September 24, 2018

This last week was memorable. But meh.

Basically I was just traveling all over. Luckily I was with some other cool missionaries so we were able to get each other through it.

Tuesday night we went to Dublin for conference the next day. All Ireland was okay. Elder De Feo of the seventy was there. Basically the mission is baptising less people now and there area few reasons for it.

Thursday, I just walked around Dublin with some other missionaries and we just explored the city while trying to stay out of the cold and rain. Dublin's a cool place and we got some cool pictures. One of the guys recent converts took us out for lunch to a really nice Chinese place. There was an eggplant dish, orange chicken dish, pork soup dish, vegetable dish, and something else I cant remember. The person that took us out dropped like €100 on us. The place was pretty neat to sit in as well. No one there spoke English except for the group of us. The restaurant didn't even have cutlery for people to use, just chopsticks. It was awesome. Then later that night I had my first Nandos. Nandos is a chicken place here. A member took us out there as well for dinner. Again this member spent 100 euros on us. I'm constantly amazed with how people spoil missionaries.

Friday, we woke up at like 4 got dressed and all went to the airport. It was like 10 of us and we all flew to Edinburgh for MLC (Mission Leadership Conference). It was a nice flight, it was a ton of fun to fly again. But MLC was pretty much the same thing as All Ireland, except the audience was involved.

We came back Saturday morning on a plane and me with 3 others drove from Dublin to Cork which was a really long drive. All of us were also exhausted and had been running on just a couple of hours of sleep for the past few days. So we were all in and out of sleeping. Eventually we all got to Cork and from there I got a bus back up to Limerick.

Sunday night President and his wife came to Limerick for interviews. But I'm sick with a head cold now because I've been stressing about my district, I've been cold and wet since my waterproof stuff is all gone now, and worst of all I didn't sleep much last week. But yah know what a mission wouldn't be a mission if it wasn't hard.

Love you Dad.

Elder Erik Orchard