An older man from Newcastle Methodist church recently (ok, a little longer ago than I care to admit…sorry, Alec…) gave me a tape of a service at their church from about 5 years ago. It’s a healing service they did about a year after the (then) minister’s wife was healed of a very rare, aggressive, [...]

Mark ran into town this evening and as soon as he came through the door he asked where the camera was. Apparently, there had been the biggest, most vibrant double rainbow in the sky. But this was all that was left by the time he got his hands on the camera. Not as grand as [...]

I’ve been really into making (and eating) applesauce lately. It’s one of my favorite summer-time foods and you just can’t get the good stuff here. So I make it. And the last time I made it, I also got to read a letter from my Grandma Druber. What a perfect afternoon. I’ve also been spending [...]

Not my own original thoughts, unfortunately, but those of Carl Medearis, who is one of my missions heros and has influenced and articulated what is in our hearts a lot over the last few years. Carl has been working in the Middle East for many, many years and is refreshingly unorthodox in his methods and [...]

It’s been a pretty slow week actually. We spent most of the weekend painting my office, had a few friends over for dinner and watched a really interesting movie called Traitor. Since our little community is becoming more firm and established we’re also spending more time doing actually “pastoral” work too – meeting people for [...]

Ange and I were prayer walking down on the main street and promenade of Newcastle this morning. It’s something we’ve been doing on and off since we got here, and lately we’ve organized our schedule so that we’re in the town prayer walking two mornings a week. We pray for Newcastle as a town, for [...]

Just got back from our prayer retreat at the Christian Renewal Centre in Rostrevor. We had such a good time. We went down on Saturday morning and joined them for an all day prayer for Ireland event, which finished around 4pm. We then went for a walk, had dinner and spent the evening reading, praying, [...]

I’ve never really enjoyed getting my car fixed.  Even in America, there’s that awful feeling that the mechanic could so easily take advantage of my lack of knowledge – “That’s right, sir, your second carburetor needs a new truss rod and parts alone will cost $300…”  So this week I got to have the super-fun [...]

Today is a big day in Newcastle.  There is a huge concert, starting at 4pm.  Headlining act is a blast from the past – The Prodigy.  There will be between 5 and 10 thousand people descending on our little town, so it will be wild.  All the churches are getting together to hand out water [...]

Wow…is it Friday already?  Happy St. Patrick’s day.  Interestingly enough, it’s a lot less of a big deal here than it is in the States.  In Indianapolis, they dye the canal green, drink green beer, wear all kinds of ridiculous green outfits.  Here there was a fairly short parade in Downpatrick (there was nothing at [...]