This morning our team woke up planning to do our first and only ATL (ask the Lord) in Ireland. I was excited about it the night before when we planned it, but our morning was filled with confusion and doubt. Tamica and I both had awful nightmares leaving us weak and fragile spiritually. Everyone had woken up late. Heather and I were still under the weather. We had three loads of laundry that needed to be dried, with no dryer and had to catch a plane to Romania in less than 5 hours. On top of it all, most of us were a little emotional about leaving Ireland.

Matt, Heather, and I dropped off the laundry at a place to be cleaned, praying it would done by the time we had to leave for the airport and headed down the street. Dublin is by far one of the coolest cities I've ever been to and we'd learned to navigate the streets around the mission pretty well in the last week. We went a couple blocks then stopped to pray. In all honesty, I wasn't into it. I was weak and paranoid about stuff going on around us. After we prayed fr a few minutes we all listened anxiously for the Lord to lead us. I saw a hospital in my head, a corridor leading to a person's room on life support. I asked if there was a hospital near and none of us could think of one. So without much to go on we kept walking down the street.

After walking for a few minutes, we stopped and realized we were running out of time and couldn't really keep walking much longer. I saw a Scientology center across the street but was unsure of how to approach that. Then I saw him. Andrew was sitting on some steps on the side of the sidewalk. He looked cold and had a cup asking for change. Ever since I had read "" my heart just broke for the homeless. In my head I pictured myself going over to him, sitting down, offering him a meal and sharing the joy of my Savior. But that was just in my head. I was a wuss and turned my head. I looked around as we discussed our options. Finally Matt said "Well I don't know if you guys noticed, but there is a man asking for change right there." I'd seen him. I'd felt the tug to talk to him. MY feet still stayed planted.

Matt in boldness and confidence strode over to the dejected looking man, Heather followed in suit and I hesitated, but accompanied as well. They started up a conversation and within minutes we found out he was from well outside Dublin, had a sister in England, had lost both his parents, was 23, had been to Iowa 3 times, and did NOT believe in God. As soon as the words of disbelief came out of his mouth I was overcome by feelings of enormous hurt and pain. I wanted to breakdown a cry but held the tears back in fear of scaring our new friend. We talked about religion for awhile longer, Matt and Heather gently encouraging him in any way they could, inserting the hope and joy of Jesus Christ whenever possible. I added little but tried to be obedient to the Spirit when it gave me words.

Throughout it all he had just too much pain, too much hurt in his past to see the glory and new life offered by the Lord. He said his roommate was a Christian and pointed to another man asking for change right up the road named Reuben, but he kept saying that "at this time in his life" he didn't believe in God. He could believe in a higher power but the God we believed in he just couldnt have faith in. How could our God put so many bad things in the world? How could someone like Noah live to be 900 years old? He had so many questions we tried to explain as best we could, and he really did respect our beliefs, but at the end of our conversation still refused any belief in Jesus Christ. We asked if we could prayed and he said no. I wont lie, my knees almost gave out on me in defeat, in desperation for this man we had just met. It scared me. That I could feel this much hurt for a guy we'd met about 10 minutes ago.

We thanked him for the chat, tried to bless him, and told him we'd pray for him. As we walked away I just didn't understand. What had just happened? Did we fail? How can we help him if we're just going to walk away? Matt and Heather stopped a few blocks away and decided to pray for Andrew. HE didn't want us to pray with him, but that wasn't going to keep us from interceding for him. As soon as Matt began I cracked. I couldn't breathe. I wanted him to believe in God. I wanted him to know Jesus. I wanted him to understand how loved he was. I needed him to believe. I needed him to have something bigger and better to hope in. I wanted to pray but couldn't. I spit out a few words that might have been a prayer but I just couldn't understand. And I was overwhelmed with this devastation, defeat, and love for a complete stranger. But he wasn't a stranger. He was my brother. As we walked back to the mission, preparing to leave Dublin I was filled with so much regret. I wished I'd told Andrew, flat out, how much he is loved individually by God. How much I loved him. How beautiful his green eyes were. How I wanted to see those eyes in heaven...

Regret isn't from the Lord so it's not something I'm going to dwell on. But the emotions I felt for Andrew after only about 20 minutes are helping motivate me here in Romania. He's helping me with confidence and urgency with the message we're spreading. With kingdom. I'm still processing through it, still examining where so much emotion came from so quickly, and trying to figure out what in the world I'm supposed to do with it.

The past week my team and I have been working with Dublin Christian Mission at the Drimnagh Family Camp. In order to explain everything and share stories I feel as if I should give you a run down of what exactly our week looked like.

In the mornings we'd wake up and head into the forest for a little prayer just with our Race team. We'd then head to a meeting for all the staff just to pray together and run through the day's events. Next was breakfast. Then a little free time before the first Session of the day. In Session the kid's would play games and be taught about 2 of the 10 commandments. Then would be craft/activity time followed by lunch. After lunch we'd head out of camp for a different outing every day. For example one day it was the pool, another a park. Then we'd head back to camp for tea (aka dinner #1) followed by another Session. We'd then have supper (dinner #2) with some free time for games or walks through the forest.

Even as I write that I can't believe it's only been a week. This routine has, strangely enough, become comfortable. Tuesday afternoon as the campsite came into view I thought "we're home!" then I realized that I'd only been here for 2 days. And honestly, we have been so spoiled in our new home. There were big tents already set up when we got here. There are at least 4 meals-a-day of really amazing food and the kitchen's always open if we're ever hungry (which never happens because we're always being fed!) We get to jump on trampolines, ride go-karts, watch movies, and go hiking through Irish forests. The toilets actually flush and the water in the shower is hot. Every person seems to be so kind and pretty funny too making for some great conversations and good laughs. But the focus of everything is the Lord, which just makes it all a million times better. There are so many stories I want to share but I'll have to do that when we get some more free time in a couple days. But for now, here are just a few interesting things we've learned:

• "deadly" and "massive" are good things.

• I always though that in Lord of the Rings when the hobbits talk about 2^nd breakfast and Elevensies that it was a joke or just something hobbits did. It's not. Those both really exist.

  • Here's the easiest way to describe it: Breakfast is always "breakfast". Lunch however is only "lunch" if it's light. If it's a big meal then it's actually "dinner". Dinner is only "dinner" is its a big meal. But if it's lighter, they call it "tea". Then the snack or light meal at the end of the day is usually called "supper".

• The chocolate really is better over here.

• "y'all" is NOT universal and you WILL be picked on for saying it.

• It's cold. Coming from Texas, this is winter.

• And it rains...alot. The sun coming out is pretty rare, so when it does, people WILL be outside.

• Even when its raining, Ireland is absolutely gorgeous.

• They don't usually pronounce the "th" sound-they just say the "t". For example, "thanks" to us sounds like "tanks".

• It's REALLY easy to slip into an Irish accent.

• Northern Ireland is an entirely different country. (Yes, I should have know that, but still...)

• When sharing a tent with 6 other girls, ear plugs are the greatest invention ever (thank you Zach Watson!)

• It seems like most people don't really like peanut butter. And peanut butter and jelly is just disgusting here.

• "ma'am" and "sir" aren't really used. Anytime we've used them the usual response is "oh please don't call me that; i'm not old."

• Ireland is a lot like the South. The people are hospitable and helpful. Almost anytime we've asked for directions, the person has gone out of their way to actually take us to where we're going, making great conversation along the way.

• They drink tea. All the time.

• Being red-headed or "a ginger" is actually kind of a bad thing. If you're a ginger evidently you get picked on for it. It's like blond jokes, except they're not seen as stupid like blonds are (if that makes sense...)

• Time is told a little differently here. What I would call "five thirty" they would call "half five".

• Brewed coffee is a rarity. Instant coffee is much more common.

• Irish names are absolutely beautiful. Some of the ones we're come across are Aoife (pronounced "eef-a") and Niamh (pronounced "neeve") Oh and they sound nothing like they're spelled :)

• Everyone is funny. Seriously I feel like everyone has the best sarcastic, dry sense of humor.

• Time is kind of optional in Ireland. It reminds me a lot of Zambian time. When someone says 5 o'clock they mean that more of a general roundabout time, not a deadline or exact measurement.

• I should have researched things like money conversion, the metric system, and clothing sizes before getting here. For example, I have no clue what my shoe size is now.
  

Matt compiled all of our pictures into a little video for all the families at camp. So here's a quick taste of what we did in our week at camp: