Update overdue

Okay, so before I delve into my reviews, it dawned upon me that it has been a while since my last ministry update here on the blog. I've emailed a newsletter recently and I send out our weekly prayer update, so I tend to forget that this venue is also for keeping you up-to-date on our journey.

A few weeks ago it seemed the right time to begin planning our next trip to Ireland, so I sent out an email to a number of our friends throughout the country to let them know of our impending visit. We hadn't yet set our travel dates and thought we would start by seeing who wanted us to what and when (within a certain scope of time which we defined roughly as the last half of September and the first half of October).

Now, when it comes to getting plans laid for events in Ireland it is often a struggle for us Americans who have this insatiable need to "get it on the calendar - the sooner, the better". We have found that we usually complete our schedule after we've actually arrived, although we always have most of our events planned before then.

Imagine our surprise in that we already have four workshops on the calendar and at least three others planned, but not pinned down yet. Crazy -- I know, right?

It looks to be another trip like our January trip -- lots and lots of traveling. We actually really enjoy that, so long as our rental car has good seats. If I don't have good support for my lower back, my hip really gives me grief. It's the pits getting older - at least physically, I mean. We've had good luck (is there really such thing?) so far in getting good deals on vehicles that suit our needs cargo-wise and comfort-wise.

We still don't have our exact travel dates nailed down, but we'll be doing that soon.

We had several people ask us this morning at church how the recent terrorist events in Glasgow might affect us. I can't imagine that it will cause us any real problems, as long as we go into the trip with the attitude that any extra security precautions, while maybe a pain at the time, are really only meant for our protection.

We're going to be traveling to Oklahoma and Kansas in a couple of weeks to visit my sister and her family and do some MPD (Ministry Partner Development, a.k.a. "fundraising"). We've been invited to lead worship at my sister's church (United Methodist) in Tonkawa, OK and I'll be preaching that morning as well. Really looking forward to that. We're also trying to get something set up at 1st United Methodist Church in Pratt, KS, which is the church I grew up in. We'll be visiting old friends while we're in the area the rest of our time there.

So that's a, well, not-so-quick Ministry Update for you. Let us know if you aren't on our email list(s) and we can add you. There's our regular list to which we send periodic updates and newsletters and then there is our weekly prayer list that goes out, um, weekly, sort of.

TTFALTNCOH!