Well we are at the Bunches tonight. Farrah cooked us all some gumbo and it was good. REAL GOOD! Well we are still hit and miss on the times we are able to check email and make post. It is taking the phone company 20 days to install us phone and Internet service. CRAZY! Sorry to be so short but we have to go. Talk to you all soon. We have a lot of picutres to share and stories we just don’t have time right now.
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
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.
Well as you can see we are still state side. We are still working on obtaining the funding to fulfill our budget. If you were to allow it, the situation could be a little depressing. Northern Ireland is goverend by the UK and so the currency used there is the Pound Sterling (GBP). Currently the US dollar is two to one against the pound. So I need two dollars for every pound I will spend. So as you can see with the US economy in the shape it is one could get depressed very quickly. Especially if you are moving to the UK. Well there is one part to the equation that Wall Street and Bloomberg have no clue about. That would be the “God Factor”. I was in prayer the other day and God spoke to me that he never leads where He doesn’t provide substance. So I took that seed of faith and have stood on it.
So that brings me to last night. Dad called me and told me he was on his way down to my house because he had something he needed to bring me. Well when he showed up he had in his hands the basket that is in the picture below. My Dad’s next door neighbor came over to his house and told Dad that he started rolling his change jar a few days ago and while he was doing it he felt that the Lord told him that he needed to give it to me to help with my trip to Ireland. So he showed up with this basket full of money rolls. There is $589.50 in change there and it weighs in at 60lbs. Now when things like this happen I know it is a God thing. Brad, my Dad’s neighbor, doesn’t go to our church and we are not sure how he found out about us leaving. However God impressed it upon Brad’s heart to help us out. So you know what I do when doubt and fear show up and tell me there is no way? I just knock it out with a 60lb basket of change.
This is the second time something like this has happened from someone outside our church family and friends. I had a man show up on my door step three weeks ago and hand me $1000.00 in cash. Said he just finished a job and felt that the Lord told him that was what he needed to give me. So I know God is making it happen and much to Tara’s disappointment on His time not hers. ;) So yeah God is awesome!
Our Visas have arrived! I tell you it is a little unnerving sending off your passports and trusting they don’t get lost along the journey. We had a very big mess up with getting them submitted. It is a long story that I wont bore you with, but let’s just say that we are very familiar with the Home Land Security office in St. Louis. Despite using an incompatible web browser (Mac+Safari) and not knowing it to getting the wrong biometrics on one of our applications we did it. We have Visas. We are now legal to travel and live in the UK.
This weekend we are hopefully going to be taking our belonging to the shipping container in Effingham IL. We are going to have to build crates to pack everything in. Along with our stuff, the Bunch’s and the McFarlands we are also shipping building matierals. We are going to be putting an addition on the church once we all get there. Yes believe it or not it is cheaper to ship the supplies from here rather than buying it in Ireland.
If you want to keep up with what is going on in Ireland right now check out the Bunch’s Blog. God is already doing wonderful things.
Well this is the official launch of our blog. We are working as hard as we can to get everything in order for our “launch” date. If everything goes as planned we will be leaving the last week of June. Our funding hasn’t all come together yet, but we are not worried. God has called us and because of that we know he has a plan.
Right now we have started the very long process of obtaining our Visa’s. Ever since 9/11 things have changed. I am pretty sure I had to answer on the application who my second grade teacher was and what I did for my third grade science project. We finished the applications and then had to go to St. Louis to the Home Land Security office to be finger printed. We had a small hiccup and had to go back a second time, but as of right now they are being processed at the British Consulate in Chicago.
Well we will keep you posted as we make our journey to Ireland
