Day 16-18: A Potential Change in Plan

Sunday  

We had an opportunity to visit the Figlas congregation, this was the kingdom hall the Aiden's sister Yvonne went to. All the elders were gone for the elder's school so the ministerial servants handled everything and they did an awesome job. There were a lot of children that gave great comments in this congregation!

So far we've been in three congregations where the elders were going to school and they all handled it differently.

1- Had the meeting on a different day during the evening
2- Cancelled the meeting and said to study at the Watchtower at home
3- Had the ministerial servants take care of the Public talk and Watchtower study

It was interesting to see the differences. The Finglas congregation was newly renovated and beautiful I think all the congregations have a kitchen built in them but no water fountain.

Emily and her baby

After the meeting we spent the rest of the day at Yvonne's house and watched movies E.T and Pay it Forward. I met a sister Maria that recently visited Florida and we had a lively discussion on the different views of race between the US and Ireland. She also mentioned that almost every American she spoke with always says that they are Irish and when she asks them where were they born they respond that it is their grandfather/mother or distant relative and she responds "Well the means you are American".

Jasmine and her mother

Jude and his mom

Preben and Drahoshk

I think often Americans hold on to their past heritage instead of acknowledging that their nationality is not the past but where they were actually born and that is America. I think that from this point forward if someone asks me my nationality I am just going to say I am American, not black, african-american, just American.

Monday

The day was spent out in service. I'm not sure if I mentioned this before but we were freezing cold Saturday because we ran out of gas in the heater. I was not a happy camper. So while that was fixed by Monday I was still cold and woke up in a bad mood.

However I worked out in service with Gary Doyle and we met a man at the door that had a problem with Adam and Eve he could not agree that all humans came from the same parents there had to be more people in the gene pool. Also felt that Judas did not have freewill because he was predetermined to turn on Jesus.

We explained that it was prophesied that Jesus would be betrayed in that God looked into the future to see what would happen and had his prophet write about it but Judas had a choice and manifested a pattern of behavior that led to Jesus' betrayal.

We spent good amount of time speaking with him and Gary explained that the account about Adam and Eve is beneficial to explain how we arrived where we are now.

The man had to go but he agreed to speak again which was nice and put me in a better mode. I didn't want to go home after that but I needed to get back to prepare for my interview. I figured it was best to stay out as long as I could though and we did calls for the rest of the day finishing about 4:00pm which was nice.

The interview went well but I won't know if I have the job until Thursday. I need to speak fluent spanish (which I don't) but I can understand it. I will have to learn it in a year and may potentially have to return to the US early. If so I may not be able to come back to Ireland for a year but this may work in our favor to come back we will see.

Tuesday

Was spent relaxing and walking around the area we lived which is what some would call "posh". We got ready for the meeting and a few friends asked how the interview went. All in all not too much happened today. We look forward to a long day out in service tomorrow!