I’m devastated! I never posted on St Patrick’s Day this Year :(

So to make up for it, here’s an absolutely brilliant video of three Irishmen taking the mick out of themselves as they head off to celebrate St Patrick’s Day!

This should appeal to all my friends around the world with Côte d’Ivoire connections… not to mention spud afficionados, flag experts, Irish dancers, Welsh (or should it be Scottish) people and drinkers of the Irish national brew!

Looking forward to your reflections and comments by pigeon post, postcards… or even comments here on the blog.

A very happy belated St Patrick’s Day!

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A wee office in East Belfast…

… not too far from where there have been six nights of demonstration and rioting.

Flag riots East Belfast

Normally it’s pretty quiet around here. We just get on with our work – praying for and promoting the work of Bible translation throughout the world today. We get on with it by day and stay away from the area by night.

This week has been interesting. The office is pretty quiet this afternoon as I sit here writing this all alone, but it’s been fairly busy all week.

An American / N. Irish couple has started work this week having returned from assignment in the Philippines. They join our other staff (all N. Irish… OK, one has her English husband) who have worked in Ivory Coast, Mali, Democratic Republic of Congo and Senegal. Another N. Irish member has been visiting from his flying assignment in Australia. An Argentinian couple popped in the other day for a chat.

Some of these are preparing to move on: to further study before returning to Senegal; to take up a new role in West Africa; another to Cambodia – but that’s just for a wedding and he’ll be back. He deserves a break having just completed the production, printing and distribution of 4,000 copies of our local news and prayer magazine Wycliffe News.

And of course in the background, there has been Andy, our friendly IT man, sorting out our computers remotely from England.

Church elders have been here too this week: two with our Australia assigned pilot and another who was on a trip with me 10 years ago to Cameroon.

As I say, it’s noisy down the road of an evening and that’s what makes the headlines. God’s work tends to go on quietly under the media radar.

Me? I’m delighted that we have two final year university students applying for linguistic / literacy roles when they graduate – and an A level student wanting a GAP year role somewhere to use his IT skills to help Bible translation. And three more A level students are coming for work experience in the next few weeks.

God is working away in a wee office in East Belfast. Isn’t it brilliant?

Take a look at what we do in Wycliffe Bible Translators UK here.

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