Monday, November 27, 2017

One thing I will miss a lot this Christmas is all the decorations in our house.  I love them, especially the stairs.  BUT we have a few cute decorations in our flat from the Christmas package!!  Thank you and thanks to the Ratzlaff's for the delivery.  Sister Yu was super excited to see that there were presents for her too (because Christmas isn't really big in Taiwan).  She also loved the Santa hats and says thank you!   All the Elders were super jealous and asked for something in the package.  One of them crossed out my name on the package and wrote his own hahahaha. 

My companion and I get along pretty well.  She is a lot quieter than Sister Scheib was and is not fully confident in her English when we are on the streets, so I have to do a lot of talking, but it's good.  It is helping me learn a lot, especially of how to deal with bashers (there are way too many of them) and the people that just throw a bunch of questions and random facts at us.  She is really sweet though and we have a good time. 

This week was really good.  Our friend, William, was baptised on Saturday.  It was so nice!  He has been taught since the end of August/beginning of September.  He was actually supposed to be baptised the first week I was in Dublin, but he had some questions after he talked to a recent convert who actually removed her records from the church after finding some anti material.  That filled his head with lots of questions about Joseph Smith, but we continued to work with him to help him build his faith and resolve any questions he had.  He was super excited to be baptised (even though the water was cold).  (I thought I knew how to work the hot water from the last baptism, but apparently not hahahaha sorry William).  After his baptism he was so grateful.  He shook our hands and started crying as he said "thank you for all the meetings and all of your patience."  He is such a sweet Spirit and was so so grateful to have this opportunity to come closer to Christ.

Thanksgiving for us was just like every other day.  We did have a dinner appointment and the lady in our ward fed us fish pie.  Basically fish in mashed potatoes with cheese on top.  It wasn't horrible, but potatoes.....  She told us happy thanksgiving, but that was pretty much the only "thanksgivingish" thing we had.  We also got a text from one of the STLTs saying "Happy Thanksgiving we're grateful for you."  Woohoo happy thanksgiving.  They also have "black friday" here, but it's definitely not as crazy as the US.  There were definitely more people in the city center though.

Now that Thanksgiving is over we can officially enjoy the Christmas music and the lights that are all over Dublin.  There are lights all over and a giant Christmas tree and Nativity display right by the spire!  MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!!!!!!!

Weird Irish facts:  

curb is spelled kerb

tire is spelled tyre

Love you lots!