Carl Baird can picture it: The green shamrock banners, the preparations for town parades, the people lining the streets.
He’s seen Ireland in its pre-St. Patrick’s Day finery, having left one year just before it came.
Someday, he and his wife, Erin, hope to be there for it in person.
The Bairds are in ministry through Youth With a Mission (YWAM), raising support and hoping to move to Ireland in 2025. Their ministry journey, individually and now together, has taken them to various points on the globe. At one point the path passed through Australia, but later pointed toward Ireland … by way of Texas.
DOWN UNDER
Carl, a New Palestine native, first went to Ireland for a Discipleship Training School with YWAM in 2014. There were months of deep biblical study, followed by a ministry trip in another country. Later, in 2017, he went to Australia and served two years at the YWAM base in Townsville, on the country’s northeastern coast.
He ministered among the Aboriginal people. He worked on a team to translate the Bible into more languages. He helped medical ministry ships when they came to shore.
Then he moved three hours south along the coast to Cannondale, to work at YWAM’s Whitsunday base also in Australia’s state of Queensland. He went to lead the base’s Evangelism Ministries, conversing with backpackers and starting a pub ministry — ministry experiences that would prove useful years later.
CROSSING PATHS
Meanwhile, Erin Engstrand had gone to Townsville after high school.
“I knew in high school that I didn’t want to go to college right away, but I didn’t necessarily want to be a missionary,” she said. “I realized I really loved it and really enjoyed it.”
After the Discipleship Training School in Townsville, she went to the Whitsunday base for more training: how to church plant, how to share the Gospel in a place it’s not commonly heard, how to save to enter full-time ministry.
She and Carl started dating right before COVID. She came back to the United States and taught preschool for a while.
Carl left Australia in 2021 to attend a friend’s wedding in Ireland. He’d been careful to have his visa paperwork in order, but he nevertheless faced a closed border amid COVID restrictions when he tried to return to Australia. Though he was in the middle of a two-year assignment at Whitsunday, he ended up back in the United States too.
A NEW SHORE
Carl and Erin married in the fall of 2021 and connected with a YWAM base in Corpus Christi, Texas. He worked in communications; she worked on a chronological Bible study course. Daughter Hallie was born during their two years there.
Now they’re back in Indiana, working, raising support and making plans to move to Ireland. They traveled there in January as part of those preparations.
“It was really nice for me to get to know the country … to know why Carl fell in love with it so deeply,’ Erin said, and to meet some of the people he’d ministered to in the past and see “the way their lives had changed.”
Carl said the people of Ireland are quite hospitable; they may look hurried on the street, but start a conversation with someone and they’ll likely linger. “It’s a very open culture to meeting new people,” he said.
While they were there they met with people and churches they plan to work with when they join YWAM’s Sligo base near Ireland’s northern coast.
“Carl and Erin are just what we need,” wrote George Rich in an email. He and wife Gwyneth are part of the Sligo team. “We desire to train new young leaders. Carl did his DTS with us here in Sligo. He was a great trainee. …
“Both Carl and Erin will be working with the DTS program and as they have vision for other projects we will be able to release them into them.”
‘SOMETHING GREATER’
The Bairds have talked to a church that needs someone to revitalize its youth program. There are also trainees at the base being sent to share their faith in other countries, and the Bairds will be part of “making sure they have a good biblical foundation before they go,” Erin said.
Also, said Carl, he has a “backpacker’s mindset” and will again minister to them as he did in Australia, but now in a place popular for European backpackers to visit. And, in a place with high rates of alcoholism, suicide and depression, he anticipates visiting pubs and trying to strike up conversations that will help people seek a different path.
As she chases their mobile toddler daughter along streets steeped in centuries of history, Erin pictures mothers doing the same in centuries past.
“It makes the world feel so connected and so small,” she said.
There’s a lot to do and juggle, but they say the same thing keeps them going: “The Lord.”
“There are people who don’t have the hope that I have. All over the world, they have these struggles,” Erin said. They want to be “helping people see … there is something greater than what is going on in our own current lives … (to) have the same hope that I have in him.”
LEARN MORE
Find out more about Carl and Erin Baird’s upcoming work in Ireland at https://carlanderinbaird.godaddysites.com/. Select “Partner” to learn more about praying for and/or financially supporting them in this work.
