Adventures WorldRace SethBarnes Sponsorship Giving

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August 22 was on a Saturday this year. That’s my birthday. So when our day off was switched from Saturday to Friday, I admit I was a little bummed. I didn’t want to clean a park on Galway’s west side on my birthday.

That day I immediately felt homesick when I woke up. I missed my friends, who last year gave me the most incredible birthday a girl could ask for. I missed home. I missed my bed. I missed having couches, having a TV and having my own space and at one point I even missed my old job (it only lasted a second, don’t worry).

We headed to the park and I grabbed the shovel and started to pull up the weeds as best I could. A man walked by and told me I was doing it wrong and showed me how to do it correctly.
 
My team and I celebrated after ministry that day, complete with
chocolate cake, a hamburger and fries.

 

We’d been at the park for a while when we met Gilbert and his cute daughter Sophie. I didn’t talk much to him, but when the girls who were talking started telling him about the church we were working with, I ran to ask Michelle if she had a card to give him. She did and I handed it to him.

 

The next day he was there. He was at church. We were so excited. We talked to him for a while and found out that his daughter’s mom and he are just very different people, as he says and that he’d been lonely because he’s not from Galway. He said he’d debated whether or not to even go to church, but he did. At the end of it I actually had the guts to ask him if we could pray for him.

He said yes that we could after we had tea and biscuits. Afterward he sought us out and three of us prayed for him.
 
A week later, our last Sunday there, he was at church again and he even offered to give us a ride to the place we’d have lunch and hung out with us, talked to several people, got connected to the people at the church and we even played a couple of rounds of a game of throw the ball into the holes and win.
 
My friend Jodi, who did the majority of talking the first time, and I talked about it at church. About how what we’ve been through these past two weeks, the hurricane, the rain, the cold, the sicknesses…what if all of that was JUST for Gilbert? We know we planted seeds and have no idea what else could come of what we did, true. But what if it WAS just for him? Doesn’t that show us how much God loves us, how crazy he is for us, how he’ll do anything to reach us? What if God, in his plan, made 41 Americans come to Galway just for him? And if that’s the case, I’m glad I came. I’m glad I was cleaning the park on my birthday.
 
And what a birthday gift he gave me.