August 2010

This year’s kids’ camp was the biggest and the best ever. With 50% more kids than last year and over 60 workers, the camp was a week of wonder and a tremendous success. The theme this year was: “How the West was won!” Living in the West of Ireland, it was the perfect name for the perfect week. The crew, complete with the Sheriff, the Mayor, the Banker, Cowboys and Indians, etc., brought home the Bible truth that the good guys always win in the end! Our team has gotten better every year and held the campers attention for the entire week while conveying God’s Word in living color. It was FANTASTIC! The girls had a special Line Dancing class to some cool Christian cowboy songs and an art class which featured portrait drawing. Dance was taught by the EuroStar Champ from ’08 (a member of our church) and Art was taught by Miss Christen, an art major and staff member. The boys had wood-working where they made an actual bow and arrow… very popular! They also had a survival class where they learned many amazing things. One, which was a particularly powerful teaching moment that I used on the parent day, Friday, to present the Gospel. They made a compass! Mark O’Mahony, a nature buff, filled a bowl with water. He then placed a leaf on top of the water. Then he produced a little box from his pocket with a magnet which had a straight pin on it, thereby magnetizing the pin. When he dropped the magnetized pin onto the leaf, it turned in the bowl on the water to point North. His purpose was to teach the kids to find their direction even if they were lost. Wow! So I used it to teach the truth that God, the Creator, has put an invisible draw on the heart of every man to provide direction for their lives. Even if you are lost, you can find True North! Scripture testifies to this inferring that Heaven lies to the side of the North (Isaiah 14:13)… the Amplified Bible says, the uttermost North! What a Great God we know and serve that has given every man a conscience (compass) and His own Spirit (His invisible Guide) so that one, though a wayfarer, could find his way Home!! This is such an important principle in the day we live in. So many people are trying teach that truth is relative, depending upon you perspective. But I know that there is One God, One Way to Heaven, just as there is ONLY ONE NORTH. Heaven is a place. Heaven has a location. And Heaven is calling every man homeward. We appreciate the opportunity to have had a week to minister this Word to the children and parents of Galway this week.

July 2010

Heather and I send our love and prayers to you all this month and trust all is well. We are fired up and in full “swing” for summer! Our amazing kid’s camp has a western theme this year so we are feeling right at home with a bit of Texas around every corner and on every team member. Miss Christen’s Dad took up a collection last year from his Cowboy Church of TONS of authentic hats, boots and cowboy shirts. Most of the things were slightly used but everything was in pretty good to great condition. Some things were still in their wrappings. Wow! Stetson hats, all the accessories like jail keys and money bags and sheriff badges. Man, these Irish guys are livin’ in tall cotton!! The team looks great… thanks, Chris!!

We have really seen the Hand of God in prepping for camp this year. We have nearly doubled our target for registrations to 300 children and therefore needed a much bigger staff. We normally run with 45 or so workers but needed 65 this time around. We had been working really hard to recruit help from around the country and around the world. And God has provided! We were looking at different venues this year for camp to house the increase in numbers. We contacted a special needs school in town and Heather spoke with and fell in love with the heart and spirit of the new lady principal there. Though we didn’t end up using it for the camp, we decided to give them a special work day. So, even though we were very tight on time with the approaching camp, we took about 40 people out to paint, clean, etc. It was sooo much fun. We had a terrific time and the principal herself was touched and blessed by the church. The principal even asked us to pray over the school as we worked so that God would bless it with a “fresh, clean start” from anything in the past. Well, the amazing thing about this story is that, as we were helping someone else, God was organizing our help! One of the guys that came over to help from our new church plant in another city mentioned our need to a Christian mission group that he worked with in Athlone: OM Ireland. Up to that point we were still short ten men and two women for our camp staff. OMI’s leader phoned a few days later and said that he’d heard about what we were doing and what we needed and then promptly committed the dozen workers we needed for the entire week of camp! Praise God! They had teams coming for the exact days and were looking for locations to send them.