Ireland (Part 1) Why Ireland?

   For a long time I have wanted to go on a family mission trip. I had been on one as a teen (to the Dominican Republic) and it had been super eye opening and has affected the rest of my life in a positive way and I really wanted my family to experience that too and I really thought it would be fun to be with them (Mara did go on a couple on her own which I was pretty excited about). For various reasons it hadn't happened in years past but recently whenever I was able, I put money aside in hopes that it would work out to go. On New Years Day of 2022 we had a family gathering where we talked about goals and dreams and that was one of mine that we decided to work towards. I wanted to do it soon before the family got much larger (through spouses or grandkids) as that would make it more complicated and before people got busier and perhaps moved away.

   I had always kind of assumed that we would go to a 3rd world country on a mission trip but in the summer of 2021 we were out at a camp in Colorado and we met the Tuttle Family (or part of them anyway) and heard about there goal to go to Ireland as Missionaries. Mara and I thought that sounded really neat and we had fun visiting with them about it. I said "If you make it there it sure would be fun to come over and visit for a mission trip." 

    It took a little while for all their paper work to get figured out but they made it over to Ireland in August of 2022. This winter I started e-mailing with them about the idea of coming on a mission trip. We knew that Ireland is majorly different from a 3rd world country but we hoped there might be something that we could do to help out. 

  Ireland does need Jesus badly. The amount of Christians there is a super small percentage. A large majority do not go to church anywhere. But it is not a 3rd world country. You don't go over there and help build homes or church buildings and then share the gospel. They are skeptical of the Gospel and so you need to build relationships and things can move slowly. Also you aren't allowed to work with kids (with some sort of program) unless you have passed a background check or something like that. 

  So as we discussed things the Tuttles said they didn't know what "Mission work" that we could do but they thought our coming would be an encouragement. So that thinking behind our trip changed a little. We would go with the hopes of encouraging the Tuttles and the other Christians there, Jonathan would do some filming to make a video for the Tuttles that they could use to send to supporters back in the states (He did do that but hasn't been able to get it edited yet as he moved recently), we would learn more about what was going on there so that we could pray more effectively and we just prayed that the Holy Spirit would work in us and use us however He wanted. 

    We were all pretty excited to be going to Europe in general and Ireland specifically. Jonathan was happy we were going somewhere that they spoke English, I love Irish music and I think the others do to. The girls have been very interested in Ireland at various times and so it was just pretty neat to get to go there. 

We really enjoyed our time with the people there. We spend a lot of time with the Tuttles and were so blessed by that. We also enjoyed visiting with others at the small congregation there. We hung out the most with Blake who is actually an American university student there. I believe he may have become a Christian while in Ireland but I am not sure. We had some great visits about spiritual things. 

  We were able to attend church two Sundays while we were there and it was just a blessing to be worshipping with Christians on the other side of the world from where we live. That was something else that I wanted my kids to be aware of and I wanted to understand more fully myself - the church as being a body of Christ world wide. We together make up the Bride of Christ. It is pretty fun to think about people in every place who love the Lord and seek to follow Him.

I am afraid this only whetted my appetite for spending time with Christians in other places. I would love to go back to Ireland again and I want to go more places too!! All in God's time. And any that I can't meet and spend time with here I will look forward to meeting in heaven!