KEEPING TRACK OF ERWIN & GAIL

Well this is becoming a habit. Once again I’m sitting in an airport, this time in Belfast Ireland. The only difference this time is Gail has not gone shopping. We have been in Ireland since this time one week ago and it has been a whirlwind of excitement. We spent the week in the company of Norman and Amy Cuthbert, the WEC directors here, but not at the WEC HQ as it was full. The other people were delayed in leaving because of the Ebola epidemic in different parts of the world. We had the pleasure of staying with their daughter in her home in downtown Portadown, and it was great.

Our first day here we spent most of our time at the WEC HQ acquainting ourselves with the people around there and the place itself. On Tuesday we started what would be a week of traveling around Northern Ireland. We started at a place called Armagh, the home of St Patrick himself who started a church there in the middle of the 400s and a church still stands there today. It’s amazing to be able to see back in history more than 1500 years. It’s a bit confusing for me to see how the Church of Ireland, a protestant church, claims St. Patrick as their patron St. responsible for founding their church and the Catholic Church also claiming him as their patron St. responsible for bringing the church to Ireland. But that’s great because they all love him and if they have nothing else in common they have St Patrick. We left Amagh and headed to the East coast of N. Ireland and journeyed north to a place called Newcastle, stopping many times along the way to see the sites and absorb the many places along the way. We headed from there back to Portadown for the night. The next day we headed back to Newcastle with the intent of traveling further up the coast but found ourselves in a place called DownPatrick, which is the official burial place of St. Patrick. We spent most of the day there seeing the sites and taking in some museums including a very old jail and government houses, we never did get back to Newcastle and found ourselves rushing back to Portadown for tea (Dinner-super) with the Cuthberts.

We are now aboard an airplane headed to Amsterdam so I will continue to tell you about our time in Ireland. On Thursday morning we headed west to a place called Omagh where we found a live museum that depicted the plight of the Irish during the 16^th an d17th centuries and their immigration to America. It started in a one room stone cabin, typical of its time, where a lady sat in the smoke filled room and told us about the family that would have lived there. It was a tough life even at the best of times, they would only have potatoes to eat morning noon and night The children, any number of them, would sleep on the clay floor on a mat while Mom and Dad and the babies would sleep on a shelf built in the corner of the room nearest the fire so Dad could keep the fire going all night. Then we went on to the Blacksmith shop where the old blacksmith told us of his trade and the use of his 5 or 6 year old apprentice who would keep the bellows pumped and the fire hot so the blacksmith could apply his trade. From there we made our way through many different houses both of the rich and the poor and on into a town site with all its merchants, banks, doctors and infirmaries. We then went to the dock and boarded a ship, of the tall three mast type, and headed to America to a new and better life. There were 4 adults or one family in one bunk that was about as wide as a small double bed with about three feet of head room or just enough room to sit up in bed if you weren’t too tall. Having survived the trip without catching some fatal disease, we disembarked in New York, New York. Where we went through a city with its tall buildings, its many flourishing shops and businesses to the country side where we were introduced to the wooden and log structures of farm homes and buildings in the USA. The living was cleaner and healthier and all you had to do was work the land that was free for the working.

From there we went north to Portstewart where we met up with Norman and Amy and his brother Angus and his wife Sarah whose home we shared for the night. We took a long walk on the promenard and enjoyed an Ice-cream by the sea. The following day we took a tour of the Giant’s Causeway, a natural and marvellous happening in nature that is absolutely impossible to describe, so I hope some pictures may help. We made our way around the north and down the east coast. Stopping all along the way to take in some of God’s great creation and some man made spectaculars we found ourselves out of time once more and we had not yet seen the Castle at Carrickfergus. So, we returned there the following day, it is something awesome to see. A structure having been built in several stages through several centuries still standing tall and strong, even having survived the bombs of 2 world wars, it is a spectacular site to see.

We finished that Saturday off with the folks at WEC and on Sunday spent some time with our good friends, Henry and Nancy Bell and their family from Canada. After a night’s sleep, we found ourselves at the airport where this segment of this blog started this morning. We are, at present, hunkered down in a wee motel in Fehrenkamp Germany. After a few pictures I will let you go for a while. We will not be found in an airport for the next 23 days but if you’re thinking that that will let you off the hook you could be wrong.

God Bless. With love

Erwin & Gail