Slan

I guess this is my last post while I'm here in Dublin. It's cloudy outside, and I suppose that's fitting. I'm a little bit sad, especially when I think about leaving all of my friends that I've made here. I went to listen to Paul Washer speak last night at the Revival Conference. It is definitely a blessed end to a trip that I will never forget. He spoke on the importance of knowing the Gospel and what it really means to be a Christian. I went into the talk a little bit skeptical because he was scheduled to talk for 2 hours and I have been to conferences before where the speaker lost my attention in the first 10 minutes. I found out shortly through Paul's message that this would not be the case. After he had been speaking for an hour and a half, I looked down at my watch expecting to have been there for around 30 minutes.

He emphasized how man alone is not good in any way. Genesis 6:5 says "Then the LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually."

Our thoughts of our hearts are evil continually. Without God we are absolutely evil beings. Anything good in this world comes from God and God alone. God would still be just if he let every person in the history of the world be condemned to hell because of their rebellion against him. It is amazing to know that I serve a God who is so incredibly loving that He has saved me from my own destruction even though he didn't have to. Nothing about me deserves to be with God, but because of Jesus Christ I am found clean in His eyes. It terrifies me to think about the judgment that I deserve, but it brings me inexpresible joy to know that Jesus is the atonement for my sins and I will spend eternity with the creator of the universe.

There are so many thoughts going through my head right now, but I can't get them all down because I am thinking so many of them so fast.

Anyway, the talk last night was really good and I'm glad that I got to go.

My time here in Ireland has been awesome, I'll miss everything about it. I don't want it to end right now, but I don't think the airlines will push my flight back until I say goodbye to Jill. It's hard to say goodbye, so I won't say it, or put a period on the end of my last sentence. Maybe that will mean I will get to comeback someday

You'll make it big eventually Ben Reel

Tim got here yesterdy and Todd and I were late picking him up from the airport. We got to the bus stop in time, but it took way too long to get there so Tim had to wait for a little while. We ate some pizza from four star pizza and then went to bed way too late because the laundry was taking a long time.

We picked up our rental car this morning and I felt like everything was a little bit unorganized from the beggining of the trip. We woke up earlier than we planned but then we realized that we hadn't really planned any details at all about the trip so everything was a little bit frustrating from the beggining. We didn't have a road map, we weren't sure where our hostels were, we didn't know where to park and we all found out later that Ireland has way too many roundabouts. We finally picked up the car and then picked up John at the spire in the middle of town. I was kind of nervous driving on the left side of the road and at the beggining I kep drifting to the left side of the lane because I'm used to sitting on the other side of the car. We had tiger bread and cheese for breakfast and then we ate tons of cookies and chips and stuff on the way to Galway. I feel like this is turning into a ramblefest so I'm going to highlight the rest of the trip.

Roundabouts are ridiculous and I am glad there aren't very many at home. The huge ones are alright but the medium sized ones stink bad. I drove around one roundabout and I ended up driving into someones driveway instead of the road to Galway.

We decided to try to find this national park called Connemara which is right next to Galway. We drove for a while trying to stay by the coast but I ended up taking us inland somehow. The fields and bogs or whatever they were outside looked awesome, so we found a random side road and got out and hiked through a giant bog where there were tons of rocks and bog and wet. I liked it a lot because it was like we were in Ireland a long time ago or something.

Some more things happened also but I feel like this is turning more into a journal where I ramble on about every detail of my day. Today was pretty eventfull though, so maybe that's ok sometimes.

Galway is nice. I'll post some pictures of it later. My shoes got real wet but I dried them in the bathroom dryer. Some guy did some serious business in one of the toilets at the hostel and smelled up the entire hall which is about a quarter mile long. I'll end it there.

Work-ed

It's a little strange to me that it has only been 5 days since my last update because of the massive amount of things that have been happening here. It feels like my trip to Ireland started about a month ago because that is about the time that awesome things started to happen. When I say awesome things, I'm talking about this group of friends that I have found here. I know that I talked about them a couple of posts ago, but they are defining my trip here in Ireland and I love it.

I also know that I said finding these people was an answer to prayer a few posts ago, but I'm going to say it again because of how much I enjoy being with them. It had been a little frustrating and depressing in the past because I didn't find many friends that I call best friends while I was in college. I still refer to a group of my high school friends as my best friends because even though I had a lot of friends in college, I didn't get really close with many of them. I am daily becoming closer with my friends here and it hurts me to know that I will be leaving them in two weeks. After every time I hang out with them I feel refreshed and built up because they are some of the strongest Christians that I have ever met. Constantly conversations randomly end up about a passage in The Bible or something else Godly. This is what real friends are and I will miss them.

I'll leave it at that for now. I feel like writing more but it will have to wait until the morning. The mo-town 6 live on.

I found a euro on the ground yesterday so it was a pretty good day.

The sun

I think it rained the hardest I have seen in Ireland last night. It reminded me a little bit of the rain we have in Texas but without gigantic thunder and 1000mph winds. So it was raining hard with a lot of drops but none of the stuff that makes the lights go out. I got up this morning (11am) and it was still coming down pretty hard. It prompted me to write in the blog while listening to Trace Bundy about something dreary and wet, but as I started writing the title the sun crept out from behind the clouds and blasted me in my face. So instead of calling this post "The rain", I changed it to the current title while squinting because instead of a dark room, I now sit in a bright good morning room.

I am quickly finding that Trace Bundy is good music to listen to while writing a blog.

I saw the movie Julie and Julia the other day with my friends. I went into it pretty skeptical because everyone seemed to think it would be a giant girly movie. It turned out to be pretty good and I laughed a lot. It made me want to blog a little bit more and at the same time learn to be a dominant chef because that's what happens in the movie.

I only have about one more week on my work visa here and that stinks. I am starting to like it here finally and now I have to leave.

We are going camping at some place next week and it is going to be really awesome. Half the people that are coming with us haven't ever gone camping so that will make it even better. I don't have any equipment or anything warm so that stinks bad. Anyway, the apple log is done in the oven and it's time to eat. Maybe Randoo.

It's hard to write about things sometimes on here. Partly because I don't know if I have written about certain things already in the blog, partly because it has been so long in between posts that the massive amount of things that have happened since then all melds into one big thought that I can't figure out and partly because its hard to find the right music to listen to while I'm writing. Apparently if I just start typing about something then I will start thinking about other things and then I will have something to write about because that is what happened just now.

Within the past few weeks I have finally found a group of people that I really enjoy hanging out with. It is really good because I think that was the last thing I needed before I felt like I was actually living here. It's just kind of crappy that I didn't find these people a little sooner than a month and a half before I am going back home. These people are really an answer to prayer because I have been in need for some Christian friends ever since I got here. The only thing that stinks is that I will have to leave in a little while and they will all stay here.

One thing that is strange about living in the same room as someone else is the variety of smells that are all around us. Each smell only lasts for a short amount of time, probably not even a day, so almost every time I walk into our room I am caught off guard. Most recently our bathroom smelled like pickles while our room smelled like bologna until Todd brought in his Subway sandwich which made it smell overwhelmingly like an onion. The other day something smelled like a huge turd in there, so we had to do an emergency clean-up which was successful.

I don't think I'm in a writing mood right now so I'll try to do more later after I get home from work. I do what I do what I do what I do.

A few more pictures

Cheers.