St. Patrick’s Day Prayer March 16, 2010

Ireland is experiencing the calm before the storm this evening. Tomorrow everyone will be involved in parades, dressing in green and many, many will be heading to the pubs as early as they can.

We’ll be heading down to the Sligo parade and then to the one in Manorhamilton.
We’re not going to give you a huge list of prayer requests this time around. We’d just really like you to lift Ireland before God and pray the things you feel to pray.

Please do let us know how it went and if you felt God saying anything to you regarding Ireland.

We’ve attached a fun link for information on St. Paddy himself. He’d be distraught if he saw what goes on here on the 17th March to celebrate him. It’s our heart to see Ireland the way he did – with it’s eyes on God and on the world He loves.

Thank you all!!!

http://www.joyfulheart.com/stpatrick/

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St. Patrick Prayed… March 11, 2010

“But after I reached Ireland I used to pasture the flock each day and I      used to pray many times a day.” (from The Confession of St.Patrick 450AD)

With St. Patrick’s Day fast approaching and people here and all over the world preparing how they are going to party, get drunk and scouring their wardrobes for green clothes, we have been thinking about what we will do on March 17th.

We’ll be at the parade in Sligo and the members of the church in Manorhamilton will be passing our flyers at the parade there. But we are once again pointed towards the power of prayer. Patrick himself, with God’s strength, turned Ireland around and so much of his time was spent seeking God for the people here that he loved so much – the people that centuries on, God has placed on our hearts.

We’re going to take the opportunity to spend some time on the 17th praying for this beautiful nation and we’d love for you to join us. Once again we’re going to try and cover the whole 24hours in prayer. If you want to join us and can sign up for an hour or even half an hour on the 17th, please let us know. We’ll send you lots of information and things you can pray for and when the 17th is over, we’ll send out a full update on the Month of Prayer in January and the Patrick’s Day Prayer on the 17th March.

Once again, thank you for standing with us for Ireland. You really have and still do make such a difference!

God owns everything right? That includes cars! March 2, 2010

If you know Eric and I, you will know that for the last year the bain of our life has been my shoulder pain and our car! Well maybe I’ll write about the shoulder pain one day (or maybe not because it bores me) but today I’m sitting down to write about the car.

Since Eric arrived in Ireland in June ’09 we have broken down 5 times. One of those breakdowns cost us over 400 pounds of our wedding money, a booked ferry and a week in Wales to get it fixed (only for it to limp home). One of our breakdowns was just as the snow hit before Christmas. We had to get a train home and didn’t see the car again for 4 weeks – only on the day we got it back did we know where it actually had ended up. A huge amount of our conversation has been consumed by what we are going to do about the car and poor Eric just has to see the pure frustration in my eyes when he talks about it to know that it is NOT my favorite topic anymore.

 

Our great friend Noel has been a star in trying to help us get mobile and Eric has batted around so many ideas for patch up jobs but the saga goes on and the car continues to dislike us.

 

In all honesty the breakdowns have all been frustrating but each time God has shown His power and protection – When we broke down in Wales, it was right at the motorway exit where some great friends live. They recommended a mechanic and put us up for the week, while we waited for it to be fixed. Another time (the time in the snow) we had just cancelled the next meeting we were going to due to the weather and the car making funny noises – if we hadn’t we would have broken down in the middle of nowhere on a very dangerous road, instead of where we actually broke down, close enough to a railway station.

 

In contrast though, other times it has been at the most inconvenient times for our ministry that the car has let us down. It can’t travel far anymore without giving up, so every Sunday we have to strategically plan our transport to church and have had to miss going to other churches we have been involved with. It’s so annoying and a very obvious ploy of the enemy to frustrate the things we are here for.

 

So we’ve discussed every possible scenario and prayed so often for God’s guidance and provision in the situation. Our conclusion is that we know God owns everything. If  He wanted us to, we’d be driving around in a Ferrari, however we are asking Him not for that but just for a car that will get us to the places He wants us to be, when He wants us to be there. God could magic a car up and make it appear in front of me here in the sitting room if He wanted to but we have learned and seen that He loves to use others to bless us and us to bless others. For this reason we are sending out an appeal to all of our friends and supporters to ask them to consider donating an amount they feel God would have them to for a fund for a car that we can use in the Mission Field here. We don’t want anything flashy but we would love to be able to head out in the car and not worry about whether we will arrive at our destination. We also need reliable transport for the teams who come to Ireland to work alongside us.

So I’d love you to pray for the car situation! Please pray that a solution will be reached soon and that in the meantime our journeys would be completed and that they would be safe. Also if you feel led to donating toward our ‘car fund’ please let us know and we’ll tell you how you can do so.

 

I can’t wait to blog again with testimony of God’s provision – we are believing for a miracle!!!