Ireland Day 9: Sunday, Foggy Sunday

The bed and breakfast we stayed at while in southwestern Ireland was in a little itty bitty village called Camp. I'm posting a map to orient you. You can see Dublin in the east, where we flew from on Saturday night, and then the little Kerry airport (where we flew into) in the south west is marked by a airplane symbol. Then the little yellow house is Tralee, where we went to church, and the flag is our B&B in Camp.

The B&B was up on a hill that looked out over the ocean--it was a gorgeous view, and although a little bit hard to find, the building was brand new and very nice. And our host John was super duper friendly and helpful (and he cooked a delicious breakfast, praising Kevin for going "full Irish"--including the baked beans). Unfortunately, we awoke Sunday morning to lots and LOTS of fog, so we couldn't enjoy the view very much as we sat at the window for breakfast.

We drove about 20 minutes to Tralee to go to church in the only branch that was anywhere near there (in fact, I chose our overnight stay location partly based on the fact that there actually *was* a branch nearby we could go to.) I had an exact address with directions because I had done some sleuthing around on the internet. (The church's website gave an incorrect address for the location of the Tralee Branch, with no meeting time listed or phone number. But, I managed to round up a Tralee Branch member's email address, and he replied to my request for more information.) It turns out that the meeting time was at 11am, just like almost all the congregations in Ireland. We were glad that the Irish are smart enough to start their church services at a reasonable time, as opposed to all those Hawaiian wards that all seemed to start at 8am! ;) (I guess it's because in the winter in Ireland it doesn't get light until quite late in the morning?)

Anyways, we set out fairly confidently for church, leaving ourselves lots and lots of extra time for parking and finding the building. However, we soon found that even our specific address with directions were not much help when none of the streets were labeled, not to mention the addresses. And, we're talking major spaghetti tangle type streets here. We parked the car and walked back and forth down the street we were pretty sure was the right one. Nothing. Finally, we went back to look (again) at the town map that they had posted on a big sign in the center of town.

By now church was already supposed to have started. I was getting grumpy and a little desperate---I *really* wanted to go to church this Sunday! But it looked like we'd just have to give up. I offered a silent prayer that we'd somehow be able to find the church building.

Just then, a young man started walking behind us, dressed up in a suit and tie. He said, "you must be Mormons." And then he led us to church! (I think that the fact that I was holding a Book of Mormon may have clued him in.) The building was actually one we'd passed at least twice already. It was just a couple of rooms upstairs from this storefront. The door was open, and there was a little paper that said "Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints" on it, but since the door was open, the sign was perpendicular to the sidewalk. (Does that make sense? Bottom line: we couldn't see the sign.) We felt so blessed that God sent us *another* guide to find our way to the church building, just at the right time, just like He had in Bray. I bet that young man didn't realize he was answering a prayer by being late to church that day!

The branch was VERY small--even smaller than the Bray branch. But the members had very strong faith. Many of them were converts. One of the Sacrament Meeting speakers was the fellow I had emailed for directions. He was actually a theology Ph.D. student, and had a lot of interesting things to say. We loved getting to know the people there and feel their testimonies a little bit.

After church we came back to the B&B to have a nap in the hopes that maybe possibly the fog would let up a little in the mean time. No such luck. We decided to strike out and take our "scenic" drive anyhow. We had planned to drive around the Dingle Peninsula (see the little jutty out part near our B&B on the map?), which is famous for being a very pretty drive. Unfortunately, mostly what we saw was just fog. There were some places were it let up a little and you could see some nice coastlines. And, we were able to see Inch Beach, which is the longest beach in Ireland. The beach is also very, very wide with lots of sand. But, the water was COOOOOOLD! Especially since we'd just been in Mexico's super warm waters a few weeks earlier. It was Sunday anyway, so we wouldn't have gone swimming, but we definitely had no desire to! It was interesting how dark the water was too--almost black. Very different from the crystal clear Caribbean.

We bought dinner at a little convenience store at a gas station (excuse me, I mean petrol station), where we bought sandwiches, juice, and two or three large packages of cookies (aka biscuits). My favorite were the chocolate covered "digestives" which despite the weird name were really yummy.

We took a little windy road to get there and back from our B&B. It wound up mountains and back down, only one lane wide the whole time. It was rather treacherous because of the fog. Luckily, we could at least see far enough ahead of us to know when we needed to find one of the sparsely strewn pull-out areas (where the road would widen slightly so that two cars could actually pass each other) because of an oncoming car.

It was a good Sunday, even though the fog was disappointing. It was good that we could take it easy, because we needed our rest for the next (very busy) day!