Off and Running

  One of the hardest things of life is to get momentum, to get an object that is at rest into motion and hopefully into the desired direction that you wish it to go. Today we get to meet with the children of Derry head on and hopefully to get them to consider the Love that God has for them. This task will be difficult in that the vast majority of the team is tired and unsure, anyone of these two would be enough to scuttle the best programs but the two combined could make for an insurmountable task. Paul said it best when he said "But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me." 2 Corinthians 12:9 Wow! boasting about weakness if ever there was thought that is foreign to man's thinking today it would be boasting about our inadequacies, we find it easy to boast to others about the things that set us apart things that make us special but boasting about weaknesses and our short comings is not part of societal acceptance. This lack of objectivity comes from the idea that we should never admit that we are less than whole, less than capable, less than pretty, less than smart, less than the ideal existence that society has placed firmly on our shoulders, a weight that often crushes and stifles us in to a shell of the creation that God meant us to be. 

   However, all hope is not lost in that the very thing that keep us from getting momentum in life (embracing who we are and how we have been crafted by God's hand) it is the very thing that will open the doors of out self-made prisons and allow us that freedom that we were all meant experience in all of its liberating glory. In this confession of limitation we admit our need for the God and his provision for our lives in this fallen world. Yes, it also important to admit that the world we live in is broken and doesn't come close to resembling the world that was once created by God and in this mire and mess is where God does His best work. So as we set off today to pray that we all remember that we'll do our best work when it is He who is the Wind in our sail: the Spring in our step and the Joy in our lives, when this happens mountains are moved and walls are broken down. So as strange as it sounds pray mightily that we would become weaklings.

May All your Heart Beats Be Irish

patrick

 Worship at Church

 The Church

 Pastor Brian

Ryan Leonard PT Instructor for Royal Irish Regiment

leading us in PT

Getting There

Anticipation has to be one of the hardest human emotions to handle, the minutes and the hours seem to drag and the plane only seems to inch a long on the moving map display. The monotony of travel is occasionally broken by turbulence, food and movies, the airport waiting areas soon become as familiar as our own homes and still in the midst of all that is mundane, the excitement builds. Kiersten worked off her energy by walking (running) our concourse several times in Washington DC (she thinks that it is 900 meters a lap) Bella the electronics wizard help me with my smart phone and Morgan can sleep anywhere and does so with great ease, Kathleen Yaeger loves and lives for coffee and is always bursting out in laughter, all these things help to ease the start of a great adventure. Soon we are on another plane and the flight a redeye becomes a resting place for our anticipation. Two meals and two movies (I watched the classic movie channel Mary Poppins and Fame my age is really showing) later we touch done in Dublin the girls look at each other and say one profound statement we're in "Ireland."

 Cybergirl contacts BFF's

The Girls at PDX

 Kiersten finds a relative on Dublin

 Girls and their Canon

 Bella and Kathleen enjoy a "Sun" spotting

 Bella and Kathleen the "Hunters" look for game to shoot

 Exploring the top of the walls in the "Walled City"

 Morgan Williams meet Morgan Williams

Off We Go

Today we set off in the footprints of St. Patrick to love the people of Northern Ireland we will move past the fields where Patrick tended his sheep and had a life changing encounter with the God of the Universe. Patrick was enslaved and was forced to tend the sheep he life was difficult to say the least, winters in Antrim (lone ridge in Gaelic) can be brutal and the tending of sheep boring and tedious. It was in these quiet times that Patrick was convinced of the existence of God. Through nature and meditation Patrick grew in stature and maturity but this was not enough so Patrick escaped his captivity to pursue the God who loved him most and knew him best. Patrick found himself in seminary and excelled so much that he was tops in his class and offered any Pastorate of his choice, he chose Ireland the place of his captivity and set sail to bring the Good News (Gospel) to a darkened land. It is said that when Patrick landed in Ireland it was pagan and when he left it was Christian in his 24 years in Ireland that Patrick baptized 120,000 people and started over 600 churches and was sending out 3000 missionaries.

We too go to a darken land with less than 3% church attendance Ireland has spiritually hit rock bottom, some say that this is due to the failure of religion (I tend to agree) and that religion has little to offer modern man. It has been relationship and not religion that all of the giants of faith sought with God, knowing God always trumps knowing about Him. Patrick put it best when he said; "I was at that time about sixteen years of age. I did not, indeed, know the true God." Faith is trusting the one we know to guide us through the things that we are unsure of or unfamiliar with and knows that we are not alone in our journey. I think that it is rather funny that i am traveling with four sixteen year olds and they still have the same opportunities that Patrick had to bring light into the darkness. Please pray for us daily remembering us for health, safety and travel.

pat