Nancy and I have stopped on a ridge overlooking the Barrow Valley in County Carlow, Ireland. We had a delightful Irish breakfast at a local garden center, and have been driving around, revisiting areas we had spent time in while serving the Carlow Presbyterian church for two months two years ago.

We flew into Belfast last Thursday and spent time with friends in Lisburn, where in 2003 I had done a pulpit exchange with David Bruce. We had lunch at the seaside and strawberry shortcake at Oatlands, a berry growing farm just outside Lisburn. We also visited the local Moravian Church where we were given a tour by the daughter of the present inhabitants of the manse. This young woman was quite knowledgeable, even explaining why in the 1800s the pastor, a Greek minor nobleman, had a replica of the Battle of Thermopylae erected in earthworks in the church yard…And she hopes to come to North Carolina in a year to get to know Old Salem, a Moravian center Nancy and I had visited just a week before.



From Lisburn we traveled via Kells (Book of Kells and High Crosses from 700’s) to Carlow, where I preached yesterday. The service was followed by a sumptuous barbecue with friends and a visit with other friends—people we got to know and love in the summer of 2008. We are staying with one of the families the church for two days, and will leave tomorrow for Camolin and a day with a dear friend from our time in Adelaide Road (Dublin) where I preached for two months in 2007. After that we will pass through Cahir and Fermoy, reconnecting with people we ministered with last September, then to Cork to visit another friend. Finally, on Saturday, we will arrive in Galway, where I will spend the next two months serving the Presbyterian-Methodist church—a primarily African-Irish congregation…I say “I” because Nancy leaves the next Wednesday for 6 weeks in Vietnam as a Fulbright English Language Specialist, then 4 more in Ethiopia training English Language teachers at Project Mercy.

All of which is to say that we are out of Greensboro and away from family now—and we miss them! The doors God has opened for Nancy and me are amazing, but the price to pay is being away from loved ones, especially little ones who are changing so quickly. But that is life and ministry—amazing joy with sacrifice. I think that each of us is called to both, and at most times in life should be able to identify both. We should be able to identify the ministry God has called us to and to experience its joy, while at the same time knowing and experiencing the cost involved in pursuing that ministry. Perhaps that is something about what Jesus meant when he said, Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.…(Matthew 10:39)