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I may not articulate some things the way they do, that doesn’t negate the beauty and power of what happened. I know several people who were present and still speak of those days with tears. Jesus is powerful and amazing.

Not as grand as his first view of it, I’m sure. But I love that it looks like the little rainbows you get all over a room when you have a prism in the window. I felt, looking at it, just like I did as a kid trying to catch those rainbows. Good for the soul, if you ask me.

This weekend was the Festival of Flight here in Newcastle. Mark met friends in town among a throng of thousands and thousands of people to watch the Red Arrows acrobatic pilots (I have no idea what the right term is, here). I wasn’t up for that much walking (after a bit too much physical activity last week that has left me bent-over when I try to stand – oops!), but watched the show from the sewing room upstairs and snapped these pics.

I was bummed to miss watching the show from the beach (or just across the road). The atmosphere in Newcastle is always so fun with loads of people in for a visit. Oh, well…

We’re getting the house ready tonight for Mark’s folks coming tomorrow. Can you say “excited”? That’s what we are! We don’t have any big plans, but I’m sure the 10 days we get together will be packed with goodness. They’ll probably introduce us to some new things here, too. You’d think we’d be the only ones doing that after living here for 2 years, but these 2 always have something great up their sleeves!

I’m still growing, which is to be expected, but still kind of shocking. I put on pyjama pants today that a friend loaned me. The first time I tried them on they just fell off. And today, they fit. It’s strange, and I love it. And there’s the pregnancy update for today.

Hope you all have a beautiful Monday!

I’ve also been spending a good amount of time nesting, which is about the best thing ever. Have I mentioned that I’m loving getting ready to meet Beaker? I thought so… Well, my mom’s making a beautiful proper quilt, so I thought I’d make a little crib quilt. What do you think? Does it work for a boy or girl?

Mark and I got some wonderful news today, as well. We’re one big step closer to getting our visa renewed. (I’m happy to go into details if you email and ask, but I don’t want to do all the long-winded explaining here.) After a few months of trying to get things moving, both on our and our sponsors’ parts, things are in motion. So we’re celebrating!

Mark’s parents are going to be here for a visit next week. We’re really looking forward to getting some good time with them. His dad has been in Jordan working on an archaeological dig and I’m sure we’re going to get some amazing stories.

Hope you’re all having a wonderful week! What are you spending your “last” days of summer doing?

He recently posted the following question on his blog:

Question #2: Your idea that Muslims can follow Jesus and somehow stay Muslim has always confused me. Can you explain what this means in clear laymen’s terms?

This is a big one. And a cornerstone of what we believed God has called us to be a part of…seeing Arab Muslims love and follow Jesus and stay within their context.

Which he answers in great depth. Please go read the full post.

If you substitute “Catholic” OR “Protestant” for “Muslim” in his article, you actually get a pretty clear picture of Northern Ireland too. That’s one of the reasons that we’re making a huge effort to set up our community in such a way that cultural and social identity is separated from following Jesus (i.e. you can remain part of either community and hang out with us).

So please read the full post at Carl’s site. We’d love to hear your thoughts too on how it relates here or wherever you are.

Peace.

Tomorrow we have a really important meeting. We’ve chosen to align our budding church community with the local Methodist church in Newcastle, essentially as sister congregations. What that means is that that their pastor, who is one of our best friends here, can invest some of his time into our community and also that they can sponsor us for our visa renewal (a new requirement since we moved over), which is approaching quickly in September. We’ll fall under what they call Pioneer Ministries – which means starting a church in a place or among a group where there is no existing work – which is a good fit. It means we won’t have much red tape but we’ll still be connected to a local group, which is a good thing missiologically, and it won’t at all be severing or diminishing our relationship with our sending churches. It’s really just sticking an official label on what God has already been doing relationally. If you have questions, we’d love to answer them via comments or email.

At any rate, this meeting tonight will hopefully make things official on their end and allow us to move ahead with the visa process. Please pray with us about this time. If it doesn’t move ahead – or even if it moves ahead too slowly – we would have to come back to the USA for 4-6 months (because of the baby being born in October) before coming back. Everything looks set to work, but please pray. It would be nice on so many fronts to be able to stay.

This is where we were this morning - the main street is that row of buildings to the left and the promenade is the path that runs down the beach.

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 revival and increased spiritual hunger, for God’s blessing on the churches and businesses, and occasionally ask people we meet if we can pray for them specifically.

There’s a story in the gospels where Jesus is walking by and this blind man cries out for help. Jesus stops and engages him, asking: “what do you want from me?” Recently as we’ve been walking around I’ve been thinking about that question. I’ve been thinking what do I really want to see happen here? What do I want God to do this morning? If I pray for people to be healed on the streets of Newcastle, do I want that to happen this morning through me? The answer varies if I’m honest and that’s ok. The point is not to feel bad, but to clarify and envision what it would actually look like for God to do what we’re asking.

I want to ask more and more specifically and expectantly. Am I actually asking for revival to break out this morning? For people around me to fall to the ground weeping and crying out to God? That might change the rest of my day… What would it look like if every church in town lit up with freedom, love, and passion and there was no more dead religion in town? We might not be needed. Am I ok with that? I think sometimes prayer becomes disconnected from what we’re actually asking for, because we don’t actually expect to get an answer. Often I think the answer comes (maybe slightly disguised) and we walk right on by because of expectations.

So what did we pray for? Well, all of the above. As we got more specific we asked that God would bring hunger and questions to people right now. That the light of his love would shine on people right now and they would feel his love. We prayed that a few specific issues in the town would shift. I believe those things are going to happen, and that’s pretty cool.

Anyway, just a few thoughts.
Mark

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, and just enjoying being with Jesus. Sunday was more of the same – reading, praying, talking, dreaming, eating, more praying. It was a really restful and restorative time.

We don’t feel like the orders have changed a lot since we got here a year ago. The biggest prayers we found ourselves praying were:

• We want to be radically intimate with and radically obedient to Jesus moment by moment (to do what he’s doing and say what he’s saying).
• We want to gather people around us who want to do the same.
• We want people who don’t know or even like Jesus yet to enjoy being around us, feel welcomed and blessed by us, and seek out our company. I feel like this has a lot to do with being radically generous (give me a break, I’m a pastor – I have to have three “radicals” in there).

Dancin' like a fly, bite like a mosquito!

Fortunately, things are not too different here, but it does add to the insecurity quite a bit when you have no grid at all for what things should cost, things are called by different names, and laws are different.  It seems like there’s more of a propensity for people to use a mechanic they know, who often just works out of his house, rather than a big business like Midas or something.  There are tire (spelled tyre, of course) shops and body shops, etc., but they’re mostly specialized shops.  As with most things here, it’s who you know that counts.

That’s what friends are for, though.  I think I found a pretty good mechanic on the recommendation of one of the Night Light guys.  Fortunately, once you find someone you trust you can just stick with him.  So there’s one more problem sorted.

If you’ve been watching the news, you may have heard that the last few weeks have been pretty tense here.  Two weeks ago there were three murders by dissident militia groups – two British soldiers and a policeman.  It’s really the first of that kind of violence in over ten years, so a lot of people are really scared that it will release another wave of retaliation and violence.  What you may not have seen on the American news is that there has been a tremendous show of cross-community togetherness.  Immediately after the shootings you saw major Loyalist/Protestant and Republican/Catholic leaders standing together on the news, denouncing the people who did it and calling for cooperation with the police.  10 years ago some of those guys would have been publicly giving their approval.  So it’s an historic time in Northern Ireland.  It’s also still an unstable time because as much as everyone wants peace, even a small retaliation could undo years of peace process.  Pray for Ireland.

Peace,

Mark