Ireland Vacation Continued (Day 5)

Saturday, July 24, 2010 (24th of July to remember when the Mormons first came into the Salt Lake Valley)

I’m having a hard time keeping up on things. I was either too tired or we are out to late.

This morning we did this tour of Dublin riding buses that do what they call hop on hop off bus tours. The bus goes to several places of interest throughout the city and you can get on and off at any of these places. It was interesting and we thought about stopping at a few of the stops, but it was raining so we stayed on the bus. The driver would give commentary as he drove. When we got to the end, we decided to take it again and get off at a couple of places. The first was St. Stephens Green a park down town. We walked Grafton Street. It is a popular spot for everyone to go. There are a lot of entertainers that are working the people for money. One man did a puppet with the strings. He was really good and was making a bunch of money. If I could get pictures to my block page, I would have one so you could see his little puppet.

We then toured Christ Church which is down town. It was built in the one thousand BC era. It was interesting. I cost six euros a piece to go in. The man at the door told us if we would attend church on Sunday we could tour the church for free. It had a crypt under it. There was some very old stuff down in the crypt. It was interesting.

We had a dinner at the Finglas building which the ward members provided and then had a testimony meeting in the chapel. That was very spiritual. There is a man by the name of Tom Murphy who was baptized a month or so before I arrived in Ireland. He is now the district president for the Southern part of Ireland. He was a professional golfer, maybe the best from Ireland, or one of the best. It was a big sacrifice for him to be baptized. He told us that he was thinking back to when he was baptized and there were five people including himself that were baptized around the same time. They were all under thirty. Since that time from and from those five people, he counted over 150 people that have received the gospel and over 50 that have served missions. Who knows how many people those who have served missions affected? Think of it, from just five people who had the courage to accept the gospel; now hundreds, if not thousands now have the blessing of the gospel. I know many missionaries went home from Ireland feeling like their efforts were of no value.

I remember one missionary; he was the most obedient missionary I knew and the hardest working. He knew the scriptures forward and backward. He was humble and served faithfully for 23 months, but never had a baptism. In his last month he quit working and decided that all that obedience and hard work went for nothing. He did not come to the reunion. I have always wondered what happened to him. I really looked up to him and felt bad that he gave up one month early.

There were many moving testimonies and even though I did not get up, I think that meeting may be the highlight of our trip. I really got to see that the work we did was not in vain. There are now two stakes and a district in Ireland. Many of the young people we baptized are now parents and have children that have served missions. It was a really emotionally moving meeting.