Today (Tuesday) was a beautiful Irish day. It started out a little cloudy with a couple sprinkles in the morning, but by the afternoon, the sun came out, and it turned into a gorgeous day! Our job for the day was to “blitz” the town of Rathkeale, in the morning with magazines and in the afternoon with door-to-door work. Rathkeale is an interesting town; it’s a traveler’s town. The travelers are an entirely different culture of themselves; they are similar to what some would call gypsies. The travelers spend most of the year traveling with their campers, horses, and families around the countryside. Some are rather shady people known for stealing and having no regard for the law. While they spend most of their time travelling, most of them have homes in Rathkeale that are boarded up for the whole year until they return home for a month or so around Christmas. They are a close-knit community and don’t trust outsiders so we received some shadowy looks from people in the morning as we distributed the magazines. Right before we left for lunch a group of young traveler boys gathered around heckling us; they were harmless enough, but we got a taste of their culture.

In the afternoon we returned to Rathkeale to follow up about the magazines that we distributed and try to share the Gospel with people. Doors can be rather discouraging and draining sometimes, and we definitely felt that in Rathkeale. We got the usual slammed doors and disinterest; we also had the people who just didn’t care. It’s so hard to talk with people who say, “I’m going to hell, and I don’t care” or “I have my own religion. I don’t need yours.” Several groups got chances to share the Gospel at doors, and one group got invited inside. One group gathered a rowdy crowd of traveler kids as they moved from house to house in an estate, and the kids gave them a hard time. It was a bit of a discouraging afternoon, but we have to trust that after we do our work, the rest of it is up to the Lord.

We ended the evening with dinner at the house of another member of the assembly. We have been overwhelmed with the kindness and hospitality of the families in the assembly. Each night we have had a delightful dinner fixed for us at a different house, and the food was amazing. We are all going to return 10lbs. heavier so you may not recognize us when we get back. J The kindness and hospitality from everyone has been such a blessing!

Please continue to pray for seed sown.  Also for the following people we met today who heard the gospel first hand and showed a varied response to it: Maureen, James, Aileen, Thomas, Michael, Jerry, Seamus, Ray, Edmund, and the always present “ Mary.”