Team Reckless arrived safely to our new ministry site three days ago. The Lighthouse is a homeless shelter in downtown Dublin that serves hot meals and distributes clothing and other necessities to the ‘least of these’ on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday evenings. Our main ministry this month is helping out at the shelter with food prep, distribution and clean up during these days. We are also able to share a brief message with the crowd Tuesday and Saturday nights before meal time. As a team we will share days of preaching.
God has blessed us through the roof with this ministry! The six of us are living above the actual shelter. We all share one bedroom, a kitchen and bathroom, but compared to what we had in mind, we are staying at a 5 star resort! Dublin is the most expensive city in Eastern Europe and on a World Race budget that could mean slim living to say the least. Our contacts here have blessed us with providing the leftover food that does not get distributed to live off of. It may not be fresh veggies and steak but we are able to stretch our monthly budget for transportation and other ministry needs by living off of their provisions.
We received another huge blessing coming out of 90 – 100 degree weather in Haiti to 60 – 40 degree weather in Dublin by having access to the clothes that are donated to the shelter. Shopping for winter clothes in Dublin wasn’t quite fitting in to anyone’s budget, but while cleaning and organizing the shelter’s closets the staff told us to help ourselves to anything we need. You wouldn’t think living, eating and being clothed by a homeless shelter would be something to brag about, but DANG!! Let me tell you about God providing….down to the toiletries we hadn’t yet bought, to the exact same article of clothing we wished we had brought in our packs…God just so happened to have these waiting for us free of charge in the nooks and crannies of the The Lighthouse homeless shelter.
Our main focuses this month will be serving the shelter the days it is open, and meeting locals any way we can to dive in to some relational ministry. This is an area I feel deeply called to as it was how I finally accepted Christ in my life. Through a relationship that had been established by someone I trusted. We have spent free time the past few days scouting out parks, cafes and pubs where we hope to become quite familiar this next month. Your prayers for the hungry, lost or confused to find us are greatly appreciated. God has worked on building our team up through love and service towards one another the past week and a half and I know we are ready to unleash those blessings on this city.
Team Reckless making the trek from the campground in Clondalkin to our ministry site in downtown Dublin.
Michelle Smith, Alison Wilms, Krystel Kemper, William Diefenbach, Sara Hansen, Blake Rushing
