A Not So Brief History, Pt. 3

cont'd from 5/21...

Is this getting too long? Boring? I mean, we have nearly three years to account for and I'd like to get caught up to the present in as few posts as possible. Stay with me. We'll get there one day soon and life will be cheery.

From the day I resigned until now, I have never doubted the decision. I've always had a true peace about it. Call it what you will, but I call it "the peace that passes all understanding" -- the source of which is God.

So here we were with no idea as to the direction we were to go. We weren't yet at liberty to share with the general public what had transpired. We went to choir and praise band rehearsal that evening, having tendered my resignation earlier in the day. Wow, that was hard! The weekend following my resignation, we met with good friends of ours to gain wisdom and counsel. Their word to us was, "It seems obvious that Ireland is where your heart is. Start moving that direction and see what God does."

Interestingly, our daughter Molly was in Ireland at that time on a short-term mission trip and would return the following Tuesday.

So we got on the Internet and began exploring missions opportunities in Ireland. I did a Google search - "missions ireland" - and one of the first hits was an organization called Greater Europe Mission (GEM). We had never heard of them, but upon exploring their website quickly realized that they were a solid organization. They had been working in Europe since 1949, yet their approach to ministry was edgy and innovative. We subsequently kept going back to the website looking for any red flags to pop up. None did.

During our first visit to GEM's website, we discovered a section entitled "Country Spotlights", and wasted no time finding and clicking on Ireland. After reading about Ireland and the great need there (which we had seen first-hand a year earlier), we saw a list of needs for Ireland -- a list of types of people they were looking for. There in the list, sticking out like the proverbial sore thumb, we saw it.

WORSHIP TRAINERS

My heart jumped. Could this be it?


To be continued...