Week 18 It Was Great to talk to you guys yesterday!

Hi guys!

It was really great to talk to you yesterday. You guys look like you're doing well. Sounds like you're having great weather as well. Hope the rest of your mother's day was fantastic Mom! 

So I told you about most of my week yesterday but in case you missed anything I'll recap briefly.  So last Tuesday and Wednesday the zone leaders came and went on exchanges with us.  It was really good.  We found a few people.  Thursday, Friday, and Saturday were pretty rainy.  We had a few appointments with Dinesh and Sean though, which were fantastic.

Church was really good yesterday.  As you guys know we got Sean to come to church.  He is really shy but enjoyed being there.  We're hoping to meet up with him again on Wednesday.  Sacrament meeting was on about holding onto the iron rod.  One of the speakers brought up the point why don't we chain someone to the rod.  I thought that was an interesting point to bring up.  Sometimes it seems that that would be an easy way out to be chained to the rod, so you could only progress forward.  However, if that was the case we wouldn't be able to learn anything because we would not have agency.

So I'm emailing you guys from the internet cafe. The computers here don't have an SD card slot so I won't be able to send you the pictures of Waterford Crystal, but I promise to send them next week.

Today it has been raining all morning. We have had a lot of showers these past few days. I think that tomorrow will be the last day of rain, which will be good. So one Irish/British word that they use here is boot to refer to the trunk of the car.

Thank you for your prayers and for emailing me each week. They really make my day. Love you guys, hope the sun keeps shining back home,

Love,

Elder Calley

One of the other missionaries here had an usb to sd card converter so I can send you my picture.

Week 17: Mother's Day Week

May 8, 2017

Hey guys, its so good to here from you!

This week seems to have began so long ago. So our Zone Conference in Dublin was fantastic. There were some great devotionals and talks given. I also did happen to take some pictures.

Doors to the Guiness factoryInline

 

Statue of someone in front of a building

 

Spire in Dublin City Centre

 

So the rest of this week has been good. We were able to meet up with Dinesh again this week and he has a date set for May 27th. He is really good. He seems to have a lot of interest but he does not have a Christian background. This week we went to Sister Porter's again to help her clean up her backyard and garden. The rest of this week has been a lot of finding. Speaking of finding we had an interesting conversation. We were at this one corner and out of the blue this elderly lady approaches us and asks if we were Jewish. We told her no, we are Christians, to which she then asks what monetary system we use and wanted us to teach her about capitalism. As the conversation goes on she turned out to be pretty crazy. We had to use the fake call function on our phone to get away. The funny part about this conversation is that behind the lady there was a car parked that was behind the lady and facing us. They were trying to mime to us about what this lady was talking about. They stuck around to listen to the conversation and seemed to get a good kick out of it. That was the weirdest part of my week this week.

That's so cool that Brandon is going to Paris!!! Wow! I'm sure that will be awesome for him!

That's cool that the Self-Reliance program is going on back home. We have had that over here for a while, or at least since I came to Waterford.  It seems like a really good program. It is something they have put some stress on over here.

So, I do not have any new Irish words but I did learn from my companion of a Scottish word, Minghim, (not sure if I spelt that right) that it means gross or dirty.

Hope everything is going good back home. Things here in Waterford are going great.

Love,

Elder Calley

Week 16: May Day

May 1, 2017

Hey guys!

So today is May Day here in Ireland. I guess they do celebrate it here in Ireland because it is a bank holiday today. That is basically the equivalent of a national holiday back home. None of the municipal places are open, such as the library, and many businesses are closed for the day. So I'm emailing from an internet cafe today.

This week seems to have gone by quickly but not much has happened this week. We got a hold of Dinesh this week. (I think I have mentioned him before, he is from India and came to one of the branch activities we had). He seems interested in learning what the church is, what we as missionaries do and what we talk with people about. We also went to Sister Porter's house this past Friday to help her clean up her backyard a little bit. She is very kind and sweet. She invited over one of the less actives in the ward and he came over pretty drunk. However, we did have a good discussion with him on how the Savior can help him and that he has people who care about him. It made me think about how the Savior can help each and everyone of us and how each of us have others who care about us. No matter what we do, He is always there with open arms waiting for us to turn to Him.

This Tuesday is All-Ireland Zone Conference in Dublin. So I will try to take some pictures of Dublin to send to you guys next week. Later today we are going to Carlow to visit the Gibbons. Brother Gibbons is one of the counsellors in the branch presidency.

It's hard to believe that I have been in Waterford for about three months now. I feel like I have gotten to know it pretty well. The one thing we have not done that we probably should do as a pday activity is visit the Waterford Crystal factory. I'm sure we could tour it if we wanted to but we have not had an opportunity and I do not know how much it costs. They do have a shop that we can visit though. There are actually a lot of tour groups that visit Waterford Crystal. Often times we bump into members from America that just finished their tour which is great.

They have at least two golf courses here in Waterford and I have heard that there are a lot of golf courses here in southern Ireland. They also have something called a pitch and putt here which is like a really small golf course where you get a pitcher and a putter and play a few really short holes.

Some things that we typically do on our p-days is we almost always play soccer in some form. Last week we played "chair football" at the church. Everyone has a chair and if it gets hit with a soccer ball then they are out.

I apologize for not being very good at taking many pictures this week, so I took a picture of me emailing you guys. I know not very exciting but oh well.

Hope you guys have a good week. I love you guys a lot and look forward to talking to you in two weeks.

Love,

Elder Calley

I do have a Scottish vocab word to share, it’s called a blether. It basically means you had a good chat. Ex: we have had a lot of good blether the week with people on the street. The weather out here is still pretty cool. In the 50's still. The spring weather is pretty similar to Minnesota.