Last few days in Ireland

We're home now. Good ol' HOT Florida. Dang it's hot.

So Thursday, the 7th, we had lunch in Dublin with a young man, Daragh Hoey. Daragh plays electric guitar at Trinity and is also in a band that is working on getting wider recognition - Star Turtle. They are already popular in the Dublin area and look forward to seeing what the future holds.

We had a great time with Daragh. One of the things that we have found very beneficial are those Irish who are willing to help us understand the Irish mindset -- the dos and don'ts; the ins and outs.

Friday we spent the day looking around the city at areas that we may be interested in living (when we eventually move there) before heading up to Swords, north of Dublin for dinner with Rory and Mindy McDonald. Rory is one of the key worship leaders at Swords Baptist and Mindy is an American who went to Ireland as a missionary and ended up marrying an Irishman. After taking a nice, unplanned tour of the entire village (I should have listened to my wife), we found ourselves at the McDonald's where we enjoyed the meal and the conversation and spent a little time talking through our plans for the worship workshop the next day.

Saturday, we held the aforementioned workshop at a school that Swords Baptist uses for it's Sunday services. There were somewhere in the neighborhood of 15 or so Worship Team members and others who were able to be with us. We had the hall from 10 am to 4 pm and expected that we wouldn't use up the whole 6 hours. When we finished, I looked at my watch and it was 3:55. What a wonderful group of people and what great conversations we had regarding worship and worship leading. We hope to be back there in January to do a vocal workshop, some keyboard instruction and maybe some other intensive training.

Sunday morning we attended St. Mark's Church in the heart of Dublin. St. Mark's is one of the largest and most influential evangelical churches in Ireland. They had a great worship team and solid teaching. You may be familiar with Maire (Moya) Brennan. She and her husband are key people at St. Mark's and she happens to be Enya's sister and a successful recording artist in her own right.

Sunday afternoon we packed and then went over to Phil and Cheryl's to debrief, say goodbye and talk a bit about our next trip, which will probably be in January. They were very encouraged with our trip and very encouraging regarding the future.

All-in-all it was a very successful trip. While it was a lot of work, leading worship in Hungary was a great joy and blessing. Spending time with my brother, Judit and Vivi was awesome. The events we held in Ireland came off without a hitch - and those for whom we did them want more of the same. The meetings we had with various individuals were exciting and opened up many more opportunities for the future.

So far, for our January trip, we could easily have 3 major events and already have plans to meet with several individuals with whom we were unable to meet this trip.

Check back here often, as I will be sharing some highlights and reflections on this trip with greater details of our adventure.

Ireland, cont.

I haven't kept up on a daily basis with this blog and there is so much to tell that I will never get caught up. So...

I'm going to give a quick overview of our time here so far and include a few pictures as well.

Beginning Sunday, the 27th of August:

We attended two churches -- Trinity (www.trinity.ie) in the morning and Core (www.corechurch.ie) in the evening. We met a few people that we plan to get together with later to talk about worship and how we might be able to assist them in our ministry.

We had an interesting meeting Monday morning meeting with other missionaries. We were there to meet and talk with the board members of Church Planting Resources, a group of missionaries from various organizations formed to strategize and share resources for the purpose of building the church in Ireland.

I finally got my insulin Wednesday morning. Fortunately it wasn't critical that we leave for the west of Ireland Tuesday.


We had hoped to connect with some people in the Galway area while were traveling, but that never happened due to various circumstances. We did have some good days of sightseeing and getting familiar with that area of the country.


Saturday we had a great time in Shannon leading a worship workshop with the worship band of Jamzone, a youth ministry lead by Elton Goode of Shannon Evangelical Church. It's kids like this that are the future of the church in Ireland.

Saturday evening we drove to Cork and stayed in a really awful Bed and Breakfast. I'll try and relate this saga at a later date.

Sunday morning we were at Grace Fellowship. Monday, we met with Michael O'Donovan, the worship leader at Grace and had a really encouraging conversation. We are planning to do a worship workshop with his worship team next time we come to Ireland (maybe January).

Although it didn't work out to meet with him, we spoke with Laurence Graham, the pastor of Cork Methodist about meeting with him and one of his key musicians who has a heart to see contemporary worship in their church. We will also look to doing this when we return.

Tuesday morning we met with Michael Neglia, pastor of Calvary Chapel Cork , his wife Rachel and their worship leader, Niamh (pronounced Neeve). It was the beginning of a long term relationship and we plan to meet up again on our next visit and perhaps pull together a workshop for several worship leaders in the area.

Tuesday night we were back in Dublin and had a great time of playing and worshipping with several guys who are traditional Irish musicians and a part of a new church plant. We also had good conversation about leading worship and arranging music, etc.

Today we are meeting with one of the worship team members from Trinity, so I guess I'd better close for now.

Cheers...