Now back to Ireland- We went at the end of October and had a cross country drive to get there.
We also fielded many boo-hoos from a couple of the children about missing Halloween. We don't dress up and go trick or treating. We make cupcakes and give them out at the door with little scripture stickers that we had made that have different Bible quotes and verses on them. The children LOVE doing this. We have an assembly line going with baking the cupcakes, packaging the cupcakes, labeling the cupcakes and then someone gets to give them out. Last year, we made over 100 cupcakes and ran out several times, which had me baking during the evening and April was handing out the "hot right out of the oven" cupcakes. The locals were crazy! They kept coming in droves and we were praying that we wouldn't run out so when we finally did-and we used every cake mix in the house i tell you-we gave away what little candy we had(with the scripture stickers taped to them also). We finally had to put a sign on the door and catch our breath when we ran out of everything. Whew! It was almost comedic!
So that is why they missed Halloween at our house.
Needless to say, we had a passenger with us from Ely who survived the long trip too! Asia came as our adopted child so she and April had each other for entertainment. The rest of us had ourselves.
It was a 3 hr drive to our first destination of RAF Fairfort in Gloustershire. We spent the night there to breakup the drive. This area is called the Cotswolds and has the rolling hills, sheep dotted fields, and lovely stone cottages. it is one of the most expensive areas to live in this country and looking at the homes and estates, you could see why!
So we got moving the next morning and had to make the ferry from Fishgard, Wales to Rosslaire, Ireland. We took a wrong turn when we got to Fishgard and had a great tour of the town. Thank the Lord we didn't miss our ferry and ended up having to wait near an hour to board. We got on, found a seating area and got prepared for the 3 1/2 hour journey. When we took off, all you could hear from my group was Chloe saying, "Look at that!". This phrase was repeated nearly 100 times as she saw sailboats, ships, lighthouses, piers and many, many birds. I was rolling in laughter at her until we had to go and retrieve a snack from the cafe and the ship started rocking and rolling. From there on I was green.
We made it to the church late that night and they were having a fabulous meal that I can't remember what it was but the dessert they had is emblazoned in my mind. Banoffee pie,(I don't know how to spell it!)was the name of it and it was SO GOOOOOD! I had one there and took another one for later. I ended up eating that one and some one elses, but it was good and that's all I remember!
So we got there and met so many people the first night. It's a good thing we had introductions on the second night or I would have had to find labels somewhere and write names on them! The speaker who came from central America, (forgive me- I can't remember from where and Darryl isn't around to remind me), he did a fine job in leading our thoughts towards God and our families. We had multiple discussions and many who didn't want to ask questions for fear of disclosing their personal problems to everyone came forward and just poured out their hearts. I was embarrasses when my husband spoke of our marital issues, but he did it out of love and wanted to hear if anyone else had been touched by those same problems. So, my pride was sadly beaten down by love but God did it in the right
place and with the right people. Our weekend was a wonderful refresher on how God want us to be and to treat others. It was well worth the trip and to top that off, the children had a great time and never mentioned Halloween during the whole trip!
Here are a few pictures from the trip.
This is Janek- we have known him for 10 years!!! So just look past him and see the beautiful greenery that is Ireland.. Ahhh, relaxed yet?
This is Wyndon and some of his friends. Janeks brother, Tomek is in the plaid shirt next to Wyn. These 2 boys came back muddy, wet and stinky nearly every evening from playing. They had a GOOD time!!
This smile says it all- We were blessed!
