Wet week in Waterford

Hello everyone! Had another solid week here in good ole Waterford! I did get to see the Irish rain a lot this week, but it was nice considering I come from a desert haha.  

Monday- Monday we were actually able to go down to the Blarney Castle! For any who don't know, that's basically the most famous castle in Ireland, and I got to kiss the Blarney stone. So hopefully I'll start seeing the gift of Eloquence sometime soon haha. But ya a really good Pday all in all!

Tuesday-Tuesday we drove down to Dublin for our All Ireland mission conference. It was an amazing meeting, and I really learned so much! The focus of Pres Donaldson's talk, which I thought was really neat, was how we as missionaries, and really as members of the church, can develop a "Fourth Floor, Last Door" mentality. This was neat because before I came our family adopted that as a bit of a motto, which if you have seen my dad's workout room you would already know. But after I was able to get to meet a lot of the missionaries from Ireland, and met some really cool people! There's only about 80 missionaries in all of Ireland, but we're getting a lot of work done. We then had to travel home that night, and didn't end up getting back till 10:30 because we had to stay late for our interviews with president. But it was a really good conference and am glad I was able to go!

Wednesday- Wednesday I had to go to the Garda station. Oh ya I guess I should explain, they really like their Gaelic here in Ireland! Like all the street signs are in English, and then in Gaelic, even though no one speaks it at all haha. So Garda is the police here. But ya I went to the Garda station to get kinda like a visa to live in Ireland. I have one for the UK, but Ireland isn't part of that so I had to get another visa haha. But for the rest of the day we just went out street contacting! We were able to have dinner with the Espejo family. They are an amazing family from Argentina, and actually have a son who is turning in his mission papers soon! But ya they were awesome and it was good to be able to get to know them better.

Thursday- We were able to go out with a member, Bro Ryan, to an area called Dungarven and meet with some of the members and less actives there for most of the day. Before we went, though, the Ryans fed us a HUGE, real deal Irish breakfast haha! And Irish breakfast has eggs, toast, baked beans, something called white pudding, which I still don't know what it is haha, bacon, and sausage. So we were so full all day. But it was good to go out and talk with a lot of the members. That evening we had the awesome experience to teach Cassius about the Plan of Salvation! Sadly his wife wasn't feeling well, but he really enjoyed the lesson and committed to be baptized on the 19th of August! So excited for him and are hoping to have the same response from Aline this week!

Friday- We had the opportunity to meet with Lisa, another on of our investigators, this morning and had a great lesson on the Plan of Salvation and the Book of Mormon. She too really loved it, and also accepted the invitation to be baptised on the 19th! It was amazing to see her take it in and really enjoy what we were talking about! For the rest of the day we street contacted, and were able to get a few appointments set up for this week.

Saturday- Saturday started off really good! We were able to each our two main recent converts, and I have grown so close to them. They both are so solid and truly love the gospel! That afternoon we decided to go and GQ an area called Kilkenny, which is about a 30 min drive from here. We get there, and see that it is literally all tourists. And the streets were so narrow it was impossible to try and stop people. So we tried our best to try and talk to people, but it really didn't turn out too well. We headed back to Waterford after a while, and when we got there we decided we'd stop by a Muslim exhibition we'd heard would be happening that day. We figured it only makes sense to listen to them if they are always willing to listen to us. We get in there, and it all started really good. We were able to go around and learn a little more, and even got our named written in Arabic! But then right before we were about to leave a young man started asking us a ton of questions about how Christ could be the Son of God. For those who don't know, that is the big difference between Muslims and Christians. They believe that Christ was only a prophet, and not the actually Son of God. So we tried explaining it to him, but as we talked more and more people came up and were asking us questions and basically trying to convert us to be Muslim haha. So after about 30 min of this luckily the convention closed down so we got out of there. But outside of that it was really good!

Sunday- This was an amazing day as we were able to get 4 people out to church! Dion came, and brought his mother and grandma. All of them said they really enjoyed the service, and the mom and grandma want to continue to come with Dion! We are excited to try and get them interested in hearing about the gospel as well. We also had Lisa come with her two energetic kids! She is honestly so amazing, ad really loved the service! The rest of the day was spent out finding, and it really was an amazing day all around!

One experience I want to share happened to me kinda throughout the week. So if you didn't know, I am not very comfortable with walking up to someone and trying to start a conversation with them. So the whole street contacting thing has been really hard for me these last few weeks haha. I have been really worries about that and praying to know how I can eventually know how to do this. The answer came in two ways. First, I was in personal study one morning and got lead to the definition of Grace in the Bible Dictionary. In that it says that grace is the power that allows us to do things we otherwise wouldn't be able to on our own. This hit me so hard as I knew that I wasn't gonna be able to learn to love talking with people on the streets on my own. I know that it had to be through the Grace of our Savior. The second part came as I was pondering during the sacrament on how I could do better this week. The lyrics to an EFY song popped into my head. "It's not about you" That helped me to understand that I shouldn't be worried about if something makes ME uncomfortable. It's about what the Lord wants. I'm on his time out here, and need to more fully understand that. I know that through forgetting yourself and using the Atonement of Christ, we can do ANYTHING the Lord asks. I love you all and can't wait for another amazing week out here! :)

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Elder Palmer