June 25, 2013 or 25 June 2013, if you prefer

Tuesday, June 25, 2013

It’s afternoon here in Sligo. We’ve spent the morning going up and down one way streets trying to relocate the photo store where we were having pictures developed of the baptism we attended last Saturday. Elder Donaldson will be leaving tomorrow and since he was the one who baptized Evan Cawley, we wanted him to have the pictures of said baptism. It took us about 45 minutes during which time the Elders were waiting for us to be there to visit with an elder named William who had been inactive for six months, but who was looking to come back into activity. 

When we finally arrived we had a very nice visit with William, who is from Zimbabwe and speaks English beautifully. 

The elders had to hustle off to another appointment (which didn’t actually work out) and afterwards we took them to lunch at the Supermac – which is basically a glorified McDonalds. It was really fun, especially trying to compete with all the youngsters (about 25) who were there on a field trip. We took the elders to see a famine graveyard after lunch. We had been able to find it last night on a tip from the branch president that it was in Ballyvitlan – just across the street and a few blocks away from the Supermac. We’ve identified a good place for the young people of the ward to perform some light service in cleaning the moss off the cross on the ground in the children’s area of the cemetery. (Did that sentence have enough prepositional phrases for you?)

Just a few minutes ago the elders came over with Evan to have Evan take a picture of us for the next article coming out in the “Sligo Champion” newspaper next Tuesday. We’ll have to be sure to watch for it so we can add it to our memorabilia and send a copy to our kids at home. The elders send articles into the local newspapers and they publish information about them which helps put a positive spin on the work we’re trying to do here. Elder Walker will be here with us for the next six weeks, so hopefully he will continue to send in the articles and spreading the good word about us as a church. The article about Elders Walker and Donaldson that showed up in another newspaper this past Tuesday carried the headline: “Professional Musician and Eye Doctor give up jobs to “sell” Mormon religion.” (Elder Walker plays the trumpet and Elder Donaldson is hoping to go into medicine when he gets off his mission.) Actually, the article was really very flattering, but that headline missed by a mile!

Sorry I haven't included any pictures yet. I've taken several, but haven't figured out yet how to post them. I'll keep working on it!