cont'd. from 5/23...
Sorry for the gap in posting. It's been a crazy weekend.
So we sent in our initial interest form. Within a day or so, we received an email from a Lois Pankratz. She is the "welcome" person for GEM. We then talked on the phone and the next step was for her to put us in contact with Phil Kingsley, who is the Field Director for Ireland. Phil and I emailed back and forth a bit and then spoke on the phone.
At the same time, we had been in contact with Kevin Fitzgerald, a Calvary Chapel pastor who had begun a work in Dublin. Both Phil and Kevin seemed interested in the prospect of working with us, or shall I say having us work with them.
Its seemed at this point that the logical thing to do was to take a trip to Dublin and sit down face-to-face with both these guys, plus see first-hand what each ministry looked like and felt like. So we started checking into flights and lodging. It was August when we started this process and we were looking at going in November, less than three months to get the money together.
Beth is a wonder when it comes to planning trips and planning how we'll get the funds together. She came up with a plan that would get us the money we needed, when we needed it. The second week of November seemed to work well with both Phil and Kevin, so we forged ahead.
We hadn't yet bought our airline tickets when September 16 came along -- and with it, Hurricane Ivan. We evacuated to Nashville for almost a week and didn't have any work for two weeks. In short, the money we had saved was gone. I told Beth we would need to plan to take our trip after the first of the year.
It wasn't long after that, when Beth came to me with a plan she had devised, saying, "I think we can still go in November." I didn't believe her. She showed me the figures. I still didn't think it was possible. She showed me again. It took several tries, but she finally convinced me that it was possible. We can't explain how it worked, it just did. In addition to what we planned to save for the trip, we had several people who, when they found out what we were doing wanted to help out. One couple blessed us with $1000! In the end, the trip would not have been possible if it weren't for the gifts we had received.
So now all we had to do was wait for November. I was like a kid waiting for Christmas. I could hardly stand it.
To be continued...
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