Nothing to do with the price of eggs...

...but yesterday morning, whilst waiting for the bus into Belfast city center, Tommy and Curt launched into a rendition of "A Whole New World" (from Aladdin, for any of you who don't know). As unsettling as this was, it was nothing to the surreal moment when they split into singing the parts of Aladdin and Jasmine, with gusto and a degree of staging. The bus is now arriving at Loony town...

On a personal note- this trip thus far as been a great chance for me to be home and to reacquaint myself with the country- in some ways as a different person- and to experience it differently. I'm loving it and appreciating the beauty in the people and places in ways that if I'm honest, I may not have appreciated before.

But I'm also here on mission and my heart is definitely being hit and torn- I suppose "broken" would be the Jesus-junior way to put it but it feels like my heart is being mangled, barbecued, hit with an ice-pick and trampled by rampaging rhinos. All at once. Some of this is a somewhat unfortunate answer to prayer in that I asked to look at people through Jesus' eyes, but dear Lord that HURTS! And some of it is satan knowing where I'm weak and doing his darnedest to destroy what I would bring to the team by distracting me and making me a pain in the ass to the rest of the guys.

So between being emotionally and psychologically vomited upon by satan and stewed by my own weaknesses, oh and physically not being that great for the past few days, I'm not having an easy ride. Thankfully the others ROCK and are doing an amazing work for the Lord. I'm not getting down on myself btw, more that the lessons God is teaching me through this trip are different in some ways since I'm from here and have that emotional tie to the place historically.

God is faithful and amazing though and has put people around me when satan is trying to destroy us. He brought Katie to me last night when satan was trying to undermine the closeness of Reese and my bond and by having such great sisters in them both, satan got schooled. God has been opening doors for us to talk about community and how that can look in a "come as you are" environment and people are wanting to hang out with us- both people outside the church (who frankly short circuit when they first meet us, because we don't exactly match stereotypes of Christians here) and people who're in churches. We've had some really great conversations with people from the churches we've been to and been able to talk about things that might help them from our experience. God has opened hearts BIG STYLE.

Please pray for the days ahead- for the people we're meeting, for open hearts to learn (in ALL of us and them!!), for strength and unity and wisdom for the team and for people to be moved to come to Seattle with the team coming to Eastlake in June 2010! Pray big- we're praying to the God who can do INFINITELY more than we could ask or imagine!!!!