Sunday - Spectacular!

What another amazing day in Dublin! Hi everyone, this is Dawn. It's my turn to post, and I can't wait to tell you about our spectacular day.

We walked over to Abbey Church this morning at 9:45 a.m. for a practice run through of the worship service. This morning's service was broadcast live over RTE international radio and Alan Boal, the pastor, was very excited we were here. Their congregation is too small to sing loudly enough for the microphones to pick up the words very well and they weren't familiar with the praise song, "Arise, Arise My Soul Arise." The gentleman from the RTE radio station, who continued to refer to us as "The Yanks", kept telling us that we needed to sing louder. As 10:45 a.m. and the start of the service drew near, we all quieted down and waited in silence for the "we are on the air" signal. I quietly prayed that we would be able to minister to perhaps a shut-in or someone who was elderly or ill through our worship broadcast. Alan had a beautiful service, clearly spelling out what a mess this world has become and although we deserve God's condemnation, Jesus has given us His wonderful grace that we don't deserve. After the final prayer, we all waited in silence again until the "we're off the air" signal. It was amazing to think that God's plan might be to use Alan, this church, this congregation, and our mission team as his vehicle to reach and bring to Him even one of the millions of people who could listen to this broadcast. The RTE guy said that he thought this worship service was the best put together service he has ever seen - and we also sang great! It was spectacular!

Alan also stated that this broadcast will be available for the next 10 days on the web. I'm not sure exactly how to get to that broadcast, but the Abbey church website is http://web.mac.com/abbeychurch might have the link if you are interested in hearing our beautiful voices :).

After church we walked back to Harvey's Guest House and got ready to head into town (I think we've walked at least 100 miles so far!). Jeff found a traditional Irish Pub called The Box House where we all enjoyed huge portions of authentic Irish food. It was spectacular!

The Box House Pub was close to the Temple Bar area where on Sundays a bustling crowd of people enjoy pubs, shops and random musicians who set up on any street corner and perform for passersby. We had taken our guitar along, and Jordan Agate had the privilege of playing and singing outside of one of the pubs. It was so cool to see people just stop and listen to her sing (Carol - she really should go into this as a profession - she was Great!!!). People threw euros into her open guitar case and we were able to hand out post card size announcements about more musical performances that were planned at the Abbey Arts Festival that starts tomorrow at the church. There already are or shortly will be lots of pictures of Jordan on this blog. To be able to watch Jordan perform and tell folks about the christian arts festival. . . it was simply spectacular!

After we packed up the guitar, Jeff told us we had to go to some library! We all thought . . . REALLY? But once we got there he told us that it wasn't just any library, it was the Chester Beatty museum library and that it displayed 22,000 rare and precious manuscripts, books and paintings. Sir Alfred Chester Beatty's collection is considered among the most impressive collections of its kinds in the world. He took us to the second floor and in a dimly lit room, we were actually able to stand there and look at a small piece of papyrus that had a portion of John's gospel written on it that dated back to 150 A.D! I just stood there amazed - it was truly spectacular!

Tonight at 7:00 p.m. we are all gathering with Alan, his wife, Ruth, and the summer interns to hold a prayer meeting for the Arts Festival which starts tomorrow. We have a lot of work ahead of us as we transform this huge room we've just cleaned up and painted into an art exhibit and cafe area (which we can't do until the African and Romanian churches are done using the church for their services today). Tomorrow we will be passing out more of the post card invitations to come to the festival and hopefully will get to do some more street ministry.

Well, it's half six as the Dubliners say, meaning it's 6:30 p.m. I'd better get ready for the prayer meeting. For all the moms at home, everyone is doing just fine.

Thanks for taking the time to read this,

Dawn