So we’ve made it to Ireland and we are absolutely loving it. We had a contact for the first 8 days and thought we would be searching for something to do for the rest of the month, but God has allowed us to stay with this contact for the whole month. Our contacts are Jim and Kathy and they are an Irish-American missionary couple who just simply devote their lives to the people around them. They clothe the homeless, have 3 foster children, evangelize the whole country and do whatever God leads them to do. They are an incredible contact for us and are really focused on challenging us as a team, a huge blessing from God. Before I get into what we’ve been doing I want to share a little story.
Jim and Kathy open up their home for guests to stay (hence why we’re here) but joining us in the house is an elderly couple named Bill and Lyla (they haven’t told us their last names). Well on our first night at dinner, half our team was sitting with Bill and his wife and we were trying to start a conversation, so Carin and I were asking Bill about Ireland and his job and various aspects of life and he was very quiet. The conversation was a bit of a struggle as he was giving very short answers to our questions. Then I decided to ask him how he met his wife, and his eyes lit up. He started sharing the story of how they met, which was extra special to him because he met his wife the same time as he met the Lord as she introduced him to Jesus. Bill sat their and talked for over an hour about the love he has for the Lord and his wife, they’ve been married for 41 years and he has been the leader of his church’s sunday school group for 35 years. He loved talking about the 2 people he loved the most. I was truly blessed to hear this man speak of what is important to him. I was encouraged and challenged by his love and willingness to share about the people who are most special in his life, and I hope to be the same witness for Christ simply by the amount of words I say about him, how he’s always on the tip of my tongue, just waiting to tell people about how much I love him and the things he’s taught and done in my life. There is power in words, our words show what we truly care about and there is no mistaken it that the Irishman, Bill, cares about Jesus and his wife.
So on to what we’ve been doing. Jim and Kathy have quite a bit of work to do around their house. They literally take a donation from anybody and pass it along to someone else in need so their house is filled with stuff that is on its way to meeting the need of some family somewhere. A good bit of our team has worked on organizing some of this stuff, there is also construction and lawn work to do around the house. I’ve painted a fence and helped install insulation in a room in the back of the house. Jim is also showing how to care for his neighbors, he saw his neighbor Paul received a shipment of gravel, so Jim, Chad and I went over to Paul’s house to help him spread the gravel. Paul was very appreciative and listened to our testimonies (Jim said he had never been able to have a spiritual conversation with Paul). Jim also threw us into the fire as he brought us in the family camper to downtown Dublin to street evangelize yesterday.
I can’t even begin to desribe all the things that happened in Dublin yesterday. We bought a Bible for a homeless man came back by and he was reading it, Chad layed the truth on a group of college aged boys who were shocked to hear it, we were able to witness to a couple who went from heckling a street evangelist to the brink of accepting Christ. One of our teammates had a discussion with a Muslim for over an hour, and some girls brought tears to men’s eyes by praying for them. It was truly amazing to see God work on the street in Dublin. Our team is itching to go back.
Things are great, the weather is great. Pray for the people we met on the street yesterday (James and Joe are 2 names to remember). And please pray that our team will continue to be stretched this month and God will reveal himself to us through these challenges.
