Weekend Break

On Saturday, we took a break from the house hunting and drove out to the ruins of an ancient Irish monastery called Clonmacnoise. You can view some pictures of our time here.

Sunday morning, we joined the Covell family (whom we're staying with) at their small church start-up called Ballycullen Community Church. In every church we've visited so far, we've been really blessed by the conversation with Irish Christ-followers who are keen to answer questions about their country and eager to help us get settled into life in Dublin. One book in particular that has come up several times in those conversations (Sunday included) has been The Pope's Children.

Sunday evening, we visited Core, a Church of Ireland congregation in the heart of Dublin. Historically a Protestant church with Anglo-Irish roots, the service we attended on Sunday evening was very creative, sincere, and worshipful. It's another resource that we hope to go back to at some point to get a feel for what God is doing in the country. It'll also be good to discover a Catholic congregation that is alive, vibrant, and active in the community. The perspective will likely be different and will give us a more holistic picture of the spiritual environment in contemporary Irish society.

Today we looked at another house that we really liked. And we may just be able to do work around the furniture issues, since it comes fully furnished. If it still doesn't work out, we've got several other places that we'll take a look at throughout the rest of the week.