Greetings from Dublin

After a long day of travel on Friday, I arrived here in Dublin around 10:30 on Saturday morning. A special thank you to Paul Biggers and Joe & Linda Bessenbacher for a trip to the airport and breakfast to boot - It made for a great start to my trip!

The first thing I noticed when stepping off the plane was that it is cold!! The temperature was 51 degrees which was quite chilly compared with the 113 degree day I had just come from. My Oregon friends would think I've gotten soft from living in the desert. Hopefully I will toughen up since I only packed one pair of long pants and a light jacket.

Anyway, I met up with Todd at the airport and we went to his house where I will be staying this week. I have my own little room and everything has really been quite nice. He had some errands to run in the city center, so I tagged along to see some sights and get a feeling of the lay of the land. I was making every effort to stay awake as late as possible to fight off the jet lag, and ended up crashing around 8:30pm.

Today we went to the church that Todd planted, which turned out to be a wonderful experience. They are a small church of about 30 people that meet in a community center in a poor area of the city. When we arrived early to set-up we found that the building was still locked. As the time passed and people began showing up for church it became apparent that no one was coming to unlock it! Undeterred, everyone loaded in to their cars and drove to the house of a family in the church who lived nearby.

About once a month, the teens in the church lead the service. Today was one of those days and about 6 of them had just returned from a short term mission trip to Hungary and they were going to do a presentation on that. So while they got prepared in the kitchen/sitting room, the adults and younger kids hung out in the living room. Once they were ready, we all gathered together and sang worship songs, listened to the stories about the mission trip, watched a slide show, prayed, and then enjoyed some Hungarian tea that they brought back - which tasted a lot like hot apple juice.

I was so impressed with this group of people who showed tremendous flexibility and determination to make church happen despite the obstacle of a closed building. The teens did a brilliant job at articulating how the mission trip impacted their lives, the worship time was great, and of course it was very enjoyable for me to meet and talk with the Irish people that I met there.

Later this afternoon I met with the other coaches who will be helping to run the basketball camp that starts tomorrow. Todd has done a tremendous job organizing what will be a very fun and meaningful experience for the kids who attend. I feel very encouraged and am ready for the camp to get underway!

That's the update for now - I will plan on posting again around mid-week after a couple of days of camp and my visit with the folks at the mission agency we are applying with.

God Bless!