The March Gang

Hey everyone we just wanted to let you all know that we are still alive and well.  We moved into our house on Sunday night and are now waiting for our phone and Internet to be hooked up.  I am at David Bunches house using his Internet.  We have found that the Irish don’t get in a hurry as far as services go. Once you get them up and running they are great, but it’s the wait.  They however would say us Americans are just impatient and that is more than likely the case. ;)  They also all do quarterly billing.  So not only are they not in a hurry to get my phone turned on, they are not in a big hurry to get my money either.  So I guess I can wait.  So we are going to have one really big blog once we get things lined out.  We have a lot of pics we want to get posted for you all to see.  I want to thank all of you for your comments on the blog.  Tara especially has enjoyed them.  We are going to do our best to personally respond to each of you, but like I said it is hard without Internet.  Most of you who know me realize that I am about to go crazy.  I havent’ been this disconnected since I don’t know when.  How do third world country’s do it?   Anyway thank you for your prayers and support.   We will make another update as soon as we can!

Today we started helping around the church to get ready for this weekend.  We are having a 10 year anniversary celebration this weekend.  Saturday night we will be having a banquet. Then Sunday we will have a special service.  Today we were finishing up cleaning the church and the lawn.  The lawn mower is not very good so we were having to rake up the grass and haul it away.  Simeon and Dawson were helping us pick up the piles of grass and loading it.  They were actually a big help.  The girls helped too, until they got tired.

Thank you everyone who is leaving posts.  We love hearing from you.  I had to sit down this morning and have a cry after reading them.  I love you all and I miss you.  I know this is where God wants us, but it is also a little sad to know we won’t see you for a while.

We are suffering from jet lag a little.  It is not a bad as I thought it would be.  Simeon is having the hardest time.  He been playing and working real hard, so he is taking naps, which he never does.  He however,  has a great friend with Dawson.  After 15 minutes of playing he said “Dawson, you’re my best friend”, those of you who know him, know that everyone is his best friend.  Dawson and him are getting along great so that helped me out a lot.

We went and looked at a house today, and we sign lease papers tomorrow.  I am very excited about it.  It has 4 bedrooms.  The kids all picked out their bedroom today.  Simeon picked out the master suite, which he is not getting, but it was a nice try on his part.  It has a huge kitchen with (Thank you Jesus) a dishwasher. YEAH!!!!!!   It has a big nice stove, bigger than my old one.  They are going to provide us a washing machine.  Over here they hang out their clothes instead of using a dryer, so I will try this for a while.

Please keep us in your prayers.  We love you all so much.  We will be praying for you.  I will get off now.  I have to sit outside to post because the wireless signal does not go through the walls of the AIM Flat.  I can see my breathe, and my fingers are starting to freeze it is 42 degrees tonight.

We are here! Our flight only took six hours thanks to an 110mph tail wind. We actually almost missed the flight due to a gate change, early boarding by Continental and us eating dinner. If it wasn’t for a airport employee and his “super sonic” golf cart we wouldn’t have made it. It is 9:43pm right now and we are getting ready to hit the hay. We felt pretty good when we arrived but it is catching up with us. We will post a little later when we can think straight.

Love ya all and thanks for the prayers!

Well I am currently sitting in a Pear Tree Inn across the highway from the St Louis airport.  We are leaving for Ireland in the morning at 10:00am.  We have a couple lay overs and we should be arriving in Belfast around 9:00am on Tuesday. We have a 4hr layover in Pittsburgh and a 3hr one in Newark NJ.  Then it is an all night ride to Belfast.  I just sent David and Bro. Mac an email telling them that they may need to bring a semi-truck to haul all the luggage back to Gilford. With three women in the party you can imagine the things we had to pack.  Before Tara gets on to me Simeon and me have a few things packed as well.  Ok maybe a little more than a few.  It is amazing what it takes to move a family of five half way around the world.

We are so excited about what is getting ready to happen in our lives.  Keep us in your prayers, and we will make an update to the blog as soon as we can.

You can track our flights in real-time if you would like…
STL to Pittsburgh
Pittsburg to Newark
Newark to Belfast

Sunday night we had an awesome church service.  We had two altar services.  Bro. Bobby Gentry, preached on “Faith”.  You could feel faith rising up in our mists.  Bro. Chuck brought up many people to the platform at the second altar service to tell what God was doing in their lives.  He did this to build even more faith.  Well, I have had my faith built up.  I know God is going to do marvelous things in Doniphan and Ireland.  I can’t wait to hear the reports of miracles that God has performed.

As most of you know Riley has MS.  He was diagnosed with this December 26th 2002.  He had been having problems in the summer before that, but he didn’t go to the Doctor until then.  He has had numerous problems as a result it.  His hands and feet always feel like they are asleep.  He has problems with his legs, eyes, thinking process, and generally everything on his body aches.  He has always kept a very positive attitude, and has provided for his family by working even when he felt awful.  We have always believed that God would heal him.  Even on his worst days Riley believed.

Well, Sunday night during one of the altar services(Riley can’t remember which one.) :)  A man from our church, Bro. Kenny Hall, came up to Riley and told him that the Lord had been wanting him to tell Riley something, and he finally got up the nerve.  He said “The Lord told me to tell you, that because of your dedication, the anointing He has placed on your life, and because of your willingness to go when you step on that plane God is going to heal you.  You wont have to worry about the symptoms anymore, because He will take care of those too.”

You can imagine what we have been feeling.  God is so faithful to us.  We booked tickets for September 22nd.  We can’t wait to step on that plane.  This has been a long journey for us, especially Riley, but God has been with us the whole way.   I love you God!!!  You are great!!!!!

I feel like I need to tell this testimony to everyone.

Well it has been awhile since I have posted anything.  Tara has really gotten the hang of this blogging thing and She has been doing a great job.   I have some great news to share with you and Tara told me I had better get it posted. :)  So here it goes and it’s a long one…

It looks like we are going to be leaving the end of September.  We got a call Wednesday night before church that has changed the dynamics of our time line.  We have someone that is sending us a $10,000 check.  This is  from a couple that used to attend our church here in Doniphan, and are in South Dakota getting ready to plant a church and reach out to the local Indian reservation.   These folks are not rich by any means, and we know this was a sacrifice.  They were blessed themselves and told me they wanted to share the blessing with us.  They said that they were looking forward to what God was getting ready to do in Ireland.  Words can’t express what they have done for us.  I know that not only is God getting ready to do wonderful things in Ireland I also know he is getting ready to do wonderful things in South Dakota.

Tuesday of last week we loaded up pretty much all our possessions and took them to the shipping container in Effingham IL.  Maybe I should clarify that all the possessions we were going to be able to take with us.  Which due to space and practicality wasn’t much. :)  That’s ok though.  We had a full day and I have a few pictures to share.  We spent about 9 hours organizing all the personal effects and items of our, the Bunch’s and McFarland’s stuff.  We have a 40ft container, but with the building material that is being sent over for the new sanctuary space is limited.  Bro. Dan Dollan, who is over seeing the loading and the purchasing of the building material has this thing figured down the very inch of space.  He drew a line on the floor of the container and said “you can’t go past this line with this stuff.”   Well we accomplished the task after several packs and repacks.  Tara and I had my Dad and our Youth Pastor, Kevin Raposo, helping us out.  My Dad proved to be quite the packer as did Kevin.  I think these guys could move a family of six accross country in nothing but a Ford Pinto.

Sis. McFarland if you are reading this I have a picture of one of your trees.  We set it outside and I guess the worms got to it or something. ;)  Just kidding! We took the limbs off so they woudn’t get smashed.

That is all for now.  Keep us in your prayers.