September Church Newsletter
Our monthly church newsletter for September has been finished and we thought we’d share it here as well.
Click the image to download the complete newsletter.
New Fall Promotional Flyer for Church
We just ordered 5,000 new flyers as a general promotion piece for the church. They are scheduled to arrive on the 1st of September and we hope to get most of them delivered by the time of our Harvest Thanksgiving service on the 24th of September. Please remember us in your prayers as a distribution this large takes a lot of walking!
Lately Around Ireland
- A teenage girl will require reconstructive facial surgery after being hit by a brick in West Belfast during what’s called a “sectarian attack” (related to The Troubles)
- Ireland has been recognized for reducing its number of road deaths by 41% since 2001; Dublin faces 5 years of traffic chaos as construction of the Metro and the link-up of the Luas (trolley system) begins
- The European Cultural Foundation fears that work needs to be done to help new immigrants integrate better with the Irish or there will be division and social disturbance
- 30% of people fear they cannot afford food or pay ordinary bills, a further 15% feel their job is threatened and 45% feel they could not handle an unexpected bill in the next year; immigrants are not returning to their homeland in the expected numbers, going against expectations
- There has been an increase in women considering abortion due to the recession; 1 in 5 visiting an abortion center cited being married and already having children to care for
- Two fishermen accidentally discovered an ancient canoe while fishing in a River
- In 2006 there were 90,000 new houses built, but this year there will only be 7,500 new homes completed; meanwhile, though Ireland is supposedly out of recession, unemployment is expected to rise
- In an effort to raise money, the Department of Foreign Affairs is considering selling a “Certificate of Irish Heritage” to anyone who claims it without requiring proof
- Despite the worsening economy, Irish people spend more on tobacco and alcohol than food, while personal spending on other items (clothing, housing, etc.) declined
- Ireland still remains one of the most expensive places in Europe to go on vacation
- They’ve counted frogs, “Protestant Bats”, and now…otters. €130,000 has been set aside to take a census of Ireland’s endangered otters. Interesting note: Otters here are found only in rivers, look a bit different from American otters and are called “water dogs” or in Irish “madra uisce” (pronounced mawd-ruh ish-kuh). We saw one once in the River Barrow. It swam up to us and chewed on some twigs for a while before swimming away.
Abandoning It All to Escape a Mortgage
I’ve mentioned a couple of times about young people emigrating out of Ireland like it was in the 1980s and that the recession is taking its toll on many. However, a recent article from Canada’s The Globe and Mail highlighted some other reasons why people would leave the country: to escape their mortgage. Currently in Ireland, if you are unable to keep up payments on your mortgage, you cannot declare bankruptcy to escape the debt. Even if you give the house back to the lender, and even if they sell it to recover some of the money, the lendee is still responsible for every penny of debt they originally owed to the bank.
From the article: “The new emigrants are either young and unemployed…or they are older skilled workers with houses and established lives, who are abandoning it all in bankruptcy.
That describes electrician Gavin O’Brien, who left for Toronto this spring, abandoning his family house. In the peak of the boom, earning perhaps €150,000 a year in the overheated home-construction trade, he raised his mortgage payments to €3,000 a month in hopes of paying off the house within a few years: When the construction industry collapsed completely in 2008, the mortgage company refused to lower his payments. He offered to pay them €1,000 a month or to let them take the house, then got on a plane.
That has become the Irish choice: When your house is worth half the value of your mortgage and your salary is half what it was in 2007, often the best option is simply to leave. Police frequently collect abandoned cars in the parking lot outside Dublin airport.”
What this means is that if they return to Ireland in the future to live, they will still be held accountable to all of their prior debts. And don’t forget that there’s still a Debtors Prison here. Not good.
Mission Team Coming
The new flooring for our kitchen renovation.
In less than four weeks a team from Ocean View Church (our stateside home church which was formerly known as Midway Baptist San Diego) will be sending a team of six. Three of them will be meeting with other churches and sharing about an addiction recovery program, while the other three will be helping to with some work around the church grounds, including a renovation of our church kitchen. They’ll also be taking part in our Sunday services and getting to know the congregation better. We are excited about their visit and looking forward to spending time with them.
Ireland Weather
