One final, crazy week

We're home now, but I have to get you caught up on the remainder of our trip...

After returning from the EWL conference late Saturday night, our luggage and guitar didn't arrive until Sunday afternoon. Our connection in Frankfurt was extremely tight as our flight out of Prague was delayed. We had all of 10 minutes from one gate to the other.

Sunday, we met with Alan and Sheryl McElwee, friends of ours who have begun a new church plant on the south side of Dublin. It was good to get caught up with them, talk about the struggles they are dealing with starting a new work and gain some new insights into the church culture in Ireland.

It was another beautiful day and we enjoyed a walk with McElwees on the Dun Laoghaire (Dun Leary)pier and lunch following.

Monday morning we drove to the airport to pick up Jay and Rachel Johnson, good friends of ours from our church who came over to meet us in Ireland help us with the conference we were doing in Galway Friday and Saturday. They were wrecked from jet lag and it was our job to keep them awake until bedtime. We started out with fish and chips at Beshoff in Howth. It was raining for the first time since we arrived in Ireland, other than a few overnight showers. But soon the light drizzle cleared and the remainder of the day was cool and bright.

That evening we went to Bennigan's (no, it really is an American institution) and met Ravi Gidoomal, who coordinates the worship at Core Church in Dublin City Centre. This is the church where Eoghan Heaslip used to lead worship before he went to take a position at a church in the UK. We had a very interesting time with Ravi, who has been in Ireland only about 2 years now. He shared with us how the worship ministry at Core operates and we shared with him about what it is that we do.

As usually happens, the first part, in fact the good majority of the conversation, there was a reserved, non-committal attitude from Ravi. This happens when we make a cold call to someone who has no idea who we are and try to set up an appointment with them so that we can share about our work, find out about what they do and see if there might be some mutual advantage in developing a relationship with them.

It's tricky. The other person often wonders, "What do you want from me?" I assume that they may think that we are in Ireland to either show the Irish how we Americans do worship, or that we think they have something that will benefit us in some selfish way.

However, once they discover that we are only there to offer whatever we may possess to help worship ministries grow throughout Ireland, no strings attached, there is a dropping of the guard, a visible change in their countenance and they open up to us. This happened with Ravi and although Core may or may not ask us to work with them, we gained insight and perspective.

Tuesday held one canceled appointment due to a funeral that the pastor had to do. We were able to get together with Alex Mosely, who we first met at Swords Baptist in January. He is the worship leader at Ballyfermot Community Church in Dublin. Unfortunately we couldn't work out getting together with Alex and his wife, Keely, so we settled for a quick lunch with only him.

Wednesday it was off to Carlow to meet with a newly-formed worship team at Carlow Community Christian Church. But this entry is getting lengthy, so I'll continue another time.