The Life and Times of a Confessed Sheep Addict

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 20^th 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!