Monday, March 21, 2011

Spring Time

Dear Family,
How is everyone? I am doing great. We had some good things happen to us this past week. First though I'll begin with what happened with transfers. On Tuesday we drove to Dublin and stayed the night with the Zone Leaders. The next day those that were going to Scotland left early in the morning to catch a train to Belfast. Thankfully I was able to sleep in to 6:30. Then it was really a normal preparation day where I went shopping with some elders in Lucan, east some subway and really just hung around Dublin. That evening with had dinner with a missionary couple, who are over the seminary and institute programs for all of Ireland. It was nice and then we did some tracting and that was our night. The next day, St. Patrick's Day, I finally met my companion, Elder Manwaring. He is from Laguna Niguel, California which is near Laguna Beach. He is great. He's been out for 6 months now. Previous to coming here he was in Bridge of Don in Aberdeen and before that in Kilmarnok, and before that in Sterling. This is his first time in Ireland and he really likes it. He says that the people here are nicer which is true than in Scotland. Anyways so I picked him up and we drove to Galway. Unfortunately and this doesn't come much of a surprise, we got lost even though you really only have to take one motorway that goes from Dublin straight to Galway. You see what happened was that the motorway split with one going to Galway and the other going to a place called Sligo and we were headed to Sligo. Eventually we realized that this wasn't the way to go so we turned around and found a nice scenic country road leading back to the motorway. For those of you who don't know, the motorway is like the interstates in America. Nonetheless it was a nice drive to see the countryside of Ireland. Then we just had a normal day of missionary work. We ate dinner with the Jensen's, a member family. It wasn't anything special for St. Patrick's Day. We had some pork, potatoes, green beans and other veg and some yorkshire puddings with gravy on it all. Simply, for St. Patrick's Day in Ireland. It's a national holiday that most people get off. In many cities and towns they have a parade. Then it's just a relaxing day. Then most people drink at night. Some people wear green, but nobody pinches you if you don't (I didn't wear green). Many people said that the parade wasn't all that great, but they say that the one in Dublin is always the best and that it is similar to parades that we have in the United States.
So things that happened this week. We will start with the best things. Peter came to church on Sunday. He was having some trouble sleeping too much because of a medication that he is taking. So we asked if we could knock on his window in the morning and he agreed. So we did and he got up and went to church. He's doing quite well and he is scheduled to be baptized on the 9th of April. We are really excited for this. The next thing is that Elder Manwaring and I were tracting last Friday and got into a young couple's home named Paul and Stephanie. They have two young kids. They let us in and just asked us question after question and we answered them and they seemed quite interested. We gave them a Book of Mormon and a Family proclamation. So we are excited to teach them again. Lastly, we received this referral from the office about this lady that was moving here from Spain about a month ago. We were told that she lives in a place called Loughrea on Barrack Street in a house on a lake. We thought this was quite vague and thought the locals would know where this is. So we went there when we first got it and couldn't find where she lived. Her phone number didn't work either and none of the local knew of this place. So we went home and later decided that we would tract the street to find where she lived. Finally we went yesterday and tracted it and weren't getting much success in that. We looked around and couldn't see anywhere that could be it. We were about to leave and on the end of the road there was this building that when I was first there looked like an office building or something, but when we went by we saw a car and soccer and goal and we both said to each other that that was a house and could potentially be it. I forgot to mention that this lady is a housemaid so we were looking for a large enough house that could potentially look like one that needed one. So we went up to the gate of the house and pushed the call button. This lady answered and we asked for the person we were looking for. She said that she wasnt' there nor did she live there, but that she was the maid. So we told who we were and left our phone number and now were are waiting for us to call her. We are so thankful that we were led there and now know where she works.
As far as answering your questions, what do you want for graduation Michelle, a pint of Guinness? a pot of gold (these are hard to come by)? a tin whistle? a handwritten note that says, "Congratulations!"? Tell me soon, or I won't get you anything. As far as mail goes. I still haven't received my package. On that note I would just like to remind everyone to send packages to this address:

Elder or Sister xxxxx
Scotland/Ireland Mission
c/o The Golf Department
Unit 1 Castletroy Shopping Centre
Castletroy, Limerick
Ireland

I hope everyone is doing well and I look forward to hearing from you next week.

Love,
Elder Buxton

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