Two of our missionaries here in Limerick left to go home this week, Elder Mulville one of our zone leaders and Elder Taylor, our district leader. It is sad to see them leave after having served with them but it is good to be able to see them go home after serving an honourable mission. They left together on Saturday, driving a car over to Edinburgh for a senior couple, the Hawks, who are moving from Scotland to Waterford here in Ireland to finish their mission. The couple from Waterford went home this week and flew out of Shannon which is close to Limerick. This week was apartment inspections before the moves next week. These were the best inspections we have had yet here in Limerick and I think this is due partly to the Mr. Clean award that we started last inspection. This time we have added a trophy to the rewards for the cleanest apartment. It is something we enjoy doing and it is nice to help the young missionaries keep their apartments clean and in good repair. Elder Taylor and Elder Hoopes apartment won it for the second time and the sisters were a close second. If there was an award for most improved the zone leaders would have won it. This week was district meeting. For the second meeting in a row we were finishing off the leftovers from the zone meeting that we prepared the food for. It was Elder Taylor's last zone meeting and it went well. They do a really nice job here in Limerick of planting flowers all around the city. They rotate the flowers as the season progresses so they always seem to be looking good. It makes the city much more attractive. Canada Day took place this past week and we didn't do anything special to commemorate it. But on Saturday we were invited along with the other missionaries to a member's home for a BBQ to celebrate the 4th of July. So they said we could also celebrate July 1st at the same time. Sister Hogan is American and we had a nice time at their place and enjoyed hamburgers and smores! We finished off the week with Family Home Evening at our place. Again attendance was not great as we only had three YSA attend. But Whitney, an American working here for the summer, gave a great lesson on fasting and we enjoyed a nice visit and some Jenga together afterwards along with a delicious Eton Mess.
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This week we had a branch YSA service project. We had a Billion Graves activity at the Mungret cemetery which is close to where we live. Billion Graves is an online database of the headstones from cemeteries around the world. Maurene has used it often in her family history research. They depend on volunteers to visit the cemeteries and using their phone app take photos of the headstones and upload them to their database. The cemetery at Mungret had not been done yet as is the case for most of them around here. We only had three YSA show up but we had a good time together and completed almost all of the headstones. We will go back soon and finish up the small part that is left. Before we did the YSA project I went for my usual Parkrun. I am going to miss the Saturday morning runs when we lose the car as they are held on the university campus which is quite a ways from here. I didn't feel too good that morning so took it easy. I had a nice chat with a fellow from Leeds, England about the Brexit vote. Through our family chats and also Skype we are able to keep the communications open with our family at home and keep up to date with all the news. That is a real blessing for us. This past weekend Jay was able to travel to Cranbrook to watch Ty play in a baseball tournament. He is a member of an all star team from Creston and plays shortstop and pitches. Also Kailey and her family and Corey and his were in Lethbridge visiting for the weekend and they all got together at Skye's place. It is so nice that the cousins can get together and play. Kailey and Caleb got some family photos taken while they were down there. We have done a lot of gardening this week at the church and also at the Haxhiaj's whose place we are looking after until they return home from their vacation. We enjoy doing the gardening and it keeps us busy when we don't have a lot of other things to do. They have a few raspberry bushes in their yard so Maurene has been picking the ripe raspberries and it has been nice to have fresh raspberries for dessert this week. We took a little trip out to Askeaton which is a 20 minute drive from Limerick down the Shannon. Last time we passed it I noticed an old monastery so we decided to go and visit it. We had a nice walk around the town and explored the ruins. We stopped in at a pharmacy to pick up something that Maurene needed and when we were leaving a member of our branch, Brother Davison, came out from the back to say hello. It turns out he is a pharmacist and owns the business there. It was a nice surprise and we had a nice visit with him. We got some sad news at Sacrament Meeting on Sunday. Our branch president, President Murphy and his family are moving to Finland this summer. She is from Finland but they have lived here in Limerick for 12 or 13 years. He has only been branch president for three months now and he has been really good, a very capable leader. They will be missed here in the branch.
We got a phone call from Sister Donaldson on Tuesday asking us if we would put together the lunch for everyone at Zone Conference on Thursday. So we enlisted the help of the Reimers from Galway and put together chicken burritos for the lunch. We did the shopping on Wednesday and spent most of the zone conference getting the food ready and cleaning up after lunch was over. We got to sit in on a little of the conference at the end when the cleaning up was done. One of the highlights of the day was the opportunity to see and have a visit with Sister Muller. She gave us a beautiful card expressing her love for us and we truly do love her. There is a special bond formed with some of the young missionaries and she is at the top of the list for us, a wonderful missionary and person. We were thinking the other day that it seems like all of our children, except one, are moving while we are on our mission. This past week Kailey and Caleb moved into their larger new home and we are so happy for them although we certainly wish we could have been there to help. Their new place was less than clean so they had a lot of extra work to do and it would have been nice to have been there to help out. I started off Saturday at the Parkrun as usual and enjoyed it. It is such a beautiful spot to run at the University campus and I especially enjoyed the trail along the river. The icing on the cake was that I did another personal best. It has been a few weeks since that happened and I thought I would not do another one so that was great! Later on Saturday we attended a District Council meeting at the church and then the Institute graduation which was held that afternoon. Just about the whole council meeting was devoted to the YSA program and especially how we could get more of the YSA to attend Institute classes. It was a good discussion and they have some plans to move the Institute and YSA program forward and I hope it happens, there is so much potential in the district. The graduation went really well and we had four of our students here in Limerick receive course completion certificates for the two courses that we taught this past year. On Sunday I got some nice treats for Fathers Day from Maurene and I especially loved the great bagpipe key chain. We also had a great FaceTime chat after church with Corey and Julie, which was early in the morning in Calgary. On Sunday afternoon we travelled out to a hotel at Castleconnel, which is about a half hour drive from Limerick. We met up with Barb, a cousin of Maurene's who is on a tour of Ireland and Scotland. It was nice to be able to meet with her and for Maurene to have a visit.
We had our usual District Meeting on Tuesday of this week. We enjoy meeting with the young missionaries and although the discussions and instruction are not always germaine to our assignment, we like to meet with them and show our support. It is also an opportunity to meet with the Reimers, a senior couple who serve in Galway and are now in our district. Together with the Reimers we provide lunch for everyone and this week Maurene made burritos which was a big hit. Our sisters also showed up as twins for the meeting! We were thrilled this week to get news and to share in three great blessings to our family. We got a text from our youngest son Scott towards the end of our Institute class on Thursday. "Well I have good news. I just got a letter of acceptance this morning into the pharmacy program at the U of A! I start in September! I'm at work so if I don't reply, that's why. I'll be on my lunch break soon though" I was so excited I could hardly stand it. Maurene was teaching her part of the lesson at the time so I had to wait until after the closing prayer to share it with her. She was so excited she was dancing around the room and it was great to share it with our students. We are so excited for Scott and Stacey and this has been an answer to prayers. Scott has worked so hard to get to this point and the hard work is not over but now he can work towards the career that he wants. This week was also the convocation at the University of Calgary and Caleb received his PhD. He has been working long and hard to get to this point and so has Kailey to support him in his educational efforts. It is a such a great blessing for them to finally have this milestone achieved and we are so happy for both of them. We only wish we could have been there to show our support and offer our congratulations. The cherry on top is they are moving into their new home soon and it will be great for them to have the extra room that they need for their family. Again we wish we could be there to help with the move. To finish the week off our granddaughter Ayla was baptized. It was such an exciting day for her and her family and we so wished we could be there to share in this great event. In the photos Ayla looked so happy and we are proud of her for this important step in her life. We had a phone call from the mission president this week telling us that he was considering moving us to Stornoway in Scotland for the rest of our mission. For the Americans on missions here and for Canadians in Ireland, our driver's licences are only valid for one year. So if you wish to continue driving, you either have to get an Irish licence or move to the other country and your year starts over. The couple in Stornoway needed to move and our year was coming up in a few months. Getting a licence here in Ireland is a time consuming, complex and expensive process. I had told the president that I was not going to go through that. We heard from him shortly after that he thought we should stay in Limerick to complete our mission and we would not have a car for the last six months. There went my dream of serving part of our mission in Scotland and not having a vehicle here in Limerick will be challenging as the public transportation is not stellar. Somehow we will manage and things will work out. We're here for a reason and we trust that we will be blessed for our service.
When we first arrived here in Limerick there was a couple who were taking the lessons from the the Elders who lived close to us called the Haxhiaj. There were from Albania and had lived here in Ireland for about 10 years. They had two sons and attended church every Sunday. They are a very nice family and we all had hopes that they would be baptized. For some reason they decided not to and we have tried to remain their friends since. They came over to our place Friday evening and we had a nice visit over at their place, it is a short walk. They invited us to supper Saturday and we had a wonderful meal and had a nice visit with them. They are leaving for Albania for a holiday next week for a month and we volunteered to look after their yard for them. He is a gardener and their yard is beautiful so I hope we do a good job. This was moves week in the mission and we had lots of changes take place in our district. We found out on Monday morning that both Sister Fechser who was staying here and Sister Plummer, from Cork, were getting new missionaries so had to travel to Edinburgh. Sister Plummer was also being transferred to Scotland to open up a new area so the sisters were being pulled from Cork. So they had to travel to Cork on Monday and close the apartment and then start travelling on to Edinburgh. So we drove them to Cork and helped them clean out the apartment there. It had to be deep cleaned and all missionary things removed. Needless to say we spent the day cleaning. It needed lot of work. We got them on the bus to Dublin and then drove home to Limerick. It was a long day! We have never been to Cork before but didn't get a chance to see any of it this trip, maybe next time. We usually do the cleaning of our house and laundry etc. on Mondays so we had to move those chores to Tuesday this week because of our trip to Cork. There was a baptism on Tuesday evening which we attended. Maurene played the organ as usual but I was recruited to lead the music. I haven't done that in a long time but I muddled my way through! We also said goodbye to Elder Salinas who is headed to Belfast and Elder Trease who is going to Dublin. They left right after the baptism. On Friday we welcomed Sister Fechser back from Edinburgh with her new companion Sister Weber who is from Germany. We picked them up at the bus depot and then took them to get groceries. We enjoy helping out the sisters when we can. The people who own the property we live in are great. Whenever we have a problem, they look after it right away. They came over on Thursday morning to repair a kerosene leak in the boiler and we had a good visit with them. They said we are great tenants so that was nice to hear. Later that day we had the opportunity to visit a beach that is directly west of here called Ballybunion. It was a really nice spot with nice sandy beaches and clean water although the water was very cold. It is the North Atlantic after all. On one side of this rocky outcropping with Castle Green on it is the women's beach and on the other side is the men's beach. It must go back to an earlier time when men and women couldn't bathe together. I continue to go out three mornings a week and go for a run. I go to the Parkrun every Saturday morning when I am able and do the 5km run there. It is a beautiful course along the Shannon River and it is nice to get out with other people and enjoy nature and a run. It is even more enjoyable now that the weather is getting better. This past Saturday was a great morning, sunny and warm and completely calm. So after the run I took a few photos of the trails and the river. On Saturday we decided to go back and do some shopping at the Milk Market in city centre. We went there soon after we arrived here in Limerick and haven't been back since and we had a great time there. There were lots of vendors of all kinds of items with lots of fresh produce and a variety of foods. It was a very busy place and we ran into Elder Ensign who finished his mission this past week, it was quite a surprise. His parents came to pick him up and he was showing them around Ireland. They attended church in Limerick on Sunday. We are almost finished our Foundations of the Restoration course for Institute. We held a class this week and have two more before the course is finished. At Family Home Evening last night we had two new YSA attend for the first time and had four altogether. To finish off the post this week, here are some photos of some roses from our yard and some other flowers from around Limerick.
A while ago we were assigned a few individuals and families by the branch president to look in on and see how they were doing. Some were not currently active in the church, some semi active and others were regular attenders at church but he felt needed some extra attention. We were able to visit two of them this week, Marcello from Brazil who is here for a year to study English and Gitana who is from Lithuania is separated from her husband and has a son. We had great visits with both of them and felt like we were rewarded as much as them for the opportunity to share a gospel message with them. We will continue to try and contact more on our list and plan return visits to these two good people. After our visits we picked up the sister missionaries to take them to the bus depot. Sister Morton was leaving to travel to the mission home as she has completed her mission. We were to meet the bus from Cork and Sister Buhler was going to travel with her to Edinburgh as she has completed her mission also. It was great to see Sister Buhler again and see that she is doing well and to be able to say goodbye to both of them. It is always good to see missionaries complete honourable missions and be able to return home. One of the families that we were assigned to visit posted some photos of a outing they took to a beach on the west coast, it looked beautiful. So we decided that we should have a look at it. We visited Spanish Point beach and also the beach beside a little town called Lahinch that are very close to Limerick and we didn't know about before. We took a picnic lunch with us and enjoyed the afternoon. Both places were beautiful in their own way and although it was an overcast day it was not raining and that is a bonus for here. We saw lots of interesting critters in the tidal pools and it was great to be able to walk along the beach. The temperature was around 14C that day but there were some hardy souls out swimming in the frigid Atlantic! This first set of photos is from Spanish Point. When you travel along the smaller highways in Ireland it is both scary and slow but you often see things that you would miss on the larger motorways. It is often scenic and beautiful if you are not in a hurry. The beach at the Lahinch was much more commercial than the one at Spanish Point and had a number of surfing schools. It was a very large and long sandy beach and even though it was a particularly nice day there were lots of people there and lots of surfers trying to ride the tiny waves. The next set of photos is from Lahinch Tuesday was our district meeting day and was the last one for Elder Blosil and Sister Morton and they started their journeys home this week as they have completed their missions. It is is sad to see them go. This week was the week that the YSA were assigned to clean the chapel. So we decided to do it Tuesday evening and we had two girls show up to help us, Krystian and Christina. We were hoping for more to show up but were thankful for those two and we had a good time working together. There are loads of flowering bushes and trees here in Ireland in the spring. There is also a narrow (one lane) country road that winds its way into the countryside behind our place that we walk down at times. Some photos from a couple of our walks this week. Ireland is truly a beautiful country!
Once every transfer we do an inspection of the missionary apartments here in Limerick. We did all three apartments on Wednesday and all three of them looked great. It is nice when the missionaries take the time to look after their apartments and we don't have to get after them to do some cleaning. We decided to initiate an award for the best inspection and the inaugural award went to Elders Taylor and Trease. Their apartment was especially clean and organized and we were greatly impressed. They were so excited when we gave them the award and have it posted on their fridge. We have been given a home teaching assignment by the Elders quorum and we visited one of our families this week. They are from the Philippines and have lived here in Ireland for many years. They are such great people and we can't get away from their place without them feeding us something. We enjoy our visits with them and enjoy their children. Their two oldest daughters have their school uniforms on in the photo below. All of the school children wear uniforms and the girls all wear those long skirts, Maurene is not a fan of them. It has been a difficult week on the YSA front as things haven't gone great. I was arranging lessons for FHE for the next few weeks at our place and was told that three of our YSA would no longer be attending due to family commitments that night. This past Saturday the branch was having a fundraiser for the youth by bagging groceries at the local Tesco. We tried to get the YSA to help out with this service project but no one volunteered to help. We had to cancel our Institute class again this week as no students were able to attend. Then there was only one person who came to FHE last night. A mission can't be all highs and there are going to be difficult times. We will keep moving forward as best we can and pray that things will improve and be more positive. We had an opportunity to drive the sisters out to Bruree this week and take part in a lesson with an investigator out there. It is always great to sit in on their lessons. There were two baptismal services this past weekend that we attended. On Saturday, there were two young people baptized from Tralee and on Sunday a young man from Limerick was baptized right after church. Maurene played the organ for both of them, of course. It is always a highlight to attend baptisms. We get so much moisture here and the climate is so mild that things grow like crazy. We have noticed these pretty flowers that grow in the cracks of walls. You see them all over the city. It is amazing that something so beautiful can grow in such a difficult place. We're striving to learn that lesson. Life can be difficult at times but we can still bloom where we are planted and forge ahead. Our week started off with an all Ireland conference in Dublin on Tuesday. We drove the sisters there and thought we had lots of time to get there early but we hit terrible traffic on the way into Dublin and walked in the chapel door just as the opening hymn was being sung. We enjoyed the conference very much and the best part was to visit with the missionaries who we served with in Limerick. It was especially great to see Sister Muller and Elder Wall. They have to be two of our favourites, great young missionaries. After the conference we drove the sisters to the bus depot in Dublin so they could take the bus back to Limerick and went over to our hotel near the airport to spend the night before we caught our flight the next day to Edinburgh for the couples conference. On Wednesday morning we flew to Edinburgh along with the other Ireland couples for the senior couples conference that was being held on Wednesday and Thursday at the mission home. We had workshops all afternoon and then a nice dinner in the evening in the mission home dining room. To finish off the day we had a fireside that President Donaldson spoke at. Then we walked over to the hotel that is not too far from the mission home. It is an large old house that has been converted to a hotel, kind of a cross between a hotel and a bed and breakfast. We had a really nice room and enjoyed our stay there. We had breakfast at the hotel on Thursday morning and then went to the mission home for a fun get to know you activity and then we travelled to the Firth of Forth for a boat ride. We went for a two hour ride on a tour boat which was a lot of fun. It was a beautiful sunny day which made the experience all the more enjoyable. After the boat tour we had the Broughtons drop us off in downtown Edinburgh where we started to take photos of homes of Maurene's ancestors and visited the Nelson monument that was designed by her great, great grandfather Robert Burn. We also wanted to visit his gravesite that was in a small cemetery on Princes Street but it was locked up and closed. I phoned about it and they said there were some structures that were in danger of falling over and it was closed until they could be repaired. So that was very disappointing. We took the bus back to the mission home and had supper and a little farewell. Most of the other couples went to the airport to fly back to Ireland but we went back to the hotel for two more days in Edinburgh. On Friday we put on a lot of miles walking around old Edinburgh taking photos of houses that belonged to Maurene's ancestors. We got around where we needed to go by taking the bus. The bus service here is top notch. They have lots of routes and buses come by every 10 minutes. We were able to buy a day pass that made it fairly inexpensive. We were unable to find a portrait that Maurene wanted to see at the National Portrait Gallery but other than that things went well. We had a nice supper at the hotel to finish off the day. Our last day in Edinburgh we spent most of the time at Princes Street and the beautiful park that is next to it. We also did a little shopping at the many stores that are all along the street. It was a warm sunny day and the park was full of people just lounging around enjoying the warmth. There was a piper with a bass guitar player and a drummer playing near the bench we were sitting on. It was fun to listen to them. We also went for a ride on the bus just to see more of the city and rode up on the upper deck. You sure get a nice view from up there. In the evening Sisters Dent and Clark drove us out to the airport to catch our plane back to Dublin. We then had to drive to Limerick and didn't get back until 1:30 am. But we didn't care, we had a great time in Scotland! We got a surprise at church on Sunday. Clarissa Baines and a friend came to church as they were having a holiday touring around Ireland. She was as surprised to see us as we were to see her. We had them over to our place for dinner and it was nice to have a visit with her. We had a great time in Scotland and both of us really felt at home there. It just felt right. The worst part is we really miss being there and want to go back. We spent another afternoon this past week working on the landscaping at the chapel. I completed the weeding and digging up of the flower beds and Maurene started thinning out and weeding an area where there were a bunch of bushes. Unfortunately there were bushes with lots of nasty thorns on them and she has the scars to prove it. She was digging out thorns from her hands for a few days. But there has been an improvement in the appearance of the chapel and we are happy about that. We had our district meeting on Tuesday morning and it is a plus to have the Reimers who serve in Galway as part of our district now. All of the missionaries participated in presenting during the meeting and it was very enjoyable. The Reimers brought lunch, chill and corn bread, which was great and we provided the dessert. There are lots of trees and bushes in bloom here right now as spring has arrived in full force. There is a clematis type vine in our backyard that has bloomed and can been see right out our dining room window. The trees in bloom here, mostly pink, are starting to loose their blossoms that are still beautiful as they fall to the ground. We drove the sisters out to Bruree again this week for an appointment with a woman there who is taking the lessons. It was a good lesson and we always enjoy the opportunity to teach with the young missionaries. We had not as much success with YSA activities this week. We only had one student show up for our Institute class on Thursday which was disappointing and also only one YSA showed up for Family Home Evening on Sunday, that has never happened before. This past Sunday was Mother's Day at home so the missionaries were able to Skype or FaceTime home to talk with their families. We had Elders Taylor and Trease over to our place after church for dinner and then set them up with our laptops to be able to have a chat with their families. It went really well with no technical problems and we enjoyed having them over. Maurene was also able to have a chat with some of our children also in the evening which was great. There was a celebration here in Limerick last week called Riverfest. We didn't attend much of it but when we were downtown we walked around some of the vendors and took some photos. Here are a couple of them that Maurene particularly enjoyed.
As missionaries we are called to serve and we have the opportunity to serve in different ways and for different groups of people. We have thought for a while how much better the flower beds and landscaping around the chapel could look so we decided we should roll up our sleeves and do a little service for the branch. We both enjoy gardening at home so why not do some here. We went over to the chapel a couple of days this week and started with weeding and digging rocks out of the flower beds. We found some tools in the shed and got off to a good start. We have decided to try to get over there at least once a week and keep working on improving and maintaining the grounds. There is lots to do. The fellow who mows the lawn came while we were there and we were chatting for a while. He mentioned that he has been doing the lawn for five years now and has never seen anything done to the flower beds, time for a change. We took a before and after shot of part of it. It was a really nice morning for the Parkrun on Saturday. I again ran a PB and it felt really good. There were not many there this week as there was a big marathon in Limerick on Sunday and probably many of the people who run the Parkrun were running in it. They have a 10K, a half and a full marathon and get around 12,000 people participating, it is a big deal. Later on on Saturday after the Parkrun, we went for a stroll around a park near the city centre and the train station called the Peoples' Park. It is a large park and well kept and it looked like it was well used. There were a lot of families at the playground and a game of cricket going on in one of the large grassy areas. There was also a public art gallery on one end of the park, but it was closed and we will have to go back another time to visit it. After visiting the park, we wandered around the neighbourhood. It is amazing the things you are able to see that you miss when driving around. We travelled down to Tralee on Sunday morning to attend church there and see how the two YSA that live there are doing. It is a very small branch and they meet on the second floor of a building in the city centre. There were three families from the states who were holidaying visiting the branch. It turned out that one of them was from Brooklyn, N.Y. and the husband was Jay Salmon. His parents lived across the street from us when we lived in Calgary and Maurene went over to stay with his sisters while his Mom and Dad went to the hospital when he was born. Who would have thought that we would be in the same small branch in Ireland on the same Sunday.
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AuthorThis is the blog of Elder Tom and Sister Maurene Wilson of our mission to the Scotland/Ireland Mission. Archives
October 2016
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