Hey all, once we get through updating you on our first 5 weeks here I will give you a picture of what is going on here as far as ministry goes. Our new email address is gdswabey@iol.ie .Send us some emails and let us know whats up in your lives.

We took the girls to a few historical sites during our first month here in between our trying to get settled. The first was a trip to Kinsale, a pretty little town south of here. We went to three places the first being Charles Fort. It had a lot of very impresive history that Gary and I found very intresting, but the girls found a little boring. Second was Desmond Castle which was used for many things including prison for French prisoners, a customs house and a home, it is now a wine museum. We also went to St. Multose church where Shanaya had her pic taken beside one of Garys favorite symbols, a celtic cross. The sun was shining and we had a great day.

CAKE CELEBRATIONS
We had a wonderful time saying goodbye to everyone in Summerland,Kelowna and Calgary. We had a famous Cheryl Davies cake made for us in Summerland with a Tim Hortons theme and Rain Happens theme and a wonderful Celtic cake for our goodbye in Kelowna made by Jen Turner. We also celebrated the twins 11th birthday with some new found friends and the best I could come up with for candles and a cake.

DON"T FORGET TO DOUBLE LEFT CLICK TO MAKE THE PICS LARGER ON THIS AND PREVIOUS BLOGS!!

This is our baby dog Mungo. He is a Soft Coated Wheaton terrier. He was born in Feb.He is sweet as pie and very gentle to the girls. He is pictured here with his breeder Bernadette and his mom on the right. Bernadette took him this week and put him in 3 shows in the puppy class, we miss him, although his is a lot more work than Spike ever was. You can't just leave him some food and water and a kittylitter box.
The first time the girls saw a ruin was when we went to get Mungo. This is an old castle ruin that is in the town of Macroom where Mungo was born. It is about 20 mins away. Yes it was raining that day. But we have not had a lot of rain, they are worried that we area having global warming over here, especially when we get over 25 or don't get rain at least every second day! They are probably right but I like it!!!!!

I have to show one of the reasons we had to leave Canada, the inbreading was becoming to much to bear. In order to find a new crop of Irish men, we went right to the source. This is my father, Tom Ryan, a decendant of the Irish people, but as you can see there needs to be fresh genes in the pool!!! We had a nice time, actually, in Calgary saying goodbye to our families. We had a great feast on sushi, not knowing there is no fresh sushi here, we found frozen but it is expensive, went shopping, swimming, to a movie and rode the log ride at Calaway park. It was a nice goodbye.

Well I thought I would put a pic of Kirbey havin a little jet lag, you must get how weird this is for Kirbey,she just never sleeps anywhere but her bed.We have had pretty good weather so far, only a couple of days, OK 5 or 6 days where it has rained. The rest of the time it is like room temp outside, usually. I have had to put on a coat only twice, we even had over 30 when we first got here. The funny thing is people here start to complain how hot it is when it gets anything over 23ish. Some were trying to say maybe Kirbey was sleeping because of the heat and our new dog, Mungo, has been scratching(maybe flees yuck) and the people where we bought the flee shampoo said maybe it was the heat and it had only been in the low 20s for the previous three weeks! We just smile and say to ourselves "they don't know heat".


We took the girls to the beach when we first got here and they had their first dip in the ocean in their lives. They did not like the taste at all.

We also spent the first week doing some painting, our house had some very bold colours even for here. We could not move in for the first week because we were waiting for our furniture and we did not legaly own the house yet(after 4 months)but the real estate agent let us have the keys,anyway we thought we would paint a lot but we only go one room done.We spent so much time fooling around trying to buy a car, beds and wardrobes that we ran out of time before we had to move in. We also spent a lot of time in government offices with all the polish people getting PPS numbers so we would acctually exist here.That was interesting because we could not get a number without an address and could not get a bank account without an address and could not get a bank statement until we had some activity and could not get a utility bill to prove we lived here until we owned the house and lived there and so on and so on, but, it all worked out when it sould have taken much longer, A GOD THING???

Well we are finally on line at our house, sort of!! We can only hook up to a computer line that is right by our front door. The previous owner has somehow seperated the phone line from the computer line and the only one is by our front door, soo, here I sit in the hall on the floor finally blogging with pics. The first pics I would like to show you are from our trip and the state of TaLeahs new guitar when we finally got it. Don't you just love the amount of luggage, hey, we were allowed 2 suit cases each and a carry on and we took full advantage of that. We got a lot of looks from people who I'm sure thought we didn't know how to pack for a holiday. The airlines lost 3 of our bags. One of the bags had all of Kirbeys medicine minus enough for 1 week and all Kirbeys clothes. We started to panic after three days had passed because we were down to only 2 days left of Kirbeys medicine as 2 days were used traveling and 3 had goen by, so, we had to find a doctor to prescribe her new medicine and this would cost a lot. We found one and just as we were about to go in and fill the prescription my cell phone(mobile as they call it here) rang and our bags had been found,money saved! We still had to buy Kirbey some clothes though. So then we got to go and see the condition of the luggage and we just about fell over when we saw TaLeahs new guitar. The cardboard was crushed and as we opened the cardboard cover we were happy to see it was still protected by the padded case.The jet lag was also intence. Kirbey has never ever, ever fallen asleep outside of her bed before and she just kept falling asleep everywhere. The twins sat up most of the second night. But we addjusted and have been sleeping fine. The twins had to sleep on the pull out bed mattress for 3 week because that is how long it took to get their mattresses after we bought them. Nothing seems to be in stock when we buy stuff and it needs to be shipped in from the mainland. We also have to wait for eveything else. EVERYTHING. 4 weeks for internet, 3 week so far for a plummer, leeky toilet,broken power shower, dripping other shower, 3 weeks so far for gates to keep the dog in, 6-8 weeks for the monk hut/dog house,5 days to clear check even if they are from this city and so on I'm sure you get the picture. Anyway we are making it work but I must say if we did not think this was a call from God, then we might be on our way home!!!!

Hi all, Sorry we have not been blogging but we have not had access to the internet. We were told 2 weeks ago that we would be on today but I phoned and they said target date is Aug. 18, TWO MORE WEEKS!! We also do not know anyone that is on the internet, they all text here to communicate. It is very different here as far as hook ups and things, like delivery of beds, 3 weeks so far. I will have so much to say and show you all by the time we get on so be ready! Bye for now.