tirty tree...still funny

Yay! Erin is finally here, and we are happy. Here are sweet pics to prove it:





ok, so we thought that since we were finally together, we needed to take an awesome family picture. here are two:





I hope that you enjoyed those as much as we did.

Here is a list of the things that have filled our last week:
-rain
-hanging out with Collin almost every day, either playing football or having tea and talking late at night
-hanging out with the kids here in Dunclug, which has consisted mainly of playing football, wrestling, walking around with the kids, sitting with the kids, talking with the kids...you get the idea.
-John and I went mountain biking with Niel and Chrissy (his son) and three of the older boys from Dunclug, and it was not only the most extreme mountain biking experience of our life and the funnest day yet, but a great time with the boys
-Erin and Elizabeth made fairy cakes (I have no idea what that is, but she told me to put that) with one or two of the girls
-Three of us got to go a primary school "leaver's assembly" (skit day) for the kids moving on to seconday school
-We attended a community barbecue with the kids in Dunclug
-We have been invited to/have attended/are attending/will attend at least 3 other barbecues or meals with Hope and Hillside Church members
-more rain
-one cool looking rainbow
-We have been learning to cook scrumptious meals for 4
-We are going to Ballykeel again tomorrow to hang out with some Protestant kids.
-We are helping the Hope Team to lead the service at Hillside Church on Sunday
-We are all learning (mainly me, Dwight) how to play the guitar from John, our resident musician. Elizabeth wants everyone to know how proud she is that she can now play the chord G. wow.

Things really have been going so well and the Lord is providing some great and now regular opportunities to develop relationships with the people here. Please continue to lift up the people here and pray that the Lord will continue to grant us wisdom and more opportunities. The weather is weird, too, so pray about that.

Here are more sweet pics to feast your eyes upon:

Our favorite sayings...

OK, so to put it mildly, they speak a lil differently here than we do. so here are a list of our favorite Irish sayings thus far (definitions and/or use in a typical sentence will follow, as necessary):

"class" or "pure class"-really cool or awesomely awesome (in the words of John); said after an impressive trick or feat of strength

"sham"- friend, synonamous with mate and feen, which are also used here

"couldn't be bothered"- one of our favorites; a sign of pure laziness (it's epidemic here); like saying, I don't feel like it
-in a sentence: luke, are you guys gonna build a bonfire this year? no. why not? couldn't be bothered..."

"craic"- pronounced "crack"; best described by examples: "whats the craic?" (whats up?), "that's good craic" (it's fun)

"lethal"- awesomely awesome- similar to pure class

"happy days"- probly the most worthy of laughing at...basically, good news/times...expression used in joy at something.

"mucker/muck"- mucker is friend, muck is mess up, a bad situation

"right"- used in a real peculiar way, almost as an interjection or conjunction; like saying ok, or but, or now...

"I'm away"-rather than "I am leaving/going" or they are not here/there, say "right, I'm away"

"wee"- used to describe something small, or just as an adjective before anything at all.... for example, you could say the wee man or wee boy (a baby) or that wee bug (a small bug) or that wee house (not small) or lets play a wee match...

"fanny"-trust me, just don't say it; highly offensive, ask Joel Brooks for a personal testimony if you don't believe me...

"tirty tree"- how a southerner would say 33

"jdfiojsdfksdfkjslkdcn"- usually what we understand from Niel McMillan, because he talks so fast

Hope you enjoyed these, we recommend you start using them in your daily rhetoric if you want to be cool...

Orange Peels

John, Colin, and Dwight

Last night, after dinner while the boys were playing football, I went for a cup of tea with a group of girls who live in the estate. It turns out two of the girls knew Joel and and the UCF team from seven years ago. They told me two of the girls from the team, Heidi and Ashley, gave them their first bibles and that they kept all their letters. It is exciting and encouraging to see how much of an impact UCF has had on this community.

we are still alive!

OK, so we have officially been here slightly more than 1 week now. In one sense, it feels like we have been here a lot longer than that already, but on the other hand, I look ahead and realize that it has been a short one week out of a whole year we have ahead of us. That is definately a bit overwhelming to think about in many ways, haha, so I just try to forget about all that and go through each day one at a time. I figure thats the best, if you have any better ideas, let me know. The Irish do things differently here so it may have clouded my mind.

Anyways, things have been grand since the last post. We have continued our orientation stuff with Russell and Danielle are beginning to have a much better grasp on understanding the culture, the people, the need, and what our role and daily life will be like. At the same time, we have been very eager to get into the community and begin to make the connections with the people again. The Lord has been so faithful already in helping us to have great opportunities to do just this. Every day, we have just been able to spend a lot of time in the community here in Dunclug, reestablishing old relationships and building new ones. Most of that time has consisted of a lot of football...and...well, just talking with the kids, especially. A lot of the people in this estate, especially the young ones, dont do much with their time. The kids have about one more week of school left. So they do that or sleep in they dont have school. Then, they walk around a lot, congregate and talk, play football, play a little hurling, eat sweets, and then repeat it all. While this is a much slower pace from our normal lives and with far less activity, it has been really cool because we have literally just had tons of time to chill with these people. And each time, the Lord has brought around just the people we needed to spend time with at that moment. I have personally been able to see almost all of my friends from last year's trip, and they are so happy to hear that we are here for a whole year. Today, we spend several hours walking to a river with some kids to jump in the really unimpressive, but very cold water, and then walk back a long time again. But it was so great, and we can see how the Lord is using the times to help us build and strengthen these relationships. Then we had a great tea (dinner) at our new neighbor's house, a young girl names Hayley who is Northern Irish and is helping with Hope and Hillside. It was so awesome to spend that time with her and she cooked a lot better for us then we did for her when we had her over 2 nights ago, I think. Then, as we walked around the estate after tea, which most people do, we ran into tons of more people. John and I, again, played some intense football matches with some of the guys, forming several new, really valuable relationships that we had been praying for. We also had a really cool prayer walk around the estates with the Hope team on Tuesday night, which will become a weekly thing.

Let's see, what else recently? We did our last school assembly with Hope on Tuesday, and it went really well. Then, I spoke at a primary school to the oldest students who were about to move on to secondary school on Monday, which also was a great growing opportunity for me, and went great. Elizabeth did the same at another school yesterday, and John will do the last one on Tuesday. Heres another awesome thing the Lord has recently done: Collin is someone that Joel Brooks, with UCF, formed a relationship with about 7 years ago on their first trip to Northern Ireland, and since then the Lord has pursued Collin until he finally became a believer a while ago. He is now 23, but is very shy and quiet around anyone he doesn't really know- basically any Americans other than Joel. Joel encouraged us to find him and pursue a relationship with him and get him in a Bible Study or something. I had only met Collin once before for about 5 seconds, but we stopped by to see him several nights ago, and he warmly talked with us for about 20 minutes, a huge encouragement. Well, Joel, you won't believe this. Last night, we swung by Collin's house to see if he was home. He and his new friend David were there and quickly invited us in. We ended up staying for almost 3 hours, playing intense games of darts. He is really good and killed us most of the times...we even got to a point in the night where he was throwing darts in between people's fingers, placed on the dart board, and throwing them into smal tomoates people held up in front of it. He was like a whole new person and I think he is just so excited about hanging out with us and we are equally excited! Tomorrow, we are going to Ballykeel to meet him and play football with him. He is going to introduce us to his 7 year old son, and hopefully his brother. So, thats so awesome and he seriously wants to hang out as much as he can, so praise the Lord!

Well, thats most of what has been going on, and we will continue to build on these relationships through any means we can. Since the kids are done with school, we will not do any more school-related things until the fall. There will be summer teams coming that we will help and work with for most of the summer, as well as plenty of other regularly and randomly planned events. The UCF team is coming in July and we are so excited about them coming and will be working closely with them while they are here. The saddest part of our time here so far has been not knowing what happened to our friend from the airport, the Chinaman who knew no english, who we led around for a night. I hope he made it ok.

On Tuesday, our long awaited last intern, Erin, will arrive, and we are sooo excited! So be praying for her, please. Pray this week that the Lord will allow us to form the relationships with the people he wants us to. Pray that we will be sensitive to His voice as he leads us to choose who to start new relationships with and which old ones to work one, and the wisdom for how to do each. Pray that we will each stay in the Word and in step with Jesus so that we will be able to walk with him here, knowing what he wants us to in this needy place. We love you all, please feel free to leave comments, or email us. we love hearing from you. Until next time...

Chinaman

The chinaman mentioned in the above post.

Hope House

Here are a couple pictures of our house and the view from inside.

Today was the first day of sunlight

Update!

Traveling: Every flight was delayed and we missed two, but after 60+ hours of traveling, some complimentary hotels stays, and leading a chinaman around Newark, we arrived in Ballymena (only 1 1/2 days late). oh ya, and we argued with a Buddhist priest about truth, creation, God, and his mac being an animal for a good hour. We were picked up at the airport shortly after arriving by two of the men on the Hope in Ballymena Team-the organization here, Niel and Russell. They helped move us into our new house, which they have been preparing for us for the past few weeks, and if I may say so myself, is a very nice place. it is a small, but nice house in an estate called Dunclug, one of the primary estates that Hope is reaching out to. The church we have been associated with in the past and will work with some, Hillside Community Church, is in this estate as well.

Jetlag: it stinks. John woke up each morning wanting to eat a full steak dinner. We are almost through with it now, though, thank the Lord.

Orientation: We having been spending a lot of time with Russell and Danielle, who are the Hope team members overseeing us four interns, which has not only been extremely helpful in our adaptation to this culture, but a great time of more fully understanding our role here in the community and with Hope. They have a 3 month old son named Samuel and it has been fun getting to know them a lot more over lunch and tea (dinner).

Ministry: After a quick night of rest on the day of arrival, we woke up on Thurday and went to our first school ministry at a local special needs school. Hope has been granted permission to go into all of the local schools and have free reign to talk about any religious material. It went really well, though we were all still slightly disoreiented. We sang some worship songs with them and then did a puppet show about the story of Daniel in the lions' den, followed by more songs, this time with the puppets. This was, of course, followed by tea and coffee with the Hope team, which is not only practiced about 3-4 times a day, but was useful in keeping us awake. On Friday evening John and Dwight were informed that they were going to have the opportunity to play in one of the first ever 5 vs. 5 football (soccer) tournament going on the next morning. It went very well and was a great opportunity to meet many new people, especially footballers we hope to develop further relations with. Though we lost our two games, both were only by one goal, and John scored the only goal of our team. Then we were able go with the youth from Hillside church to climb a local mountain called Slemish, where St. Patrick spent time herding sheep. We were also able to meet with some of our old friends here from previous trips, especially one friend named Collin. Tomorrow, Dwight is going into one of the local schools to speak to all of the students who are about to enter secondary school. Then Elizabeth will do the same on Wednesday, and John on next Tuesday. All of the Hope team will do an assembly at another school this Tuesday, similar to the one we helped with the day after arriving. This will be our last school program until after the summer, because schools get out in less than two weeks.

Weather: Though it is rumored that it was sunny and warm only a few days before we came, nothing but incessant rain and cold has filled each day up until today. We got our first sunlight and slight warmth today, which was incredibly refreshing. It is again rumored that it is to be nicer this week. Time will tell.

More to come after we get more settled! And we can't wait until our fourth companion, Erin, arrives next Tuesday. Sorry this post took so long to get up, and that it is so long, the others will hopefully be more timely and less boring.

From the interns, we love and miss you all! Keep praying!