Hey everybody!

I am finally in Dublin! I have been settling in and have been meeting so many people. I feel a bit dizzy trying to remember names and sometimes even understanding names through thick accents from all over the world.

Abbey Church and the Boals are wonderful! I am super excited to be working with Alan and Ruth over the coming weeks and months. They have such a wonderful desire to serve Christ here in their community.

I am also working with an Irish guy named Mark. We will be working together with another youth club in the city to minister to the Youth of Dublin. He will also be working on a community Audit to aid Abbey in it's outreach to the surrounding area. I have been helping him with little things related to that and it is also helpful to me learning my area.

A week ago I got a "flat mate". Her name is Lydia and she is wonderful. It is great to have another person in the flat to share meals with. From January to April another intern with MTW will be joining me. Her name is Perry and we have already been emailing. I am very excited to meet her and work with her and Abbey. If y'all could pray for her as well, since she is now in the support-raising phase of her internship.

It has been SUPER cold since I arrived... cold and rainy. Not exactly a surprise, it is Ireland after all. But it can be tough at times. Since I am in the city I walk everywhere and when it is raining it can be quite a downer. Please pray that as I plan events for people to attend to experience Christian fellowship and to hear the Gospel and see it lived out that the weather would not discourage too many from leaving their homes.

Thank you all so much for your prayers and loving support! I keep having double takes since I arrived, "Am I really here?"... I keep expecting to wake up and to realize his was all a dream. But I really am here in the flesh and I am so excited that I have so many people praying for me.

Please pray that:
God would continue to mold me into the servant that he would have me be
God would prepare the path before me and the people I will be meeting and witnessing to with my daily life here.
God would bless the Boals (the pastor and family of Abbey Church) in their devotion to sharing Gospel in Dublin
I would not let the weather get me down. (sounds silly but it is a real concern of mine)

Hopefully by the end of this week I will be able to get some photos up and share that with y'all.

"And the ransomed of the Lord shall return and come to Zion with singing; everlasting joy shall be upon their heads; they shall obtain gladness and joy; and sorrow and sighing shall flee away." Isaiah 35:10

I'm not sure...

I am not quite sure where in my heart, mind, or soul to store this feeling of disgust/remorse/awe... I just heard a rather odd noise coming from the dining room... after certain failures (by our 2 cats) earlier today concerning a mouse we found in our front room you would think I might have expected this... (Right now is is past 1 AM and I had to turn my computer on specially to record this) There were some very loud pooms and scratchety struggling noises coming from the front 2 rooms... Emmi walks out with said mouse hanging from her petite face holding her head high... I call up the stairs for my dad (I know) and mom... they come down quickly, in their PJ's, mom with camera in hand. (everything about today needed to have the closure of photographic evidence of the poor little mouse's noble death)... Emmi then begins the dance of horror, you know when cats just play with their semi wounded prey? It's like watching a train wreck... it is so terrible but maybe I can blame The Crocodile Hunter or something on Discovery or Animal Planet during my childhood for my inability to look away... After cheering silently for the little guy who so valiantly fought off and evaded 2 cats all day in our front room (you seriously gotta give the guy some points for that) Emmi finally did him in. Ok, I think after a moment of watching her playfully batting his dead little body around the dining room, that was sick and twisted... And I moved on, I have seen this before... I turned my computer off and was about to go upstairs to bed... That's when I heard the odd noise... I couldn't quite tell what it was so I turned the light on... Emmi was actually eating the mouse! Maybe there was some innocent and totally naive remnant inside of me that just thought things ended when I left the room... or that the cats really don't like mouse meat, they just enjoy the hunt and leave the dead little bodies to their loving and wonderful humans to discover the first moment their feet hit the floor in the morning... but no... I had the grotesque privilege to learn otherwise... Emmi is a fierce and relentless carnivore and she crushes bones... beware folks...

So Close!

Hey every body! Just thought I would share How Good God is! I am absolutely amazed by how He has been so faithful and patient with me through this process. The whole fund raising thing is not exactly something I am particularly gifted in or a fan of. Ever since I can remember I have never been in to fund raisers for school and so I never developed that side of my brain... I say all this because it is so obvious to me that the status of my fund raising has absolutely nothing to do with how crazy I have been these past months. God has brought in every penny so far and He will bring in the rest. I am amazed by how much he has blessed my efforts...

For my Monthly need I have 82% raised. For my One Time need I have 67% raised. What this means is that I still need $520.00 for each of the 11 months I am gone and $2,725.00 before I can leave.

I have set October 8th as when I need to leave. I did this because Abbey Church has a need that I am trying to fill as soon as possible. The previous interns have both returned to the states and now Alan Boal (Abbey's pastor) and the church are preparing for my arrival and are hoping it is sooner rather that later. I have that same hope. Please continue to pray that God will continue to mold me into the woman that He wants me to be and that he will provide quickly for me to go to Dublin.

I know, I know...

So I have been reminded again and again ( I wont say any names... you know who you are)
that I have no clue how to do this blogging thing... well, I do apologize for the huge gaps in between each blog post but I do have a reason, or more like a lack of reason to blog right now. So I figured that in order to satisfy the unnamed individuals mentions above I will now talk about all the incredibly boring stuff that I am up to these days.

1- I have been working on my support letter and getting them mailed out to everyone I think might be interested in what I will be doing (hopefully) in September and beyond. But see, I cannot mail all of the letters out at once since I mean to follow up with a phone call to talk about my mission work to come. So I have grouped the letters into groups of 16 to mail at a time so every week and a half I will have 16 phone calls to make... and then I will mail out the second batch, and so on.
Let me tell you, signing your name 50 times and writing your own address 50 times is not easy... But I will gladly sacrifice temporary use of my fingers for the greater cause of the mission in Ireland!

2- There is a book that I have grown up with, thanks to my mom, titled The Little White Horse. I recently decided to read it again since it has been one of my favorites for years. This may sound incredibly odd to, well, anyone who reads this, but every other time in my life I have read the book I reached the middle of the very last chapter and stopped. It was never on purpose, sometimes I might have misplaced it, other times I probably got caught up with another book... but there really is no excuse.
Last night was the first time I have ever read the entire thing. And it was more magical and lovely than I could have ever imagined... I felt that I owed it to my mom to tell her that this was the first time I ever read the ending... I was a little nervous because she loves the book so much that disowning me would be a perfectly reasonable punishment for my crime. She was only shocked out of her socks when I told her, so I felt much better.

well, thats all for now... I really hope more interesting things happen soon so I can write a better post!

Haycock...

So I was asked to be a chaperon this weekend on the Haycock Youth retreat. I love to help anyway I can but I still feel a little weird! Kate Kelly is now a chaperon... does that sound weird to anyone else? Jeepers... I am now feeling the guilt from all my years past when I was part of keeping the chaperons on similar trips awake for hours and hours past midnight... So ironic how when we look back we have that 20/20 vision we didn't realize we were without at the time.
I am sure there won't be any trouble though, it is a great group of kids going...

Dublin, Ireland!!

Today I received the official invite from the church in Dublin to be an intern with their ministry! I am so excited! Earlier I saw a new email in my inbox that had an attachment. It looked like it might have been a virus email so I deleted it. Turns out it was the invite! So I had to have MTW resend it to me... Jeepers.

I AM GOING TO IRELAND!!

66 degrees!!!

Is it just me, or has Aslan returned to Narnia??? It is a glorious 66 degrees outside and I was able to drive home today with the car windows down. The air is finally beginning to kind of smell like spring is around the corner. Wow, I miss spring and summer! Even though all the trees still look dead and depressing I am amazed by how much the sunshine and temperature can affect how I feel.
Hooray for Aslan!