2nd post this year...that's pretty good for me, i'd say :)

it's amazing how the days fly by when something is coming to an end. i fly home tomorrow (eek!), and truthfully i'm quite sad about it. not to say that i'm not excited to see everyone at home...it is just hard to leave a place and people that have grown so dear to my heart, especially not knowing when i'll be be back. OH! and here's some exciting news...ELIZABETH IS COMING BACK FOR ANOTHER YEAR!!!! she talked to sam and alan, who are happy to have her stay and work for hillside again. she is coming back in july with the UCF team and will be staying here when they all leave. we are all super excited for her, and i have to say it is good to my heart to know that someone will still be here to continue the specific relationships that we have developed and grown. YAY!

anyway, since our time here is quickly growing short (john, elizabeth, and dwight leave next monday!), we have been trying to see and spend time with as many people as we can. last friday we hosted a bar b que in our back garden for our friends from both churches as well as from the estate. it turned out to be a beautiful day, and i'm proud to say that we successfully went through...dum, dum, dum...130something burgers and 50 sausages!!! needless to say, we all had a lot of fun. (and just to let everyone know...the guys from the church take very good care of us. we definitely could not have done it without all of their help!)

saturday we went up to coleraine with our friend danny to play on his boat. despite the combination of cold water, one hurt ankle, and one horrible wake-border, we had a great time hanging out. yesterday was our day to spend with our friend paul. we went to see indiana jones (i have to say, i was a wee bit disappointed), had family dinner, wore funny hats (see picture below), and spent the evening playing music and talking. elizabeth and i took a hiatus from paul for an hour or two to hang out with amy, reegan, anna, kay, and lauren.



since this is our last week, it is full of many "last moments." today is my and elizabeth's last art club with the girls. we are having a party and our friend amy is going to come, too! the guys are heading over to calvin and marty's, and i'm pretty sure that they will be two very sad boys when dwight and john leave (of course, dwight and john will be two sad boys, too). later this evening bobby and norman are stopping by for a while. even though we've only spent one day with them since we've been here, they are one of the most encouraging couples we know. we are excited about seeing them again! oh, and tonight is also our very last family dinner...sad.

please pray for us as we are saying goodbye to all of our friends here. pray for opportunities to spend quality time with them and last chances to share the gospel. specifically, the girls on my heart right now that you can be praying for are amy, anna, and danielle. also, please pray for our readjustment when we head back home. it is going to be a different life for us than the one we've grown accustomed to this past year. i mean, we all have to find jobs and everything...yuck. thank you all for keeping up with us and being faithful to pray.

I wish I had witty subject lines....

Oh boy. It is so hard to believe how short our time here is: two weeks from today for the three of us and one week from Wednesday for Erin! These past few weeks have flown by as we are bringing some of our regular programs/clubs/bible studies to a close for the summer and trying to spend plenty of time with all of our friends here. Here's the quick rundown:

-While the girls are continuing the Tuesday after school art club with their faithful 5-6 girls for the next two weeks, John and I have had less faithful attendance from our 5-6 guys in the last few weeks, and so are going to spend the time with the two brothers that we have invested most in, Marty and Calvin

-Ballyloughan, as we have mentioned before, has started a Wednesday night outreach into the estates, and we are helping for the next two weeks with that, leading sports activities for kids

-We are continuing our Thursday door to door prayer ministry until we leave, as we are nearly finished with individually visiting ever home in the estates. While this sometimes proves routine, or without many people to pray and talk with, the past few weeks have been so encouraging! During the last two weeks, we met and talked and prayed with two grandmothers of one of the largest families in the area. When I say large, I mean they each told us that they have a range of 60-90 grandchildren and 20-30 great grandchildren. This family is a traveling family that is very very closely knit and is matriarchal by nature, and so it is a huge thing for us to not only meet these lovely ladies, but to receive such warmth and acceptance from them. We were also able to pray with them and will be giving them Bibles. This is also the same family that supplies about 50% of regular attenders for Kidzone at church at Hillside each week, so please keep this ministry and this family in particular in your prayers.

-Our Thursday night youth club is finished, which frees us up to hang out with everyone. Since the weather has been phenomenal for the past three weeks, and it is light until 10:30, there are many older kids out. John and I have been playing much more football on the courts recently, and it is prime time for strolling around and visiting. It is also clear that the summer is nearing, as the older ones around here start getting into their crazy mindsets again, complete with excessive drinking, late night parties, fighting, police riots, and the like which are already becoming regular.

-Fridays and Saturdays are pretty free for us to meet with any people we are close with, and to just hang around with the kids.

-Besides our weekly events, we are scheduled to have dinner with someone different nearly every single night until we leave, so this is great to get some final quality time in so many different friendships. We have already had tons of great times recently, including going to a huge motorbike race at the coast this weekend (similar to Nascar in popularity and style, but a roadrace), and a huge barbecue with friends yesterday after church. We are soo thankful for the hospitality and level of love that our friends here have shown us this year.

-Finally, this Friday evening, we are having a big goodbye barbecue for pretty much everyone we know here, including people from both churches and especially people from the estate. Some friends from church are helping us with the food and supplies, and we are beginning to tell everyone. Please pray for this time, as we expect and hope to see lots of people we know, get a chance to say a final goodbye, and still share our love of Christ through this final act of kindness.

Well, true to form for my updates, this has become longer than I intended, but hopefully you have found this encouraging and will be faithful in prayer for us through this last bit of our time here. We love you all!

may day and hayley

Last Monday we celebrated May Day.  We really have no idea what exactly May Day is other than it is a bank holiday which means everyone is off school and work.  We think it is similar to Labor Day.  We loved it.  I think it might be my new favorite holiday.  The weather was amazing!  It actually was incredible for most of last week.  Even the 'not so great' days were great.  The days do warm up over here believe it or not, though we usually still wear jackets on the 'warm' days.  But this week we were all wearing t-shirts and flip flops!  

We celebrated May Day with Hayley and Paul at People's Park, one of our favorite places in Ballymena.  We had a picnic, played frisbee and made daisy chains.  Dwight made his first ever daisy chain after learning several different methods.  Erin and John rescued the frisbee from beyond the fence a couple times.

We also said good-bye to our dearest friend Hayley this week.  Hayley was the first person we met when we moved to Ballymena last summer.  She was our next door neighbor for a while and we quickly became friends after I walked into her house without knocking a few times.  She took us to Belfast to explore caves, to Downpatrick and Newcastle.  She taught us to play scrabble and then we quickly learned a new meaning to the term 'competitive.'  She opened her home to us and became part of our family.  She even let me have a party in her house one night while she was upstairs on the phone.  And no matter how mean the boys were to Kat the cat, she always let us back in.*

She is beginning an adventure...she left Dublin at 12:30 am last night to visit a friend in Estonia for a few weeks.  There is talk of a European road trip as she makes her way to France to find a job teaching English or writing.  I am a little jealous.  I'd never heard of Estonia and kind of want to go there now.  We love her and can not wait to hear about her travels.  I personally think she is going to be the female Bill Bryson. 

Check out her blog:  http://coffeehelps.wordpress.com

* If anyone reading this would like a cat, Kat still needs a home.  

burgers, indiana jones, and clean clothes

During our time in Ballymena, we have found some great places to eat, one of which is the Spinning Mill. Our friends took us there last summer for breakfast and we have made use of the inexpensive meals over the past months.  A couple months ago, I was invited to have lunch with Dwight and Paul.  I went to the counter to order my sandwich and went back to the table to wait for the guys.  They returned excited and informed me that they had discovered that you can order an extra slice of meat on a double burger for only a pound (approx $2) extra, making it a triple.

So, after months of planning, we took a family outing...

...they ate every last bite.

The new Indiana Jones movie comes out May 22 in Ballymena.  To celebrate, we watched Raiders of the Lost Ark with our friend Danny Sunday night.  We met Danny through working with Ballyloughan Presbyterian Church over the past few months.  He is a physics teacher for an all boys school in Belfast where he teaches ages 12 to 18.  He drives up to Ballymena (approx 30-45 minute drive, depending on the traffic) every other week to help with the community youth club.  He is great.

To continue with news of laundry...the weather has been amazing and I dried my clean clothes outside on the line yesterday.  They smell so good.

All of my clothes are pink...

It's sunday afternoon right now and we are all enjoying a couple of hours of rest and reading in between the morning services and the night services. After church this morning, we were invited to lunch at a couple's house from Ballyloughan. It was a great time and we really enjoyed getting to know them more, and experiencing the love of Christ through their hospitality and the fellowship of the body here. Elizabeth is about to go have a meeting with the elders from Hillside about trying to figure out a way for her to stay on living here after this year. Actually, they are here right now to pick her up, so please be praying that they will have wisdom and discernment in this matter, for Elizabeth really feels that the Lord is leading her to stay.

We had an unexpected, pleasant surprise visit from Colin the other night! He called my phone and said he wanted to see us, which was very exciting, because we have been trying to get ahold of him recently, to no avail. Anyways, he came by sometime after 11 and ended up staying till near 1am. It was so good, and we were able to make him his favorite food ever-bacon! He didn't like our American biscuits as much, but breakfast, football, photo shoots, coffee and tea, and a group walk through the estate was never as much fun. Please keep praying for Colin, that the Lord would continue to seek him, even in the midst of his running from him, and that Colin would give in to the Spirit and yield to his ways.





Yesterday, Elizabeth went to the coast for the day with a friend and had a great time, John and I went rock climbing at an indoor wall again, and Erin guarded the fort. We took Steen, on of the boys from the estate, with us climbing and we really enjoyed hanging out with him, since we haven't seen him around much recently. We also went to Mark and Jacqui's house the other night and made them chicken quesadillas and saw their baby Jonathan.

Well, the only other important thing that I can think of is that I had a tragic blow to my limited wardrobe. I had delayed in washing my clothes for so long that I was finally forced to do it so I would have something to wear. Rather than split it up into two loads, i literally shoved it all into the tightest single load ever...much to my dismay, I realized far too late that I had also included in that load my red boxing wraps. That's right, my ENTIRE load is pink, not an even, slightly distinguishable pink, but bright, random splotches of red and pink everywhere. oh well, I guess I am reminded that life does not consist of these things, but things of far greater importance. I better get used to pink.
Until next time, we love you all!!!!