It gives me great pleasure to introduce the next speaker and it is Martin Curley. Now, Martin is from North East Galway and he runs the North East Galway DNA project. He is so successful at the work that he does is that around Mount Bellew and Menloch, he is known as Mr. DNA. He's tested a huge amount of the locals and he's put together a local geographic project that is probably a beacon of hope for a lot of people who want to actually run similar projects themselves and he's going to tell us about the successes he's had with the project that you will get from joining these projects over and above just using your own DNA matches. So please give a warm welcome to Martin Curley. We love you, Maris. Thank you very much for a wonderful introduction. I hope in 14 minutes people will still be okay with that. So good afternoon everybody and thank you to Maris and thank you to Jared and thank you to the committee for inviting me here today. I'm going to talk a small bit about how I've used DNA and social media to connect and reconnect our local diaspora with each other and the picture that I have taken there is of two people walking down to where their great-grandmother was from and accompanied by a person who's about to introduce them to their relations. So I'm going to talk more about that a bit later on. But first I want to just introduce if there are members of the government here to where East Galway is and rural Ireland and people from East Coast know it quite well but maybe not members of the government. And just to see some of the surnames that we have there. Some of them are very, very local. A little bit about the history and a little bit about the diaspora. So just a small introduction to that. So first of all it's on the other side. And it's always been on the other side. Galway has a long history and long tradition of being the furthest away in one way. And we saw that yesterday and today in terms of DNA and how that the earliest migrants, they went as far as they could go and then we have our natural boundaries. As the comedians said the other day, the boundaries of Ireland, our border is the ocean. So Brexit and all of that. So we have Galway and we're going to be specifically talking about where is kindly introduced. This area here where I live now, where I'm from and just right here is where I grew up. And this area here is where my DNA comes from. So I can go back four generations is most places and they're all within that small locality. So what I'm going to try and do is to have a look and see some of those family names that are around there. And as you can see this is Abinak Moin. I've taken this from the Griffiths valuation and immediately rabbits pop out. And they may not pop out in other places but they pop out here. We have Mangans, we have Curly's, my own surname, we have Kelly's, we have Tracy's, Ford's, Murphy's, get around, Mullerys, Conway's and so on. And there are some names then that are kind of slightly uncommon. So we have Divneys or in some places they're called Divannies. And we have Gilmers. So there's quite a few that are spread around and Garrity. So this is a little bit better in detail of some of those names there. And some of you may have those in your family trade. Obviously a lot of us have Murphy's, but not too many might have Concanons. And Concanons were actually there for a thousand years as also were the Mangans. This is My Lot Parish. And now we have the Mangans jumping out here in My Lot Parish. And this was the civil parish of where I grew up. So you have other names there as well like Monahans, and Mahans and Kennedys that we're very familiar with. It's a bit of a cue second. I'll talk about them later on. And again, just a little bit of a higher resolution on that. So Gemsy's there, Kis is a very unusual name. And yet around our area we have loads of kits. This is Kilkern. And again, you see a little pattern here. There's some families that are there for, you know, in most areas. And other families like the Holians only show up in certain parts. Are the Hussies, okay? We're not talking about the older women here who may be a Hussie, but this is the Hussie family name. And so the Kilmartens, another name there. So again, some of those names. This is my own area here. Ruans, and Mahans, and Kellys, and Lallies, and Blates, and Dooley's, and Gerriti's. So when I'm growing up, I hear all of those names. And I think that's who's in the world.  And Gerriti. I saw somebody here with the last name. Gerriti spelled slightly different than the way we would spell it. So this is Kiloran, which is Baligar area. And Kiline. And I'm going to talk about this particular family of Q's ex later on, who are in Kiline in 1855. And there's none there at the moment. If Lindsay is anywhere watching this, we have got your DNA connections as well, because the Lovens came from around there too. And another big name is Prehens. So these are the people that occupied our area. And these are the people that we'll talk about. So, if you look here at, this is the great site from Trinity College with the Down Survey. And you'll see that in 1641, the old manins were the chieftains in the area. This is my home village. And Robert Baron Trembleston, Robert Barnwell, Baron Trembleston, took it over in 1670. So I'm going to use those two names for a little story in a few minutes. So just to give you a little bit about the historical background, like most areas, this here again is from that 1670 down deposition a little bit more. But you see loads of manins, or manning. And they originated from our area. So a little bit about that. So this is a newspaper report from the area in 1843. They sent 100 police out to collect tights. And according to the person reporting, there was neither horse, cow, sheep, stack of corn, or potato pit to be found. A very impoverished area. And they came back with a considerable sum of 11 and three-quarter pints to pay. So that was 100 police, the county inspector coming out. So Mr. James Lynch of Winfield. And Winfield has a little connection here with Dublin because that was the estate that was bought by the genocents. And the genocents have Donny Brook Dublin 4 and they also have Winfield. And he was leasing it. And he was an esteemed gentleman and he kind of makes things good. So in terms of our history, we have a lot of people who have been displaced from there. That was one of the things when I was growing up, we didn't have too many people in the area. So we found out a little bit more about them. But there was lots of stories that were untold. This is from the 13th of April, 1847. And it's from Barnsville Grove. Lord Trimblestone, Barnsville Grove. I actually live in Barnsville Grove now. But it talks about a family. James Sweeney, Mary, his wife, and their son John, a lad about eight years old were found dead in Gilke. And this is during the height of the great hunger. So this is in a corner of a field. The father lying with his clothes on and his old hat beside him. The wife lay at a distance of three yards from him with the little boy's head and arms resting on her breast. This is what we experienced. And yet it wasn't spoken about. And the people that were affected by that, the Sweeney family, their neighbors, those stories were lost until we started to dig into the archives that started to come on in terms of Irish newspapers. This is from the Goal with Indicator of 1847. This is from 1848. And it talks about the landlord's agent coming down and, sorry about the blur in this, 35 families were dispossessed for non-payment of rent and 13 houses leveled to the ground. So this is 1848. So what happened to those people? There was lots, sorry about that, there were lots of people being evicted from the area. And here in this next neighborhood, Pat Riley, agent to the landlord, 12 people evicted on this particular day in 1849. So I've been looking at that history and looking at my own village. This is the number of people in it in 1841, 367, and in 1851, 176, almost 200 people are gone from that area. When I was growing up, there were 50. So it was always something in my head where did those people go to, what had happened to them, and obviously most of them had immigrated. And over the last number of years I've been trying to find them in records and sometimes got lucky. If you were in Iowa in 1925 and you had to fill in the census, you had to say who your parents were. And Henry Melody filled in the census. He was born about 1855 in Ireland. He was married. And he's living in Buchanan in Jessup County. And his mother was Catherine, the person typing it in put Doulay, which is very French, which was Dolan, which is very Galway, and Henry Melody. And when I looked at that record I knew I'd found somebody from Gilca because those are names that are common in our area. And sure enough, when I traced the family they were originally from our area. But that was several years ago, trying to trace family. It was a bit difficult. Then you had to try and reach out to them by email, try and find if somebody did a family tree, try and look up, as was mentioned earlier, around trying to find them in phone books, trying to find email addresses, and whatnot. DNA testing exploded, all of that, as we know. And so what I'm going to try and do now is just to show how I try to use the DNA to explore the different ways then to reconnect. So I started off first. I was invited by Brandon Curley in California and Brandon was doing the Curley-Surning genealogy. And if you see down here at the very bottom there are not too many Curleys. And the Kennedys and the O'Neill's and the O'Brien's you have thousands. I waited, I think, three years for my first Y DNA close match as in, like, maybe in the 1700s we were related. So the Y DNA, it's great for the CERNIN genealogy and it's wonderful to push and to find out a little bit about where the Curleys come from. It turns out that our family probably originated in the 1500s, so we're a bit later than a lot of Irish families. But going from that then, I started to explore ancestry DNA and autosomal, and to find out that, yes, I'm related to malicious, the king of Spain. Fantastic. Unfortunately, as was mentioned earlier, I got upgraded and my Iberian disappeared. So I'm actually destroyed here because I was hoping to get down here to the Basque country in Spain and say, high cousins. But the ethnicity isn't kind of like, you know, I kind of like was most interested in. It was a nice little bit of frosting on the cake. What I was most interested in was who were my relations and especially on my Curleys side and my mother's side, my grandparent's side. And I started off with, I think, 34. It jumped to 68. Fourth cousins are closer. This is three years ago, two years ago. It was wonderful. I had 178. And then after Christmas of last year, about three, four started popping up every day. So thank you to all the people who bought DNA tests for their long lost relations and give them as Christmas presents. And it started to go up. And now I've just over 300, I think, 355 at the last count. But who are they? And where did they come from? Obviously, when we're looking at fourth cousins, it's going to be much, much harder to try and link them in. When I did it at the start, I was really excited because I was able to go back and some family generations, five generations, which means fourth cousins. And then I discovered that fourth cousins on DNA doesn't necessarily mean fourth cousins on paper. So the disappointment was there, but also it led to other interesting discoveries. As we kind of said, well, I know who one person is on my DNA. Who did they share the match with and started to find out if we could find some people in common. And my DNA says, believe it or not, that I am from where my great-great-grandparents are from. So it's a goal way. And I share that with over 1,000 of my DNA matches. And the thing about goal way is that we have a long history, especially of going to America. But one of the surprising things that I found was that some of my DNA cousins ends up in Australia. Shouldn't really be surprised because quite a number of them went in the 1840s and 50s. And I'll tell a story about one of those immigrants a bit later on. So using that information, I started to try and find people then who are from the area, who are from close by. And so my curlies originally came from the parish of Abbenak Moai, so I started to put in who else to put down. Now, obviously this is based upon the fact that people have done their family tree and I've actually put in that location. But at the same time, I was able to do that. Obviously the ones who come up close are my own family. I know about them, but then it's a case of who's the most further out. So for this presentation, I just kept the close ones on the screen. Goal way. Who is from goal way? The distant cousins. Sadly, a lot of them want to have trees. They would have trees possibly hidden or trees not connected to the DNA. So it's a little bit of digging down. So over the course of the three years that I had my DNA, I was doing that. I obviously got it downloaded, put it on to Family Tree DNA, got it also on MyHeritage and got it on to Jetmatch as most people do now. Because using these combination, I was able to explore slightly more. So obviously on Family Tree DNA, you have your finders, you're able to go on the paternal and the maternal, so I was able to say who is slightly connected. But again, people who are being related for five generations away. So not quite too helpful and sometimes you have people who are coming up as cousins that sometimes you have no idea in connections. And somebody mentioned about MyHeritage and again, it's developing a better system because some of the matches don't seem to have any connection to Ireland. Jetmatch was one of the places obviously that most of us are very much aware of and how to use it and especially who matches who. Who matches one or both kids. So I use that quite a lot because if I know who is the person that I'm related to and then I stand and look to see who are the other people that we're both related to and to see do we have shared DNA and in common and to try and find that. So that is one of the main tools that I would use in helping then because if I know that this person is from Aguinoch Boy Parish or Menlo Parish, well then possibly the other person has roots in those places as well. So again, the whole idea of Jetmatch is looking here and hoping that you have a number under four because if it's over four you may or may not be able to find them. And thankfully I have in the last few years got quite a number of my own relations to do the test and through them have been able to do a little bit more. So what I'd like to talk about now is just how I start to use that first with a surname project and then have that developed into using it with an area project and the first one is the Manion Plan. Has anyone got any Manion roots here? Quite a few people okay, hello cousins we all come from the one Roos and it goes back to East Galway. And the person responsible for developing this and getting the history of it together has put together a brilliant website and it's all about the Warriors, Chieftains and Kings. So you may all bow later on to the Manion Kings in our midst here and the whole idea of that was to just to look back, Joe Manion who created this, this is Joe here giving the very first talk in August 2014, a wonderful book then to a guide to residential ceremony of various historical trail. He's really built up the Manion Plan over the last number of years and in 2016 I approached him and said to Joe about doing an Autism DNA group on Facebook. So to use Facebook because I was getting Manion matches and it was emails and it was messages on ancestry and I was finding people were connected to each other but how do I not just CC them into an email and I figured that the easiest way to do that would be to see if they use Facebook which was quite popular back before we realized all of our stuff was being taken and use Facebook to get everybody together and one person put up a picture and everybody else can see it and comment on it and make the links to it. So I set up a Facebook group for the Manions. It was a closed group so it was only people who had Manion ancestry could go in because some people would say oh I have a Manion cousin but I wanted to keep it so that way the discussion was purely on who your Manions are and that way we'd have a very concentrated discussion. Now when I took this snip it was 446 we're up just above 500 now and with the Manion group it was a matter of just communicating what was there so what I did is I started to ask people to share their DNA matches with me and then started to search their matches for Manion or MA in ION and if it was Manning in ING it was a matter of seeing were they in English Manning or in Irish Manning based upon their ancestral roots whether it was in Ireland or in the UK unfortunately Peyton Manning who we are hoping to have one of the great footballers, American footballers turns out he's got UK Manning roots rather than our own Manion. But I think I've got somebody here in a few minutes I think I've got for that loss to our plan. So by going through the DNA matches and then sending out a message and I kind of I know it kind of is a bit on the long side the message that I send out I wanted them to know that there was a place where they could come to and then I wanted them to know that they had a historical reason for doing that that we go back to the 8th or 9th century so as I said my own Curly Ancestries only to the 1500s here we can go back to the 7800s and we can also talk about just down the road. I was in Plontarch this morning the great battle of Plontarch in 1014 the Omanians were there and we actually know where they were because they were a part of the O'Kelly group that came up to help out the people from Clare and I see Paddy is here, people from Clare need a bit of helping out every now and then so the O'Grines need a bit of helping out the Golgalad said we will go and help you out and the dead, Paddy the dead the sort of things are, but the Omanians were right in the middle of it but to send an email, to send a message to the people who have Omanian roots and say you are a part of something bigger and you are a part of something that has a history that can be traced back I got a lot of responses and the group grew in numbers so that is going back to just two years ago to June of 2016 so what happened with that by 2017 we had gone from just a handful of people from the Diaspora coming to the Omanian gathering to now we have dozens and next year hopefully scores where people are starting to now because of Joe's wonderful work and to find their Omanian roots and to go back and to say this is the place sadly we don't have a nice big castle left you know how we helped us with the O'Kelly's they kind of turned on us and this is a little bit of our castle but you know what you can get your hands on your own castle I'm sure so these ladies here coming to honor their mom who had passed away who was their Omanian roots and this person hopefully will come in the next year or two if there are any Americans in the audience I don't know if you recognize this person here he was a running mate of Hillary Clinton he's Senator Tim Cain and this is Tim Cain's grandmother's father who is a Omanian and his Omanian comes from Tumon County Goalway so Tim Cain's great great grandfather and I had the privilege of having a phone chat you know how the previous speaker said about don't stalk but try and research so we got the phone number of Tim Cain's mom and we had a lovely conversation when she phoned me back because I left a message and I said I'm researching Omanians your grandmother and your grandfather were Omanians and I'm researching that and lo and behold she had done she's in her 80s and she had done a DNA test and so I was able to get her son who is not Tim but the other son to upload it to Jedmatch and in the Jedmatch group we were able to find a few cousins distant cousins but seeing as his mother had gone in 1825 from Tumon it was close enough to say we got somebody close by so when Tim or his mom, hopefully his mom and his siblings come were able to introduce them so if you're looking for famous relations you might want to check out your Omanian DNA roots there so that was the Omanians so how do we go beyond that and the opportunity came pretty soon afterwards because my main job is to deliver workshops to students in high school and in elementary school so in primary and secondary schools and I deliver them on how to research your family history or how to research your local area and I was working with a group of students in Baligar in East Galway and I mentioned to their my coordinator, transition year coordinator that it might be an idea to do a DNA test to invite their parents maybe a few of them might come on board but thankfully Ancestry provided enough of kits for each of the students' parents and so the students here they got their family tree sorted and then we invited the parents to come in to spit it's not normally that you would get a letter from school saying please come in and spit but they got one and I was told that it's kind of a one off by Ancestry so thank you very much for Ancestry doing that the difficulty arose in that communication then with the matches so the people who had done the test they're coming up as DNA matches but life catches up so that was in October 2 years ago and by January February I had people saying I haven't heard back from the person I'm matching one of the first people that came is Pat's Abernathy and Pat's great grandmother was a lohan from Newbridge in County Goalway and she left in 1849 as a 7 year old and Pat wanted to find out who were her lohan cousins and by coincidence the August previously in 2016 had gone on a tour of Goalway with a priest from the area Fr. Louis lohan and he brought her to Baligar and she sat down in a bar was chatting to a person and he said I'm a lohan too and she said would you do a DNA test and he did and when the results came back he was her third cousin so you never know who you can bump into and this is the other knife so this is if I get this right this is Fr. Patrick Mokler and this is Fr. Tommy Conway both from Newbridge and Goalway so they're first cousins and this Fr. Penny Mokler officiated at the wedding of this person Nancy's two children but Nancy and Pat were actually roommates in college so as she said there's only one degree of separation but only if you're from Baligar DNA tests and most likely they're all related there because they have got lohan connections as well and it's wonderful that this is happening because of what we're doing that people this is in Mississippi that they're gathering together and making the connections that were lost for 170 years so by March of 2017 I decided to put up a Facebook group as well for Baligar we have one for Goalway but to make it narrow because I'm getting a lot of people to have just Baligar so we did this and we have just over 370 members there's Pat there on that and the reason for making it very specific is because Goalway is a big county and Baligar is a small place so if people at Baligar who can you talk to and advise as well locals to join the group so people who had not done a DNA test but who knew the area invited them in so that way and literally this morning in another group where a person who's a neighbor of people who are looking for information and I was able to connect the two and say oh you know that Thahi family can you answer this so the person who answered it from the area has not done a DNA test but she's able to fill in the connections and that's what I like about the groups because we have a wide range of people in different places not everyone will be as good as this member who puts in their jet match number and then gives you not just the names but also a wonderful family tree sometimes I will get people say thanks for adding me and I'm like okay but I thought you wanted to find out who you were connected to so I suggest gently remind them can you post your ancestral information and your jet match number if you have it and then the ball starts rolling because then people want to find out who are they especially to find out a name like Cranon or Kilolay or Kilcommons or Lohan these are very specific to this area if you have those names in your family tree and you have East Gaul relations you want to check out his jet match number see are you related as well and to do that and there's where the social part of it comes about because it is a conversation people are chatting to each other people are finding out loads this family I kind of did a bit of research I saw a program on TV about a certain person I reached out to the family to find out and they came to Baligar to find them and they gave me a little bit of information that was able then to link them definitely to the area now apologies my phone is not too good and it was dark and it's a little bit crappy but this person here is the family historian and her family Catherine and Catherine's grandfather's name is Cusack so I mentioned Cusack's before I don't know if you know anyone in the world who's into acting who's a Cusack one or two people might be nodding their head here because Catherine we were searching for the family of Francis Cusack Francis Cusack and Margot Tracy their son Dennis goes to New York and Dennis's grandson grandson is an actor called John Cusack so through this group through the Baligar group we brought back John Cusack I was able to find through some friends we got the debt certificate that put him to Baligar but not just that we also found that one of the Cusacks who had stayed in Ireland and who was actually my friend's aunt who coincidentally is in Mississippi as well had done a DNA test and were able to match up John Cusack where he had come from in Newbridge County Goalway so again just the power of social media the power of making those community groups together so that way people can chat and talk to each other and then share that information just a story that kind of like touched a lot of us in East Goalway back in May it's about girls who left in 1852 and just to tell you a little bit about the background of it those girls were in the work house in Mount Bellew and it goes back to a lady that I was actually chatting to this morning up in Clungtarth a lady called Nula Healy Nula is passionate about her family history it's from an area close by me called Caramore in Abinac Moe Parish and in Caramore in 1861 62 the local landlord his name was Blakeney there's a village named after him in County Goalway Castle Blakeney the local landlord decided don't really want people in my area anymore in this townlet I want to put cattle in and want to put sheep in so if you see the big X's here those are the people whose land was gone and down here it says the few remaining houses are to be knocked down in May of 62 the whole village was wiped out now he gave them land but it was in a much more boggy area a place called Clungtain and because of that Nula's great-uncles immigrated and were never heard of again they immigrated to America and Nula wanted to find out about them so I was helping her out through ancestry through records, through immigration but to try and find a healing going to America in the 1870s 1860s is well-nigh impossible so I suggested to her in December just before December of 2016 to do a DNA test and to find out a little bit about the healies and where they were this Thomas Healy is her great-great-grandfather and he had 10 acres of land and worth two pounds and a house worth 10 showings so you're talking about maybe a two-roomed house there at best and lo and behold were able to find the family that had gone to Philadelphia and so Nula's DNA results worked these here are her second and third cousins in Philadelphia and were able to get in touch with them and find out a little bit about them and who they married where they are today but Nula also had another name which was kind of unusual, Hensbury and it's very local in our area so I was doing nothing one afternoon and I decided to have a look for the Hensbury's to see Nula's matches and one of the matches that came up was this one and managed by Kin and Catelyn so as I did I responded to the match and I said that I'm looking for this match of Hensbury, there were fun men there and I got a response from Kin to say that his Ellen spent time in the Mount Bellew Workhouse and we were part of rather I was a part of a group of four that were researching that particular group of girls who had gone to Western Australia and they had gone on a ship called the Palestine and this is the debt record from the Mercury and Hunter River General Advertiser in 1917 about Mrs. Ellen Daly she had got married, she had family she died at the advanced years of 80 years so one of those girls we now had an end story for her and a little bit about her life she had lived in Sydney in East Madeleine for nine on 60 years and then she was a native of Ireland didn't say where we're able to confirm that it was her Ellen Hensbury, this is the group of girls Ellen comes up there again Kilroy, Mayans that are leaving and we're able to confirm through the DNA that she her descendants and Nula were actually a match predicted fourth cousin or so but it could be on different sides of the family so I just wanted to make sure it was a Hensbury connection so I looked at other Hensbury's that I had and I found that yes they shared common DNA in the same place it was a definite Hensbury match and this is Ellen's family tree going down to the person who matched there's a picture of our husband no picture sadly of Ellen but pictures of our children her grandchildren and also the family were able to show where the family lived in Sydney sorry about that from poverty in Ireland to a pretty nice place in Sydney any Australians in the audience so you might have Dramon, I don't know if that's familiar with you so there's the daily family home and this is the daily grandchildren of Ellen Hensbury so this is in 1928 and one of their children the great grandson came to visit in August of 2017 rather with his wife so they came to visit and we brought them back to where Ellen was from and introduced them to the newest Hensbury relation of a few months old so making those connections was important and not just kind of like just one family the group that we had Paula Kennedy, Captain Connolly and Mary we gathered together as many descendants as we could and there's a wonderful documentary on RT's nationwide this is the kin that responded so in May last year we gathered the descendants of as many of the girls that we could find and brought them back and kin spoke about this is Nula's brother Christie the bond that was immediate with the family because they recognized the cousins they recognized the cousins from the family in Australia so bringing those stories together is a big part of what we do in the groups and trying to find maybe a common this is John Lander I'll just go back here to Cameron so Cameron and kin are first cousins John Lander the great grandson of a girl sent to Australia from Palestine Brideship he was the former ambassador to the Islamic Republic he was the first ambassador actually from Australia so when they restored ties with Iran the Islamic Republic after 1979 he was sent down there so there's amazing stories that we're finding through DNA through connections and bringing back home Michelle here is another descendant this is the graveyard in the old workhouse that we have now restored and we have put up a plaque there there's 825 people that died from 1864 to 1900 and we put up their list of names on the workhouse graveyard and Jim Fahey and Michael Blanch of the commemoration committee for the victims of the Irish hunger finally donated a plaque as well so there's a plaque there for those who died there were victims of the great hunger and obviously Ellen and the other 29 were so what is the advantage to having localised groups we already have wonderful groups with thousands of members I think 5,000 but it's probably a lot higher the Irish DNA registry 4795 the Galway genealogy group has got 877 that was going back a few months ago so there are wonderful groups out there so why set up new groups for me when I'm looking at the Galway group this is Galway from Banalaslow to Clifton you're talking about a 3.5 hour journey so if somebody asks for a query about something happening in Banalaslow nobody in Clifton will know when I need something from down here I ask Pather or Jim because they're connected to this area of Galway so the idea was to make it very specific and how I put them up was through the poor law unions because they became the registration districts so when people are looking at birth certificates they will see the poor law union they were born in Montbelieu now Montbelieu is a big place but that they could be here so again to narrow it down so what I did is to build it within the parish and within the parish again as I said before what I've done is to invite people who have not done the DNA to still join because they're the ones who are going to be giving the information so a person is coming on and asking for information about a particular family and they've done the Jed match they've done DNA but they don't know the local knowledge so it's a matter of getting it down that way and again the numbers in the groups were up to almost 400 in some groups and we have some other successes I wanted to mention this finally this was the former Cahirla the chairperson of Galway County Council two years ago he's got mangan roots and because I've been talking about the mangan DNA he said let me do a DNA test and he did and it came back and it said couldn't do it because you'd have to retry as some people have found so I was like yeah go ahead do it so he went and did it and sat down we started looking at his relations and the first person that we kind of looked at was Barbara and Barbara was coming up as a second cousin and she had done a family tree so we looked at the family tree Barbara's last name was Donahoe Michael here, Michael Conley his grandmother was a Donahoe and Barbara's family tree had Michael's grandmother's twin brother on it and that was it it turned out that William Donahoe had gone to America he had married his wife had died so his wife's family took in the children and then he died young and all they knew was there was a Donahoe in Ireland which is quite an easy name to research I'm sure and to find a Donahoe in Ireland so 35 years trying to plot through and eventually they kind of like got a death certificate which is said that Donahoe his parents were Donahoe and Cougan so they kind of narrowed it down to East Galway and then Michael's DNA said this is family second cousin and what happened is that the family were reunited this is Michael and Barbara first time of meeting second cousins Barbara brings home with her 19 family from California to go back Michael brings his first cousins and their families together they go to the size of where William had left and there unveil a plaque to the whole lot of the families I started with talking about why I was interested and now there are people making those same connections there's an interest the DNA Barbara now she put this up here on Facebook yesterday I said can you send some pictures because I'm doing the presentation she sent it up and to gather people together to say we are family after 100 years of separation but then to join the local community groups or if there's a family group around to join those and to connect and while the huge groups are fantastic for answering questions that are very general the smaller groups I feel are fantastic for reconnecting people and people say oh I know who that person is they're down the road from me so I also invited Morris and Paddy and Jared last year to a genetic conference in Galway and there we explored people's jetmatch numbers people started talking we have a few in the audience today that said you're my cousin you're my cousin it was terrific it was a conversation so we're hoping to do that again on Saturday May the 4th in Montpellier and to invite people again last year's conference to this year's conference we're going to have maybe a doubling of people in the area who have done the DNA and also have uploaded to jetmatch I have to include here Sean Tracy from Houston, Texas Sean has done DNA through family tree DNA of about 60 people from a small area called Kiltala it's between Kilkernan Glenamady and County Galway and because I see Sean's email addressed in our jetmatch if a person has two or three of them I invite them to the Clonburn group because I know that they have some connections there and there they're able to say who their family was and then we can reconnect them to the family so I hope I answered some of the questions that Morris had sent to me which I had a quick look at last night again so Karameela Mahagif and thank you very much for listening I appreciate it I think your presentation really illustrated how powerful it is creating these Facebook groups where the local people with the local knowledge can help the Diaspora Irish to reconnect with their ancestral homeland and that's something that Ireland Reaching Out we're trying to do we can talk a little bit about that I was a part of Ireland Reaching Out I'm the parish administrator still and Ireland Reaching Out is a fantastic program to know if you're familiar with it and the gathering it had in 2013 that led to the Irish gathering the idea there was that the local people would research the records and then reach out so in one way I'm kind of doing that but instead of looking at the local paper records I'm looking at their DNA profiles and I'm kind of picking out who's born in Avionakmoy who's born in Minda who's born in my law and then saying please join this group you've got relations here and then find out who those relations are on the ground bring them together on social media and then hopefully we'll bring them together as well like Judy will be coming down to Galway and we're going to track her mangins in gloves and next door and just invite them to say come seek Galway even if you're not a government minister Well Kieran Cannon did come down and made, didn't he? He did, he's local he's from Kiltala which is great and it's great to have the minister for the diaspora from our area because he's well aware of what's going on there I was very encouraged by his speech because he was actually very complimentary about DNA testing about the work that you'd done on DNA testing in the area so it was great to see that I came away certainly feeling that DNA had been normalized in the area where you've done so much work If you went to a person about five years ago and said would you like to do a DNA test then kind of look for the horns at the back of you and stuff now it's kind of like that DNA test where can you get it from at first, I'm getting those questions all the time and so thankfully answers you down there have a nice sale, family tree DNA have a nice sale, my heritage has a nice sale and it's great that those companies now will be taking some back to East Galway and having a few more people test the speaker before had spoken about older people testing so one of the difficulties obviously is SPIS as opposed to that and you know there's ways around it but at the same time for me it's nice to do an ancestry test which you then download and then you can go and put them on the other sites and the oldest person that I've had do a test it was a friend who had done a test because she was a relation she was aged 100 when she did the test and it came back straight away so it was good, it was family tree DNA so well done to them that was tested in the audience has anyone tested more than a 100 years old Jim Holleram and Peter 101 he has your bet when did you test 4 years ago ah there goes my maths, well done guys well done Jim, well done the only consolation is their manuals that's a big consolation any questions for Martin yeah Donna actually because I've just started a group like this for the pioneer settlers in New Zealand fantastic and I have to say this is absolutely brilliant because this is exactly what I'm looking for like a template to run but I just wanted to ask you a practical question in the background are you keeping our spreadsheets of DNA kit numbers or doing anything else in the background or kind of just letting them test and get on with it in the Facebook group I invite them to put their numbers up on a page on files so people who are just joining can go and see the other jetmatch numbers and I have an Excel spreadsheet as well on that and I've done that on a few of the other groups it doesn't always work but it's worthwhile to do so putting a file and just putting jetmatch numbers in it and to kind of done that I thought I had no I have it in for the panel discussion what to do with that and basically when somebody comes in then I'll say can you look at the jetmatch numbers but now we've got like 400 manian jetmatch numbers so it's kind of hard so it's for me now to say okay this person is from this area let me check if they're related but I look down to their list and I see they're in their 2000 to see who do I recognize and seeing them in that way but it's a matter of having it in your head but also making sure that other people can access it as well thank you very much great, thank you Donna great question, we've got a few here I'm going to go to Andrew first and then I'm going to come down now we do have a social, we have a panel afterwards where we're going to be discussing Martin's project the main Gale Touch project the registry project and the Clare Roots project to look at the different ways that these local geographic projects are actually conducting the work that they do so that you can compare and contrast to see what kind of methods they're using and if any of you are interested in starting a local project you can pick and choose from the array of different methodologies which is the best one for you there's no right answer, no wrong answer there's a variety of different ways to skin a cat that's the panel after this Martin, is there a directory of all these local projects somewhere? they're in the Galway DNA project if you join the Galway DNA project in files I have a word document and what I've done is just put up those and I pass that on to Morris as well so it's in the directory here so basically if you're looking for somewhere in East Galway if you type in the name the parish and type in DNA it should come up there have I just knocked myself off? probably your batteries have just died sorry, it should come up there's also the ISUG Ireland website which is I'm going to get you new batteries for that the ISUG Ireland website which will have a list of some of the local projects in Ireland in fact we're trying to expand that all the time so ISUG Ireland would be a good place to go there was a question here yes, here we go I just wanted to share as well as DS4 guys there are many many many of these types of groups I've got one in Cork I've got one in West Galway I've got my Newfoundland Costelos so it is a broad community that's developing just look for your place there probably already is someone starting something up already to join thanks very much for that comment because I think that is very very important that we actually have a central area where all of these the projects can actually be put put up do you want to comment on that? yes that's great and especially one of the groups that I kind of referred back to is the main Irish project as well with Matthew Barker he's amazing in Portland, Maine and if there's this Irish and I know there's a West Galway group as well and again it's going down to families I've got my own descendants of my Reynolds, Blade and Mordens who are in a small place called Liss in Avionak Moi in 1800 so those families now are spread around the world and again it's true there have been refugees in some parts several of them end up in 1851 senses in North which in Cheshire and they live together and there's a two year old who is born in Ireland so when I was going back and researching that I found that the local landlord had actually evicted quite a number of families and these were the refugees they're now in Australia they're in England, they're in America they're either Reynolds, Mordens or Blades and it's great to have a Donlan connection as well because Gerrit here, myself we're working on the Donlands just around the D'Amour, Glenamadi Clunburn, my law areas and Chum areas that there's a concentration of Donlands there and the DNA is coming back to say that we have shared ancestry that shared ancestry is probably from the late 1600s, early 1700s and there's a ton of family and Joe Metz in Cincinnati who has done amazing work with his extended family there but yet there's tons of connections being met and it's a matter of just finding the right group for you and if it's not there, set it up Very encouraging words and also if anybody knows of any groups that aren't on the ISOG Ireland web page and just Google ISOG Ireland and you'll actually come to it and you'll also see local autosomal DNA projects please send me that information so I can update the page and that way we can have a one stop shop for all of these local projects parish by parish throughout every county in Ireland that would be the aim and that would help the diaspora with the local roots and the local people find cousins that have been missing for 150 years like you said one last thing, we're going to have a panel discussion afterwards and we'll take a lot of the questions at that one as well I'm missing something Dan and Minnler today my dad's second cousin is a hundred so what I'd like if it's possible Mars if we could sing Mary a happy birthday from everyone up in Dublin some of you might be her relations but if we could sing now we're heading back to Mars one, two, three happy birthday to you happy birthday to you happy birthday dear Mary happy birthday to you very good thank you very much we'll set up for the panel discussion but take a five minute break and come back to join us then


Today we're in Joshua chapter 4. We'll begin reading at verse 1. I'll read to verse 9. We'll get into our study. Joshua chapter 4 beginning at verse 1, reading to verse 9. Joshua chapter 4 verse 1, it came to pass when all the people had completely crossed over the Jordan, that the Lord spoke to Joshua saying, take for yourselves twelve men from the people, one man from every tribe, and command them saying, take for yourselves twelve stones from here out of the midst of the Jordan from the place where the priest's feet stood firm.  Then Joshua called the twelve men whom he had appointed from the children of Israel, one man from every tribe. Joshua said to them, cross over before the Ark of the Lord your God into the midst of the Jordan, and each one of you take up a stone on his shoulder according to the number of the tribes of the children of Israel, that this may be a sign among you when your children ask in time to come saying, what do these stones mean to you? And then you shall answer them, that the waters of the Jordan were cut off before the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord, when it crossed over the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan were cut off, and these stones shall be for a memorial to the children of Israel forever. And the children of Israel did so, just as Joshua commanded, and took up twelve stones from the midst of the Jordan, as the Lord had spoken to Joshua according to the number of the tribes of the children of Israel, and carried them over with them to the place where they lodged and laid them down there. Then Joshua set up twelve stones in the midst of the Jordan, in the place where the feet of the priests who bore the Ark of the Covenant stood, and they are there to the stake. As mentioned earlier, Joshua is a book that gives to us insight into conquest. It's a book that gives to us insight into having courage and confidence, but it results in conquest. And as we've been looking at this particular book, we have seen that the children of Israel have crossed over the Jordan, even as we have just been reading, and they are now setting foot on what has been called in Scripture the land of promise. Now this is a promise that they had been waiting for many years to see fulfilled, and finally this promise is being fulfilled. When you look into the history of the promise that God gave to this nation, you begin to look at when he first gave that promise, and you can see that all the way back to the time of Abraham. Abraham lived two thousand years before Christ, and God had spoken to Abraham, who was the father of the Jewish nation, and had given them a promise. And it was a promise concerning the land that he would one day give to his people. That promise is recorded in Genesis chapter 15 verses 18 through 21, and there it says, So that promise was made very early in the history of Israel. Two thousand years before Christ, few hundred years before Moses. That promise that was originally given to Abraham, who is later known as Abraham, was repeated to his sons. That same promise that this land would be given to them was given to Isaac. The same promise was given to Jacob. And then later on God repeats that same promise to a man by the name of Moses. The children of Israel had been in slavery in the nation of Egypt. And God began to speak to Moses, who is raising up to become the leader, the deliverer. And he began to speak to him, and as he did so, he reaffirmed this promise that he had originally made to Abraham. Exodus chapter 3 verses 7 and 8, it says, To deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians and bring them up from that land to a good and large land, to a land flowing with milk and honey, to the place of the Canaanites and the Hittites and the Amorites, the Parasites, Hivites and Jebusites. I'm giving to you this land. God had given that promise hundreds of years earlier, repeated that promise, and finally once again repeats that promise to Moses. So under Moses' leadership, as we know, the Jews had left Egypt. They began their journey to the land of promise. But while they're on this journey, they spent, say, sent these spies. The word spy is literally an observer. They sent some men, 12 men to observe or to spy out the land to investigate it. And they were intended to bring back a report. We know the story. We know what happened. They came back saying that the land was beautiful, but the land was impossible for them to possess. Now, God had said, and we need to get this as Relayna Foundation, God had said, I will give you this land. When these 12 spies returned, 10 of them giving a bad report, God got extremely upset with them for that report. There were only two of the 12 spies who came back and said, we can take that land. One was by the name of Caleb. The other was Joshua. And God got upset over the report that was brought by the other 10. And why would God get upset over that report? Well, one, by saying the land is too strong for us, the giants are there, the fortified cities are there. It's impossible for us to take this land. We cannot possess it.  Because God had said, I will give you that land. That land belongs to you. I will give you that land. And so as they came back and gave this report, saying that we cannot take this land, they were calling God a liar. And the second thing that was bad about that, one, it's bad enough to speak of God and call Him a liar, but two, this influence that they had on the people of Israel undermined their faith. And when this began to take place, the men began to say things like, our wives and our children are going to die. It's better for us to return to Egypt. That's the sin of unbelief. And because of this sin of unbelief, those who were 20 years of age and up, died there in the wilderness. Those who were under the age of 20 were permitted to enter in along with Joshua and Caleb. When you follow the history of the children of Israel, you get to the book of Deuteronomy, and the book of Deuteronomy, it records how that Moses died. Now Moses is dead, and Joshua has been commissioned to lead the nation to enter into the land. Can you imagine the anticipation that these people are feeling? They've been wandering throughout the wilderness now for a total of 40 years. They're about to enter into a promise that God had given so long ago, 40 years. You know, as I was reading that, I thought, I've read that so many times. I don't think it really has an impact on me. 40 years wandering in the wilderness. I mean, as I look out here, there are some who are with us this evening who haven't even lived 40 years yet. Your whole lifespan hasn't reached 40. There are others who can't remember when they were 40. But as you look back, for those who have the ability to do so to consider what 40 means, I was trying to figure that out myself, so I wanted to find some way to measure that in my own lifespan. 40 years. And so I looked up something. I looked up what was taking place back in 1983, 40 years ago. And these are things that were going on 40 years ago. 40 years ago, the average cost for a house was $82,600. The average income in the United States was $21,000. The Department of Health and Human Services declared AIDS the nation's top medical priority. Christy Brinkley and Cheryl Teiggs. Anybody remember those two names there? Yeah, they now model walkers, but they were considered our most beautiful women. The computer mouse was invented. People were actually going out buying cabbage patch kids. The big movie was The Return of the Jedi, and Michael Jackson's album Thriller made Billboard's top 10 and remained there for 78 weeks. That's how long 40 years is. It was a long time ago. Can you imagine for just a moment, you wandering in a desert for 40 solid years? I can't imagine that. That's beyond my comprehension, have to be honest with you. 40 years, and the land of promise was within eyesight. They could see it at a distance. For 40 years, they wandered around, and for 40 years, they waited to enter. And now the day has come. Now the time has arrived. They've come to the banks of the Jordan. The priests have entered into the water. Their feet have touched the water, and the water began to recede 15 miles to the north. The water stopped flowing, and it was damned up. And as the waters parted before them, they began to walk on the ground there, and they're standing there on the brink of the Jordan. And this is what has been taking place. Someone said it was fitting that a miracle similar to that of the Exodus from Egypt should mark the entrance into the land of promise. Fitting also that the commencement of Joshua's ministry should be thus a glorious pledge of future victory in the might of their God. Well, to their enemies, it was a sure sign of the judgment about to overtake them. So they're now entering in, and there has to be a sense of fear. There has to be a sense of jubilation. We're entering into this land of promise that God had first given to us so long ago. And now they're there crossing the Jordan. They're standing in this land, and God begins to speak, and he speaks to Joshua, and he says, I want you to fulfill that job that I had given to you concerning those 12 men that I had you appoint. They're to take up a stone from the Jordan, and they're going to return to the campsite. You see, later on, you're going to see in verse 19 that they're camping on the western shore of the Jordan about a mile and a quarter outside of Jericho. They're in a place that is called Gilgal. And he's saying, I want you to take these stones from the Jordan, and I want you to set them up. What they're doing is they're putting together what is called stones of remembrance, memorial stones. These are memorial monuments. This is what he wants them to do. He wants them to build a memorial monument with 12 stones. This is a memorial monument that is intended to communicate to them something that they're supposed to remember and never forget. They're supposed to remember where God met them and how they entered into the land. It's a memorial for them. Now, memorial monuments are something that you find often in Scripture. You look in the book of Genesis, chapter 28, and you see a story there of a man by the name of Jacob who had a dream. He had a dream of a ladder that was connecting heaven and earth, and after he awakened from that dream, he had a stone there that he had used as a pillow, and he anointed it, and he established a pillar there, a place of remembrance. You look into 1 Samuel, chapter 7, a memorial when Israel defeated the Philistines in battle, and a place called Mitzvah. They are called stones of remembrance, and this is something that is common in the Old Testament. So he wants them to have what are called memories, stones of memories, memorial stones. Now, I want to look at a few things here because as I've been going through Joshua with you, I've really intended to share with you some things that are really for you to become leaders because that's what Joshua's all about. It's a book that teaches us how to lead and how to be those who follow God very closely, and I want to share a few things with you that are very basic, some applications here, and I want to note these with you. I want to note something that's very basic. Notice how God had given Joshua an order, but the order that he gave to Joshua was very simple. He said, I want you to communicate something to the leaders of the children of Israel, and this is what you're going to tell them to do.  Take it to your campsite. That's a very, very basic command. It requires simple obedience. But if you're ever going to grow in the things of the Lord, that's what is required of you. That's what is required of every leader, simple obedience, but that is what is required of every believer in God. Simple obedience, a willingness to do that which God calls us to do. And when you do those things, simply when you are obedient, God meets you in special ways because obedience to God's directions will always, always result in blessings from the Lord. God says to Noah, I want you to build an ark. God moves him by speaking to him, and what does Noah do? Simple obedience. He builds an ark to the saving of his family. God says to Abraham, you're going to have a child through Sarah, and Abraham obeys, and it results in him becoming the father of a great nation. God speaks to Moses. He says that I'm going to be with you and you're going to deliver this nation of Israel out of Egyptian bondage, and Moses obeys and results in the deliverance of the children of Israel from bondage. In the New Testament, it's found in Luke chapter 5, the Lord Jesus Christ is there by the Sea of Galilee, and there are so many people that are crowding him that he looks and he sees these two little, these two boats that are there on the shore, and he turns to one of the owners, a man by the name of Peter, who we know as the Apostle Peter, and he says to him, cast out a little bit from the shore. And so Jesus goes, and he begins to teach out of this boat, and as he does so, Jesus turns and says to the Apostle Peter, now launch out to the deep and drop your nets because you're going to have a catch. We know the story. We know how the Apostle Peter says, Master, we've been fishing all night. We caught nothing. Nevertheless, at your word, I'll drop the net. What was he saying?  What do preachers know about real life? What do you know about working the way that I work?  So he basically is trying to correct God, which none of us have ever done. We've never tried to correct him in our prayer, telling him what he's doing wrong and how it would work if he'd only do this. But that's what the Apostle Peter does, right? And he says, but nevertheless, at your word, and he goes out, he drops in it, there's a great catch. The other boat goes out, there's a great catch, and before you know it, through simple obedience, they're overwhelmed with blessings.  Jesus says to him, when Peter's there in the midst of a storm, he's in that boat, and Jesus, as Peter sees him coming, is that you, Lord? Lord says it's me, and he says, if it's you, then command that I should walk on this water and I'll come to you. And Jesus says, then come. We know how the Apostle climbs out of that boat and begins to walk on water. And he sinks. Now a lot of times, I've heard people speaking concerning that, and they'll say, well, what little faith he had. Well, Jesus said, oh, you have little faith. Why did you doubt? But as I think about that story, I think there are 11 guys who were sitting in the boat. There was only one climbing out. And the other 11 are basically, you're saying, you can do it, Peter. Come on, man. You can do it, except for Thomas. Thomas is saying, I doubt it. I doubt if he's going to make it or not. And Judas is taking bets. But that's what was taking place that night. But you see what happens. You see how simple obedience results in blessings. So many times we think that God doesn't have good intentions for us and that if we actually do something or give something up, then we're going to end up losing. We're going to end up on the short end of the deal that we're giving up more than God is giving to us. But the Bible teaches that it's simple obedience that God blesses. Jesus obeyed. And the result of his obedience was our salvation. Isaiah 50 verses 5 and 6 says it like this, the Lord God has opened my ear and I was not rebellious. Nor did I turn away. I gave my back to those who struck me. My cheeks to those who plucked out the beard. I did not hide my face from shame and spitting. Jesus gave up his life for us. He was humiliated for us and through his obedience we actually have been saved. So obedience to God's direction results in blessings from the Lord. That's one thing I see here. A second thing, and you see it in verse 5, each one individually was to participate in the task. Each one carried a stone upon their shoulder and that person carrying that stone was representing one of the 12 tribes. Somebody else could not do this. Each one had to do it themselves. God has something for you to do that nobody else can do. It's not that it's impossible for them to do, but it's really something you're supposed to do. Every one of us in this room has a task that God has given to us and it's our responsibility to perform that task. Obviously it's easy for us today to say well somebody else ought to do that, but the fact is there are things that only you can do and God has called you to do whatever it is that he's commanded you to do. And many of you in this room right now already know what it is that God said to do. You just don't want to do it. And sometimes you're thinking that somebody else can do it or somebody else should do it. But in reality God is saying listen I've done something in you to change you that should cause you to be so blessed that you can't help but desire to do it. God has changed your life hasn't he? Hasn't he done a great thing in you and shouldn't you out of thankfulness do that which God has called you to do? Well absolutely. That's what God has done in your life and that's what's to take place. In Ephesians chapter 4 verse 16 Paul said he makes the whole body fit together perfectly as each part does its own special work it helps the other parts grow so that the whole body is healthy and growing and full of love. And so each part does its own special work. These men each and everyone individually were to carry one of these stones because they had a task that they were to perform that nobody else could do. And then I want to spend a moment looking at this with you. A third thing and you see it in verse 6 notice what it says that this may be a sign among you when your children ask in time to come saying what do these stones mean to you then you shall answer them that the waters of the Jordan were cut off before the ark of the covenant of the Lord when it crossed over the Jordan the waters of the Jordan were cut off and these stones shall be for a memorial to the Son of Israel forever. I want to spend a moment sharing with you a little bit concerning this and I want you to see this again notice verse 6 when your children ask in time to come when your children ask in time to come let me ask a question that I don't intend you to shout an answer out for it's called a rhetorical question let me ask the question and I'll supply the answer in just a moment the question I would ask for you to contemplate notice what is the greatest influence in a person's life up to the age of 25 what is the greatest influence in a person's life up to the age of 25 think for a moment with me you don't have to shout anything out but think for just a moment what is the greatest influence in a person's life up to the age of 25 I was with a group of pastors recently we were with a man by the name of Josh McDowell some of you perhaps have heard his name and Josh brought that question up to us what is the greatest influence in a person's life up to the age of 25 and so I was with several pastors and their wives and so answers began to be given perhaps it's an answer that you would have given someone said movies somebody else said literature somebody else said music somebody said sports education friendships you can begin to shout out a variety of things what is it you know what the number one influence in a person's life both male and female up to the age of 25 is the number one influence in their life is their father did you know that their father now in common culture today we would say it's got to be the music it's got to be the movies it's got to be the DVDs it's got to be the books it's got to be the education it's got to be what is called common culture today it's got to be politics it's got to be their understanding of religion or their spirituality the number one influence the number one influence in a kid's life and that's where the church needs to wake up because a lot of dads don't know that a lot of dads don't understand that a lot of dads think mama should raise the kid mama should do the upbringing mama should bring the religion into the home a lot of fathers think that way a lot of fathers not all fathers but a lot of fathers think that way and a lot of fathers don't even know how to be a dad to their kids Marie and I were walking just this last week we were leaving a restaurant I didn't pay and we were running to the car and as we were leaving they caught me I have a bad back as we were leaving a man his teenage daughter and teenage son passed us on the sidewalk and as they were passing us on the sidewalk this son who I estimated to be about 15 years old the father turned to him he said don't be such a dumb and then he used the word that was improper to refer to his own son and as he said that to his son I was looking in the direction when the man said it and I saw the face of his son when his son looking in our direction seeing people walking by hearing what his father just called him his son looked at his feet and as he looked at his feet and walked past me I turned to Marie and I said what you just saw is what a lot of men do to their boys what you just saw is what a lot of men do to their children they don't know how to lead their kids they don't know how to love their children God help us all it's true and we are the greatest influences in our kids lives and we were fathers need to understand that your children will one day ask what is this supposed to mean that's what he's saying here notice with me the question when your children ask in time to come what do these stones mean to you that is our opportunity to share what they mean it's our opportunity notice there has to be a certain age you know an infant isn't going to ask that question there has to be a certain kind of maturity even in inquisitiveness there's a certain place in time in their life they ask that question we have to be prepared to supply the answer we should be able to what do these things mean to you and as a father it's not just what do they mean to your mom and it's not what does it mean to the church dad what do these things mean to you it's a very powerful question and it means a lot God commanded the fathers to communicate these things to the children during the Passover when the Passover occurs there's a certain thing that occurs during the Passover memorial supper there's a time when a question is asked Exodus 1226 says it shall be when your children say to you what do you mean by this service a father was supposed to be able to supply the answer God delivered us God is present God is powerful God is able God is our God that's what the father is supposed to supply that's what I was supposed to and that's what I still supply in the life of my children I was speaking to somebody just the other day and I was saying when I was growing up and my mom would say to me and I'd smile at her right alright whatever in my mind I'm thinking you know there's a certain point where well that's just not true I'm 62 years old come on now mama will still consider me that until the day she goes home to be with the Lord how do I know that because I look at my children and I call them my babies because no matter how old they are they will always be that to me they may not like that some kids don't like oh I gotta grow up sniff sniff but you'll always be that to me I will look at you always as my child I will see you always as my baby even if you're 35 even if you're 40 or 50 it doesn't really matter and here's something else for you I will always have an influence in your life I want to be that influence in your life for good I want to be that person you come to and ask what do these things mean what's the importance and significance of this my son Joseph my son Joseph has spent a lot of years in college I think he's spent a total of 8 to 10 years in college my son Joseph is 31 years old 32 years old and my son Joseph still sits down with me as his dad and still asks questions and he's much better educated than I am and he'll say dad what do you think about these things what do you think about this and I still supply that answer for him because that's what fathers do that's what our responsibility is that's what God has called us to do they ask the question because it deserves an answer in Deuteronomy chapter 4 verse 9 it says only take heed to yourself and diligently keep yourself lest you forget the things your eyes have seen lest they depart from your heart all the days of your life teach them to your children and your grandchildren Psalm 78 verses 3 and 4 which we have heard and known and our fathers have told us we will not hide them from our children telling to the generation to come the praises of the Lord and his wonderful works that he has done we have that responsibility to tell the wonders of God how do we do that well when they're young praise God tonight there some of you have your children children's ministry bless the Lord for that when they're young you give them devotionals in our case with our kids I read scripture to them every night we prayed there were times I would read a biography of a missionary or some great person that God used in the past and all their young life from the time that they were able to listen I would have them seated in front of me we would sit in the front room and my children would sit in front of me I would open the Bible and I'd say God we're going to read this passage tonight and I did that Monday night Tuesday night not on Wednesday they were in church Thursday night Friday night Saturday night not on Sunday night they were in church and I did that all of their life into high school and including their early high school years every night five out of seven days they had devotion for their years of their early life and it still was difficult when they got to the point where they wanted to decide where their life was going to go we need to pour into our children we need to have stones of memory places that you can speak about that God met you in a special way it's good to remember it's good to remember what God has done and it's good to remember and share concerning his goodness to us I have done this before I'll do it briefly right now my children can speak to you concerning these things in this church by and large but it can do the same in my own heart, in my own life I have places that are like memorials to me to where God met me in a special way I started a Bible study in my parents house in Norwalk and every once in a while when I have opportunity to go out to do some ministry I'll drive by my parents house it's no longer in our family they sold it many years ago but I'll drive by and as I drive by I'll pull over on the side of the road there and I'll look at that house and I have memories of how God met me in a special way in that house back in 1970 and it's a stone of remembrance for me that I'll be there and I'll look at that house and I'll remember what God did after getting saved I began a Bible study in the city of Ontario and I would drive to Ontario to minister to my brother it was in that Bible study that God brought to me a wife and just this last week on just this last Monday I was driving and I drove past that little apartment there in Ontario where my brother's Bible study was where I began my ministry here in this region back in 1974 and for me it's a stone of remembrance I got involved in a small fellowship in Claremont where I became an assistant pastor and I've gone by that church chapel that we used to meet in and I remember how God moved there I started a Bible study in my sister-in-law's home in the city of Ontario and I driven by that and as I drive by I look at the house and I remember it's a stone of remembrance we drive by the small school that we had and had to go to a small school and I just drove by that school this last Monday and I remember we purchased land in Ontario we built it out and I drove by that it's a stone of remembrance we rented out Ontario High School and drove by it this last week and I remember what God has done you need to have places in your heart where God meets you all of those places have special memories to me and all of those places make up the history of our fellowship they are special places because they're places that God met me and met us the church in remarkable and special ways and these are the special memories that I've shared with my children the Psalmist in Psalm 145 verse 4 says one generation shall praise your works to another and shall declare your mighty acts the children of Israel were to remember that God stopped the Jordan so that they could cross over they were to remember that their God is a God who keeps his promises and they were not to forget this fact they were to remember that the God that they follow is powerful and the God that they follow can do all things that it's necessary to deliver his people they were to remember notice verse 8 and 9 it says just as Joshua commanded and took up 12 stones from the midst of the Jordan as the Lord had spoken to Joshua according to the number of the tribes of the children of Israel and carried them over with them to the place where they lodged and laid them down there then Joshua set up 12 stones in the midst of the Jordan in the place where the feet of the priests were the ark of the covenant stood and they are there to this day so they took those 12 stones they made a memorial in Gilgal but they also had 12 other stones on the eastern side of the Jordan and they put it there so that even when the water once again was covering them they would still know that when there was a time of drought or there was a time when the water receded that people could still see those stones and still remember that that's the place that God did that great work stones of remembrance and verse 10 it says so the priests who bore the ark stood in the midst of the Jordan and it was finished that the Lord had commanded Joshua to speak to the people according to all that Moses had commanded Joshua and the people hastened and crossed over it came to pass when all the people had completely crossed over that the ark of the Lord and the priests crossed over in the presence of the people and the men of Rubin this is the first Mexican tribe in the Bible the men of Rubin forgive me the men of Gad half the tribe of Manasseh they crossed over armed before the children of Israel as Moses had spoken to them about 40,000 prepared for war crossed over before the Lord for battle to the plains of Jericho on that day the Lord magnified Joshua on the side of all Israel and they feared him as they feared Moses all the days of his life imagine the fear the awe that these people were experiencing as they're participating in this incredible miracle the waters in a heap 15 miles north of them they've just crossed over this Jordan some had seen this kind of thing before as children but others are now experiencing it brand new an amazing awe inspiring moment that would have been and as this takes place notice verse 14 says that God magnified Joshua on the side of all Israel and they feared him the miracle caused the people to respect and hold him in high regard because he was God's leader it developed a confidence in him on their part and his credibility is now established they saw God's hand on him and they followed his lead then verse 15 the Lord spoke to Joshua saying command the priests who bear the ark of the testimony to come up from the Jordan Joshua therefore commanded the priests saying come up from the Jordan and it came to pass when the priests who bore the ark of the covenant of the Lord had come from the midst of the Jordan and the souls of the priests feet touched the dry land the waters of the Jordan returned to their place and flowed over all its banks as before now the people came up from the Jordan on the 10th day of the first month they camped in Gilgal on the east border of Jericho and those 12 stones which they took out of the Jordan Joshua set up in Gilgal then he spoke to the children of Israel saying when your children asked their fathers in time to come saying what are these stones then you shall let your children know saying Israel crossed over this Jordan on dry land for the Lord your God dried up the waters of the Jordan before you until you had crossed over as the Lord your God did to the red sea which you dried up before us until we had crossed over that all the peoples of the earth may know the hand of the Lord that it is mighty that you may fear the Lord your God forever all peoples of the earth may know that the hand of the Lord that it is mighty this work of drying up the Jordan allowing them to be able to cross over is not simply for the benefit of Israel but as a witness to the world God is the God of the whole earth he's not a tribal God and his desire is that all might know and all might worship him God be merciful to us and bless us and cause his face to shine upon us that you may be known on earth your salvation among all nations God is not some tribal God he is the God of all creation and so they are to know this God and secondly that they might fear the Lord forever this fear of the Lord reveals that you have a relationship with God because it's the beginning of wisdom it's the beginning of knowledge it's through the fear of the Lord that you depart from evil that you worship and serve God and so God's desire is for people to know that he is mighty and God's desire is that they would reverence him and worship him and so those twelve stones of remembrance that were placed in strategic places are intended to communicate to the children of Israel what God is ready and powerful God is and to remind them to remind them and finally we're about to take communion which is another form of reminding us what God has done in the past what God is doing now and what God will do yet in the future


All right, so apparently there's this thing going around where people are trying to in various ways show that they can pick locks with mittens and dildos and bananas and various other things causing them stress. So I figured to try something a little more real kind of take away something that makes us human which is our thumbs because I can see if I can pick a little American lock. So you can see I'm taping my thumbs up with some packing tape that I have around. And this is further conflated by the fact that I'm left-handed. And put that back in there. And so I normally would use my thumb to run the tension tool but turns out that that doesn't work as well. So what I'm going to do is kind of use the heel of my hand to tension it. Okay, so I'll let it in the part of me taping my hands up. So the idea here is I'm going to do this before. Oh yeah, that's it. That's better. Using demonstrating my incredible superhuman abilities or subhuman abilities in this case to pick an American series 10 lock without the advantage of opposable thumbs I was going to try one of Bill's techniques but well the grocery store was out of bananas shall we say and I don't really like bananas so sorry Bill come on you motherfucker I can see pin 1 laughing at me the counter rotation can't control that was my wife laughing at me in the background pin 1 is good we want pin 2 the feedback is just absolutely yes open all right good I'm going to get my thumbs back now so I hope to hell that was in frame yeah I can't not be I got the white endo lens on anyway American series 10 PFI, Bill you can tell me what that means and there it is I'm going to reset it but great whoops a few and you know there it goes works with a key yada yada blah blah so and if I were cheating and had to remove pins it would have opened much more quickly so anyway there you go no thumbs beat that have fun and keep it legal bye


Expert names main task of Russians near Bakhmut. Currently, the primary objective of Russian occupiers near Bakhmut is to restrain Ukrainian forces, preventing them from being redeployed to the Avdivka sector, where invaders have been attempting an offensive since early October, according to military expert Oleksandr Musienko for RBC Ukraine. Military expert Oleksandr Musienko believes that despite pressure and Russian counterattacks, it's unlikely they will achieve operational success near Bakhmut. According to him, the combat dynamics have been consistent for several months. Ukrainians launch an attack and make advances. Then the enemy counterattacks and the cycle repeats. In the expert's opinion, the adversary's goal near Bakhmut is to tie down Ukrainian forces, preventing their transfer to the Avdivka sector. According to the Institute for the Study of War, Ukrainian armed forces have continued offensive operations towards Militopol and achieved some success west of Robotyn in the direction of Kopan-Zaporizia region. They also maintained positions and reportedly launched an attack on the left bank of the Kursan region. Meanwhile, Ukrainian defence forces persist in storming actions south of Bakhmut in the Donetsk region, inflicting losses on the enemy in personnel and equipment, and consolidating positions at the attained front lines.