Ready or Not, Here We Go!

Things I am not:  Eloquent, a writer, a theologian…Then why am I writing the inaugural entry to our family blog?  Because I must be crazy.  Either that, or I want to share with you the adventure God has our family on – as it happens, in the raw.  Being raw means being vulnerable.  Being raw invites judgment.  But being raw also allows one to be real.  And real is good.

So, here goes…We are on an adventure to become international ministry workers Ireland.  Ireland!!!  Oh.  My.  Goodness, Ireland!  To be international ministry workers.  Wait.  What?  I don’t know how to do international ministry!  I never went to Bible College!  I have a family that includes four children!  I have a career and so does my husband!  We have two churches that we love in two states! We love our lives in the Bay Area.   Then why go?  Because, without a doubt, God has grabbed our hearts to walk with the people of Ireland.  And he’s opened a door for us to go.

Rewind time to July of 2014.  Ben and I were celebrating our 15^th Wedding Anniversary by visiting Ireland for a week.  With no kids.  And no agenda.  To just be together and enjoy each other’s company.  Ahhh!  The day we arrived, we were struggling with jet lag after barely sleeping on the plane.  In an effort to keep awake, we checked in to our hotel and immediately went for a fun walk and ended up in a  neighborhood called Temple Bar.  Temple Bar is filled with pubs and music and people.  It is surrounded by Christian Cathedrals older than our country! Definitely a great place to be!  But as we enjoyed the sights, we also noticed something that came as a surprise to us – blatant drug use in the open, during daylight hours.  We saw three different situations in the course of two hours.  Now, drug use in a big city is nothing unheard of.  It happens all over the world.  And we knew this.  Then why did this affect us so much?  Because God impressed on both Ben and I the spiritual side of drug use.  Much of the time, people turn to drugs because they are looking for something to fill a void inside of them – a spiritual void, perhaps.  So as we took in the sights on that afternoon, we didn’t just see a man with a needle hanging out of his arm, we saw a man in need of Jesus’ love.  We were both caught off guard with this went back to our room to pray for the people of Dublin.  We prayed for the Christians in Ireland and asked God to show us a family who is already there who could share the love of Jesus with the Irish people.

Even after we were home, our hearts were still burdened for the Irish people.  So we continued to pray.  We asked God to connect us with a missionary family who we could financially support.  And he did!  And that burden that was supposed to have been lifted didn’t lift.  Somewhere, somehow, we began to wonder if maybe, God wanted US to move to Ireland.  So we continued to pray.  And after 15 months of prayer, it became clear that that IS what God wants us to do.

We are now a part of an organization called Amoveo Group.  The purpose of this organization is to help meet the physical, emotional, and spiritual needs of people all over the world.  And, as soon as God allows everything to fall in to place, we will be headed to Ireland for as long as the door stays open.

So I invite you to join our family in this blog (yes, even the kids will write from time to time) as we step out in faith to share the love of Jesus with the people of Ireland.