Ireland - Week 1a

I realize it's been a week since I've blogged.

Sorry.

Here's the first installment of a recap of what we've been up to since last Thursday.

We arrived in Dublin Thursday night, got our luggage in good order, picked up our rental car and made our way to Phil and Cheryl Kingsley's house. Phil is GEM's field director for Ireland and their house is in Shankill in the south of County Dublin. To get there from the airport in the north of the county, we drove through the city since it was late and the traffic was light.

While we were in Budapest, I realized that I had left one vial of insulin in the minibar of our hotel room in Sopron. It was hopeless trying to retrieve it and we decided to wait until we got to Dublin to deal with it. I had enough insulin to last me a while, so it was not an emergency situation.

Friday morning we hung out and caught up with Phil and Cheryl. In the afternoon, we made our way to Dundrum, on the south side of Dublin, where there is a shopping center (mall) that opened just about a year-and-a-half ago. We went to a pharmacy there and told them our situation. We were told that I need to have a prescription from an Irish doctor, but that they carried the type of insulin I needed and could get it in the form that I required by the next morning. There was a doc-in-a-box on the next level just above the pharmacy, so we made our way up there. It was 3:30 and the clinic was going to reopen at 5, so I made an appointment for 5:15.

After we ate I saw the doctor. He asked me into his office, I told him my story and he wrote me a prescription. I saw the pharmacist and gave her my prescription, getting the assurance that they would have it for me in the morning. Once we left Dundrum, we drove around the south end of the county looking at housing areas in which we might possibly be interested in living once we move to Dublin.

Saturday morning we went once again to Dundrum Town Centre and was told by the pharmacist that their regular supplier didn't have what I needed, but that they would check with their other supplier Monday morning and have the insulin there no later than Tuesday morning.

Our plan was to leave Tuesday morning to go to the West of Ireland, so we explained that we really needed to be sure that it would be there as they were promising.

Saturday afternoon Beth and I met with John Yoder and Andy Sloane at the Kingsley's. John is an expatriate American who leads worship and Andy is a member of the youth group, but plays on the regular worship team at City Gates, a church in Cabinteely near Shankill where we have ministered in worship several times previously. We spent some time just chatting about worship and their experiences, joys, frustrations, etc. Then we shared songs with one another and each of us came away with some new songs and new perspectives.

John happened to mention that a friend of his and fellow worship leader at Core Church in the City Centre was moving to Australia and getting rid of most of his equipment, including a good keyboard. Ray McCarthy is his name. We had been considering purchasing some portable sound equipment and a keyboard that we could leave in Ireland for our travels there and then for our eventual move, so that we didn't have to haul such items back and forth from the States. So after calling Ray, we went to his house and checked out the keyboard. We're not yet sure if we will buy it, but we did hit it off with Ray and his wife, Helen and ended up sitting around their kitchen table sharing stories for some time.

Sunday, we attended two churches and had two very different experiences. More on this to come.

And the insulin saga continues...