It’s been sunny and beautiful here in Newcastle for the past few days. And I’ve been eating up being outside (and not being on the computer) in the low-70s-warm-sun-cool-breeze weather. Sorry I’ve been m.i.a. again. We’ve decided a weekly posting time is in order for us Guinns as we have a pretty horrible track record with consistent communication. Consider us officially back on the horse.
Mark quickly posted last Friday about the concert that was happening that day and the crowd that was to be in town. We had such a great day, despite us both waking up feeling a bit under the weather. We headed to the Methodist church around 1 to start setting up and making food for the volunteers. This was the first event where most of the churches in town worked together in any way. A few churches had teams handing out bottles of water to people walking around (lots of them really drunk by about 4pm). Others brought food and support to churches that were “stations”. One church had people praying for 30 minutes of every hour for most of the day. It was neat for us to be part of, though I don’t think we have a clue how ground-breaking that really was for Newcastle. Most of the daylight hours we were either feeding the team, praying in the church, or handing out water and asking people if we could pray for them. Not too many people wanted prayer on the spot, but lots filled out little prayer cards that we’d take into the church and pray over for the evening. A few people did want prayer, though, and that was scary and amazing, too. One guy in his early 20s (I’d guess) just asked us to pray that he’d make it through the day. It seemed a pretty vague thing to ask, but an amazing woman and I prayed over him for a minute. Afterwords I had an overwhelming sense of God’s enjoyment of him that sent me to laughing and telling him “God loves you so much, man”. He replied, “I know. I CAN FEEL IT!” Talk about exhilaration! Mark prayed for a guy with pain in his ribs (he thought they probably broken) and the pain went away on the spot. We so enjoyed getting to love on people and speak blessing over them. It was pretty amazing to see other volunteers at work, too, who were far out of their comfort zones, but being really courageous and faithful and enjoying themselves, too. We hope there are more events like that in Newcastle and are thinking about just being out on a normal, crowded summer day.
We’ve started studying John with Campbell and Kristi. We meet every other week and spend a good few hours together really digging in. We’ve been blown away by the nuggets (as Campbell calls them) God points out to us each time. We’re all excited when we get together because we know God’s on the move and changing us more and more to move with Him. Seriously, there’s nothing better. I was thinking last night about a Misty Edwards song I’ve been listening to lately that says:
O won’t You let me love You more, this is all that I desire
Won’t You let me love You more this is all that I require
Won’t You let me love You more this is my deepest heart’s desire
Won’t You let me love You more still more and more
My heart feels full to overflowing with that chorus right now. My heart is for him, but I want him to expand my capacity, blow my boundaries so I have even more to love him with. I want – all 4 of us want – to change Newcastle and Northern Ireland, and we know this is where it starts. This is where all the change comes from. And I love it!
My class is officially over, after a bit of a drawn-out goodbye. We ended up packing for a week longer than originally anticipated. So there were about 3 extra goodbyes, which is always a bit on the awkward side. Aileen, our teacher, decided to retire after 30-some years of teaching textile courses of one kind or another. She’s afraid she’ll be really bored in retirement, so she’s already volunteered to help Paula (my good friend from class) and I cover some chairs this summer. One of the best things about cleaning out the gymnasium we called a classroom was that all the furniture that wasn’t picked up by its owner was free game! I got about 4 kitchen-ish chairs to redo for free! I’m excited to get some fun fabric on the cushions and maybe paint the chairs themselves something unusual. Too bad we don’t have any room to keep one! Paula and I are making things for a craft fair coming up in July, so a chair or two might be included in that lot. And we’re hoping to sell our stuff at St. George’s Market at some point this summer, too. It’s one of my favorite things to visit on a Saturday morning, so I’m excited about that. I’m trying to get my branding all wrapped up so we can put labels on the things we make as well as having nice price tags and business cards. The brand name has changed from Blackened Branch, but I’ll save the new name for later. I’ll post about that once the logo is done. (Just making sure you keep coming back…)
That’s probably enough long-windedness for one Friday morning. Happy weekend to you all!
