Imitators of Those

“And we desire each one of you to show the same earnestness to have the full assurance of hope until the end, so that you may not be sluggish, but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises.”

Hebrews 6:11-12

Tag: Mission

  • Teleported to Glory

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    Dónal
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    In the next couple of weeks, we are going to have our first visitors from home, coming out to our adoptive country. Dee’s mother, brother, and sister-in-law-to-be, will be on their way back from a trip to Australia, and on the way to Ireland will stop off with us in South Asia for a week.…

  • The Change Along The Way

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    Dónal
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    The story goes, that when the Cambridge Seven (distinguished young British missionaries who had left their popular sports careers and student lives, to move to China) arrived on those Eastern shores, that they had somewhat of a run-in with their new team leader – Hudson Taylor. Hudson Taylor was well known for his deep commitment…

  • Trust Not In Fluent Lips

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    Dónal
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    “Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?” – Galatians 3:3 For new missionaries, the realm of language learning is a battlefield. Never mind the funny mistakes one makes (E.g. You try telling your students that you’re proud of them, and instead tell them that you’re pregnant…), on…

  • Leviticus and the Pilgrim Mind

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    Dónal
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    Childhood summers meant camping. On an almost rolling two-year cycle, we would one year go down to camp in the very south of Ireland, and the next, load up our 7-seater car with all manner of things, catch a ferry to England for a quick visit with our grandparents, and then take the Channel Tunnel…

  • Leviticus and The Right Hand of Fellowship

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    Dónal
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    My alarm went off. I rolled out of bed, threw on some clothes and plodded into the kitchen. Switching the kettle on, while rubbing my bleary eyes, I gathered the necessary coffee-making implements and waited patiently for the water to boil. After preparing my locally-produced coffee, and waiting the perfect 3 minutes (no arguing!) for…

  • The Faithful Understand the Time

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    Dónal
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    If you were to drive a couple of hours North-West of Dublin, until you find the Middle-of-Nowhere, then take a left down a very bumpy, pot-hole filled road, cross a bridge, down another few roads with grass growing up them, you will come across a little village. It is a single street, with a couple…

  • Leviticus and the Butchery of Eid

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    Dónal
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    The animals streamed into the capital in the days preceding Kurbani Eid. The basement of every apartment block became home to half a dozen or so offerings-to-be; mostly bulls, the occasional heifer and even a goat or two. Out in the streets pick-up trucks loaded with these same animals drove back and forth, delivering them…

  • The Longings of the Human Heart

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    Dónal
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    I didn’t expect this to happen. If you’d asked me 7 months ago what I would be involved with in South Asia, I could have given you a plethora of important answers, and many an idea springing from a (admittedly sometimes overactive) holy imagination. But amongst all those options that my uninitiated brain could formulate,…

  • Our Feet Shall Tread This Place Again

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    Dónal
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    Recently Dee and I have been watching some David Attenborough documentaries. The last set that we watched were focussed on migration. Sharks that travel to a remote Hawaiian Islands to attack fledgling albatross chicks attempting their first flight, salmon turning bright red, and braving Alaskan bears, to reach their spawning grounds, lay their eggs and…

  • Chickens, Elephants, and the Illusion of Freedom

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    Dónal
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    Recently I was visiting a poor rickshaw driver’s family in their home. Our teammates have befriended this rickshaw driver, and treated him well, witnessing to him in word and deed. They live in a field behind a large mosque, with a handful of other small one-room dwellings. Their entire living space is about 7ft by…

  • The Problem With Aeroplanes

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    Dónal
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    I love aeroplanes. Ever since I was a child, picking out my first Revell model kit with my Grandpa (a Messerschmitt BF109G), reading Biggles books, watching war movies and watching the helicopters fly overhead, I loved them. My goal as a teenager was to join the Irish Air Corps, but when I encountered Christ at…

  • The Blessedness of Kind Mother-in-laws

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    Dónal
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    Mother-in-laws (MILs) can be the recipients of some bad stereotyping in the West. I’ll say it clearly at the start for the record: My Mother-in-law is great! And for a lot of people in the Western world, the stereotype doesn’t have as much bearing as perhaps it did at some point in time. Recently, we’ve…