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.

The weather got pretty wet soon after the 4th. But until last evening stayed pretty warm. There’s been some of the nasty, super-wet drizzle and some lovely, romantic rain. It’s beautiful and green outside, so who can complain?

We’ve had a fairly quiet week. A few evenings at home in a row, which has been a nice break. I’ve been working on settling into the house and making it “us”, as well as working on some things for Beaker (our son or daughter to be, if you haven’t heard the nickname yet). I’m loving getting more attached to this creature taking over my belly. It’s not uncommon for Beaker to kick my hand when I press on my belly, which makes me giggle and get wide-eyed every time. Here’s a pic, albeit a crooked one, of my growing belly.

I’m going to get back to the quilt now that my fingers have had a little break. We’ll write soon explaining it all, but pray for us as we have a rather big meeting next Thursday evening about partnering with the Methodists here and our visa renewal. We’ll let you know more soon!

Tomorrow we’re having close to 30 people over for a little Independence Day BBQ. We figure no one in the world would enjoy celebrating our victory over the British like our Irish friends. Or maybe they’re just in it for the eight pounds of beef we bought. Either way it should be fun…

It was also exciting to see God’s provision in their lives – the large new house he’s supplied for their ministry of hospitality plus the gift of kitchen basics.

Mark is very disciplined in working his job on the computer every afternoon. I think it would be hard with people around who are doing fun things. Ange and I did ‘projects’ – made a diaper bag, jewelry, meals and such. Lloyd walked and walked every day. He always power walked up that last steep stretch to Ange’s house. After hearing more and more daring tales of where he wandered around the mountains, we got so we were afraid to let him out of the house by himself!  Finally, on our last day, Lloyd and Mark climbed to the top of Slieve Donnard, the highest mountain in N. Ireland.

We travelled to Cork over Memorial Day weekend and played the tourist role for a bit. Happened on a festival of sea chanties in Waterford. A night at Waterford Castle was so cool. Check out hotels.com for great rates.

Some observations: Mark is amazing on the bodhran (drum); 10 pm is hardly even dusk, but between 10:15 & 10:30, it gets dark for about 5 hours; even on sunny days it’s rarely very warm; it costs $80 to fill the car with gas; Mark is an excellent Bible teacher; Ireland is too far away.

Mark and I decided to call it a snow day as church was canceled (lots of old folks and snow/ice don’t mix well here) and we weren’t needed anywhere else. We spent the day in jammies (or what we wear in their stead) just taking it slow.

good morning, cutie

The only thing that would have made it better is a new puzzle to work on. Oh well. We had an enjoyable enough day.

there's another mountain behind that thick cloud

And while we’re on pretty mountains, here’s one not too long before sunset.

We’ve been meeting on Thursday nights for church in our house for about 6 weeks now. We’re having such a good time with it, too. Last week I took a couple of pics, though most of them turned out blurry. But I’ve got one I can show you.

they were having fun, honest!

The first few weeks we jumped around different scriptures but now we’re on with the rest of the MAC group. It’s been so encouraging to us and everyone else seems to really enjoy it, too. We’re meeting tomorrow night to talk about how we’re going to move forward organizationally as a church plant. So if you think of it, please pray for us. We need all kinds of insight and sensitivity to where God’s directing us. We’ll let you know how things move along.

It seems like this month’s theme is “take courage”. God’s been doing some mighty things in us and is gently reminding us of the real need for us to live fully in our identities as sons and daughters of the king. Friends were over this morning to pray with us about tomorrow night and we got the same sense in our time together. Take courage. Encourage yourself in the Lord. We don’t have to pretend to be royalty – we are. And we get to welcome everyone we meet into the peace and abundance of the kingdom we’re part of. How amazing is that?! Pray that we would.

Thanks for coming back. We’ll talk again soon.

the town at the foot of the mountain

beautiful buds

the gnarly tree in the plot next door

a bush full of bright berries

sweet bird

I wish I could have gotten a recording of the bird songs to post as well.  I just stood outside watching my breath and listening to the chirping.  Thanks, God.