Sis Mac

In case you didn't read the comment left by Valerie about Sister Mac, things are looking up for her. Once her blood is thinned enough, they will send her home. It will take 30-60 days for the blood clot to dissolve. She is feeling much better and glad to have Bro. Mac there.

Thanks Valerie for the update!

Timo

Keep up with Timo on Vicki's sister's blog.

http://www.tsmithconroe.blogspot.com/

This family needs your prayers and a miracle from God!

Urgent Prayer Request from WNOP

Our very good friends Vicki and Tremayne Simoneaux's son needs your prayers:

Timothy (Timo) Simoneaux, a missionary kid from Africa, has bacterial meningitis. He has been unresponsive for five hours and is being air-evaced from Malawi to South Africa. They expect the plane to arrive within the next five hours. Please pray that the plane will arrive sooner and get him to South Africa. Please pray for God's healing power to flow in Timothy's body. Please pray that the family will have peace in this scary time.

Sister Mac

We haven't heard anything about Sister Mac. We will update you as we do.

If you have any info, please leave us a comment.

Thanks!

On Asking Directions From An Irishman

He spake thus:

"Do you know where the Moira Roundabout is? Right then, well you wouldn't go that way. You'd go the other way up the Dromore Road to Roundabout Fifteen. There you take left and go about a mile until you come to a large hill. Go down the hill. Now when you come up the other side of that hill you'll be in town. Now I can't remember if it's the second light or the third light, but at one of the lights you'll see a stone fence. If you'll just take a wee right at the only road past that fence, you'll come to the train station and see a car park. Now you wouldn't park in that car park because it is much too dear. So if you'll circle back around to the other side of the train station, go back up the street you just came down and go completely around the roundabout, you'll see a free car park. The best thing to do would be to park there and walk back."

Great Service on Sunday

Sunday service was fantastic. We had 27 including a couple of first time visitors! A Filipino brother came from Tome, which is well north of here. He had to take a train to one city, catch a bus to Belfast, get another train from Belfast to Lurgan, and then Bro Eamon picked him up from the train station and brought him to church. That's a real desire to come to God's house!

We had a tremendous time in God's presence and many lives were touched. We desperately miss Pastor Mac, but we are encouraged knowing that God has brought us all together for this time and place for the advancement of the Kingdom.

Our faith is high and God is confirming His Promises over and over again.

ICU

Please pray for Sister Cindy McFarland as she is in intensive care for the next five days. They have found a blood clot in one of her lungs. Brother McFarland must leave to be with her on Sunday morning.

I know that God is in control and that he has us here to help during this time of need for the McFarlands. However, we will miss Brother Mac and can't wait until Sister Mac is well and can return to her home here in Ireland.

Thanks for the prayers!

Wed. Church

We had great church last night.

Pastor Mac began teaching about prayer. He noted that the Bible does not say "if" you pray and "if" you fast. It says "when" you pray and fast.

He is leading the church into a season of prayer. And I'm sure that fasting will follow next week's lesson. We better eat lots this week. (wink, wink)

We are happy to announce that Steve and Sherie Bunch have booked their tickets to come and see us the first week of September! We are so excited!

If you have a chance, click on my link to Vicki Simoneaux's blog. Her son Timo prayed a prayer for the children of Africa that is really worth reading.

BTW...

We had 29 souls in service today! Praise the Lord. We are growing.

This is just too cute!
Make a joyful noise unto the Lord!

Food, fun, and fellowship.

Worship the Lord! Praise His Holy Name!

Sit back and relax. This may take a while. Pastor Mac is back!

Sunday school...before it got wild!

Mid-week Service

It was Wednesday night...and we had people at church!

Camp out

During Ben and Rani's visit, the guys had an interesting camp out (in the front garden of the church). Um, yeah. You might not call it a camp out because they got cold and went home somewhere around 1:00 in the morning. Now that's roughing it. I guess that they didn't think that all four of them could fit in the two man tent that they had. Imagine that??

Week 7 or is it 8 now?

We have been busy even though we took the week off from working on the church property. Of course that means that we worked at home because there is always work to do there, right? Brother Mac was sick early in the week and really need time to get over the jet lag before diving into physical labor.

Today was the first real work day. The guys - including Dawson (and Shawna part of the time) worked really hard in the garden. (That is what they call yards here whether or not there are flowers growing.) It really needed a good overhaul. The weather was lovely! It's too bad I didn't have my camera there to take before and after pictures.

Meanwhile, the rest of us worked in the church and the house cleaning, and organizing, and rearranging, and making things look and smell pretty (yes things can smell pretty).

We are looking forward to Brother Mac preaching tomorrow in his own church! After church, we are having a good old fashioned potluck (benefit of a small church). I guess it's not really a potluck because we have planned out exactly who is bringing what. Unless the "luck" comes in when the food actually arrives and is tasty.

Pray for my Sunday school lesson tomorrow. (smile)

A Blog! (But No Photos)

Wow! We've had computer troubles the last few days and are just now getting re-connected! It's amazing how attached we are to computers, especially being so far from friends and family. I thought our oxygen supply had been cut off!

So the good news is we're back online, but there may not be any pictures for a few days unless and until Farrah can work some of her magic to get them posted.

The other good news is that we just finished up our Wednesday evening service and we had 18 people in attendance! What????!! Just a few weeks ago we would have considered 18 on a Sunday to be a huge crowd (and everyone knows you have more people on Sunday than on Wednesday, right?).

Gary brought another friend tonight, a guy named John. Guess what? John says he's an atheist : ) He won't be for long!

Other updates:

• The Mac Attack is Back! Well, at least Bro McFarland has returned to Ireland. Sis Cindy will remain in the States under the care of her doctor until September. Keep them in prayer. Though we wish Sis Cindy could be here too, we are ecstatic to have Bro Mac. We got to hang out with him some yesterday and had a blast.

• Lynn and Kyle and family are simply amazing. We've connected with them in such a great way. They just keep on amazing us with their kindness and generosity. After Sunday service they took us boating on Lough Neagh (here's where one of those pictures would be nice). I thanked them for sharing their blessing of a boat with us and they replied "that's what blessings are for - to share".

• Saturday was a big holiday here (12th of July) and then Monday was a big holiday, too (Scarva Day). So Lynn and Kyle invited us over for a big bbq and we got to meet some of their extended family. All precious people.

• We are overwhelmed at the goodness of God. I'm so glad He's allowing us to be here in Northern Ireland to connect with such wonderful people.

Thanks for all of your comments on the blog. We always look forward to reading your posts!

Thank God for Good Church

God gave us a really good service today. It seems like each week the Presence of God is even more real in the service than before. People were visibly moved both during worship and during prayer time after the message. We are truly seeing God move and it is so awesome to be a small part of it.

Today Gary brought a friend named Simon who we really enjoyed meeting. Simon is also hungry for more of God and said that he had never felt God like he did today.

Kyle and Lynn, who have been so good to us and the church, brought their daughter and her fiance today! We were thrilled to have them with us.

And of course we are so pleased that our long term friends Rani and Ben Nolan are visiting us all the way from Texas. We've all had a good time laughing and cutting up, and yesterday Rani and Ben pitched in to help us clean up the church for service today.

At church this morning, Ben gave us a good word by sharing some things God has given him about truly getting to know God.

We give God all of the glory for what He is doing in Northern Ireland!

(I'm sure Farrah will post some pictures soon)!

Misc. Photos I Thought You'd Enjoy

If Caleb really played with this much gusto, we'd have some church!

Future preacher? Or singer? Or both?

We had a stray dog come up Wednesday night. Yes, he wondered into church in the middle of Bible Study! He was wet and smelly. Nathaniel and the dog became instant friends. Hmmmm....

Gary and me, right after he was baptized.

A Good Report

It's amazing how busy we've been. About six weeks have gone by and it seems like we just got here!

We're starting to adjust to the Irish way of life, and though we haven't exactly picked up the accent, we are starting to use some of their vernacular. An example of this would be where they call a baby's pacifier a "dummy". No longer do we search the house and car for "nu nus"...no, we search for "dummies". And there are lots of dummies to be found depending on which sense of the word you want to use!

As crazy as it sounds, driving on the other side of the car and road is now done without a second thought, and when I try to imagine driving in America my head starts spinning and I get real dizzy. Okay, so it isn't that bad but you get the idea.

This week we will be busy making final preparations for the McFarland's arrival next Monday. They are missed much by the church people and by us.

There was a great presence of God in the service today. We had a good crowd and the worship was excellent. Farrah brought a good report from Sunday school. (One little guy named Jacob walked into church this morning, went straight up to Farrah and asked, "Are we having Sunday School today")? So that made Farrah happy knowing that Jacob was looking forward to it.

Kristen said my sermon was good, but she fell asleep so that's not good! I'm guessing that I'm not on the short list for camp meeting next year.

All said, we still feel "dead on" to be here in Ireland contributing to the Kingdom.

And that's another Irish expression.

New Link Added!

Rev. Paul Dickson is a dear friend and mentor in my life, and I am adding a link to his website on the sidebar. You can also click here.

Bro. Paul was well into his training to become a monk when God began dealing with him to leave the monastic order. He is now an Apostolic minister and has an anointed ministry that combines humor and his personal testimony.

Be sure to check out his website to read all about the "monk who stole the bell"!

American Holiday

Happy 4th of July America!

God Bless America

We celebrated the 4th of July today at the McFarland's house with an American style BBQ. Later we gathered around a bonfire and roasted marshmallows (which was really nice since it is cold out, especially at night).

Our dearest friends, Ben and Rani, arrived in Ireland today. They won't be at our house until Thursday, but then they'll be here for 5 days! Yeah!

Hello to everyone who is at Louisiana Camp meeting this week! I know that you are all enjoying the AWESOME services.

Slideshow

I added a slide show element to our blog. We plan to update it often. Enjoy!

UK

I just thought that you all should know that living in another country is very expensive, especially in the UK. I would never have expected to pay $80 for a cheap baby walker and $120 for a used toddler bike. That is craziness! Whew! Now that that is said. I feel much better. LOL. Thankfully we have some friends bringing Elayna a walker from the states from Walmart for $20. That is more like it. And we are still searching for Dawson a wee bike to ride.

We had a wonderful service last night. David played his guitar and sang (the high school boys class in Denham should appreciate that). Then we had Bible study. And then Gary was baptized in Jesus Name! It was really moving. God is so awesome!

Today, Brother Kelley came to visit at our house. It was a nice visit. I think that he was mainly stopping in to make us feel welcome and to show his support. (I actually don't know because I was entertaining two very busy babies while he and David visited...LOL). But I did manage to get a picture to post of the visit. I guess David can tell more about the visit later.