp. This guy, later described by Richie as “a wee old man with a crazy lazy eye” was actually pretty nice about the whole thing.
As we were saying our goodbye’s the old man stopped us. He said, “So, why are ya’s here in 5miletown anyway?” We told him who we were and what we were doing… this got him really excited. Then, this man in his late 70s proceeded to talk to us about Jesus and his relationship with him. He talked to us about the urgent need for evangelism here and about the Lord’s immenent return to set up his Kingdom. As he went on and on I couldn’t help thinking about Dave’s arm. God was using the wee little man to teach him powerfully. I wish I could say stuff like this was rare, but there must be something in the water here… good stuff happens all the time.
Last night Daphne, our host pastor, asked if I wouldn’t mind filling in for the Crogher church on Sunday in addition to her church. I said, “Why not?” I will be adapting my message from late June called Shaping our Kids. Of course, I’ll have to cut out all the good stuff since I’ve only got 20 minutes. [Did you hear that Bob, 20 minutes? Just think of it as a really, really long introduction!]
Yes, people are still laughing about my sheep faux pas. Still funny… won’t do that again.
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