Life is rolling along here like the gentle green farmland of
County Mayo (did that sound Irish?...probably not, but I tried). We are settling
into a daily routine as we continue to serve the churches of Calvary Mission. We
are learning more and more about our new surroundings as we chat with local
folks, enjoy fellowship and work with our church, and visit our town’s museum and points
of interest. I have been taking lots of pictures as a hobby to visually record
the places we have seen and things we have done. As I was looking through
pictures from various days, I realized that I had taken a disproportionate
amount of pictures of sheep. I don’t have more pictures of sheep than I do of
Quinn, but its close. It is true that every time I see a field of sheep, or a sheep
next to a beautiful tree, or a sheep next to a stone wall, or a sheep with a
little lamb, or a sheep by a shimmering stream, my index finger starts to
twitch and I feel the urge to take another picture.
I love sheep. I can’t get
enough of them. Quinn understands this urge. He sees sheep and says “I wish I
could run out there to that sheep and hug him and he wouldn’t run away”. Oh, he gets it alright. The problem is that I
see sheep every day! They are literally everywhere we go in Mayo. How many
pictures of sheep does one person really need? …apparently, for me, hundreds.
Quinn is developing a bit of musical talent. He used to ask
us to turn off the music we might be playing and singing and dancing was definitely
out of the question. The creative and musical culture of Ireland is starting to
rub off on him. He is virtually a one man band all of a sudden. Maybe he has
been influenced by all the street performers. On Wednesdays at the bookshop, sometimes
Quinn will perform and Andy will talk to people and hand out free encouraging
literature. I am not sure if his talent is attracting people or driving them
away. You be the judge.
Yeah, maybe we will work on that a bit.
In May, Andy and I celebrated our 20th wedding
anniversary! We took a quick 2 day trip to County Clare and County Galway to
celebrate as a family. We saw Bunratty Castle the first day and the cliffs of
Moher and the island of Inisheer the next. Quinn collected sea shells, played
among the castle ruins. It was a
beautiful family outing that we will always remember. We also went to
Rossnowlagh with our church for a weekend retreat. We had worship services each
day, ate and recreated together. It was great craic (fun…pronounced crack).
We are still learning how our language is subtly different.
Different meanings for the same word catch us off guard sometimes. For instance,
the word craic (crack) I used previously. If someone were to say to an
American, “we are going to have good crack at the church retreat this weekend” we
might be thinking we needed to find a new church in which illegal drugs weren’t
part of the worship. Just sayin’.
Here's another one: the first few weeks we were here we
wondered why people would say they would call, then not call and just show up
at our doorstep. Of course we weren’t bothered at all by people dropping by, we
actually love it. We figured it was just a cultural quirk until we finally realized
that when they say they will call…it does mean drop by. If they were going to
reach you by phone they say they will ring us. Oooohhhhhhhh……now we get
it. Also, a store is where you buy
groceries and a shop is for everything else. If you say, “I went to the book
store”, we get a funny look….like we eat books for dinner.
Well, that’s all for now…I am sure there is a sheep somewhere
that needs a portrait taken. I also need to have crack and roast a book for
dinner!
