At random moments walking around the city of Dublin, you’ll hear myself or one of my teammates say “I can’t believe we’re in Ireland!” “Is this REAL life?” “We still have over 300 days left of the World Race, crazy!”
The reality is that this IS real life. My team and I have embraced that fact and have been serving it up in Dublin for the past couple of weeks. The Lighthouse is a ministry of the Dublin Christian Mission, who serves the homeless and needy. We’ve been working with our ministry contact, Rocheanne (nicknamed Roach), who is from South Africa. He has a sense of humor that is in high gear all day long, so we all keep each other laughing and even received some new nicknames from him (but no need to share them here haha).
We’ve been doing a version of “Extreme Home Makeover” at the Lighthouse building. Our days have been filled with cleaning, organizing clothes, painting, etc.. I’ve also sharpened my instant coffee-making skills as they love their coffee and biscuit breaks over here!
Three nights a week the homeless come for a time of worship, teaching, dinner, and clothing distribution. It’s usually a crowd of 60-100 people, and mostly men from other countries. We’ve helped out in all areas, and thus have been stretched outside our comfort zones already. My teammate Hollis and I have been deemed the worship leaders, which we both find humorous because neither of us claim to have the gift of a singing voice, but we’re open and willing. What can I say…all that karaoke practice is finally paying off!
Our team with the volunteers at the Lighthouse.
We’ve also been taking part in the teaching, including a David and Goliath drama performance one night. The day after that a couple of my teammates met a homeless man on the street that recognized them because of our drama we did at the Lighthouse. He said he was looking forward to coming back there. The other nights we’ve been taking turns speaking, even though most of us are fearful of public speaking. We knew we’d have to embrace and press through that fear at some point this year, but we just didn’t think the opportunity would appear so soon! I stepped up to the challenge the other night and shared about our identity in Christ, looking at God’s truth of who He says we are versus the lies that Satan tells us. We finished by singing one of my favorites, “How Great is Our God.” People responded and sang along with us (which was not the norm), and it was a beautiful moment. All praises to God.
We leave Ireland tomorrow and are headed to Romania and then continuing on to Moldova (which is east of Romania and also touches Ukraine). All we know at this point is that we’ll be working with Crossover and working under the umbrella of church planting. We’re not sure what the availability of internet will be so you may not hear from me for a few weeks. But when I return to the wonderful worldwide web I’d love to hear from you so please drop me a comment or an email. They really do bring a smile to my face! =)
We’ll return to Romania on September 21 for The Awakening, a 3-day conference for World Racers, staff, and World Race alumni. It will be an amazing time and I look forward to see how God moves!
Farewell beautiful Ireland!
