Ireland in Retrospect: Dublin (and nearby suburbs) Day Four

Dublin Day Four: September 17th

We had plans for this morning. Unfortunately, thanks to a wrong turn off the bus, we had to alter said plans.

But first, let's rewind to a couple months ago when I was researching Christian churches in Dublin. I came across one called Liberty Church, and started listening to sermons online. I especially enjoyed listening to the sermons by Rob Duff, who was the pastor at one of the suburb locations. I did a little social media research and found Pastor Rob on Instagram. I then found his wife's Instagram page, and lo and behold, we had a mutual friend - Zack! I found that to be very interesting, so I contacted Sheena, Zack's wife, to find out.

Rewind to several years ago when a group of young people, including Zack and Sheena, and a few other friends, traveled to Ireland for a missions trip. As it turns out, Liberty Church was the very church that they partnered with! And they have continued relationships over the years with the pastors and their family members. What a small world! Sheena helped me get in contact with Patrice, Rob's wife, and we started making plans of how we could spend some time together.

We had plans to do dinner last night with Rob and Patrice, but they had to cancel, so we decided that breakfast before church would be a great idea. Getting to Liberty Church Bray, which is south of Dublin, would take a 17 minute bus ride, followed by a 40 minute train ride, and a brief walk. But alas, we went right instead of going straight after getting off the bus, and missed the train by approximately one minute! That meant that we wouldn't get to bray until well after 10:00, and they had to be at church by 10:30. What a bummer!

Waiting for the next train.

We ended up getting to church a little before 10:30, and got to meet Rob and Patrice, and their daughter, Penny. They recommended that, since church didn't start until 11:30, we should get some breakfast at Molloy's just down the street. So that's what we did.

Yummy indeed!

We strolled back to the church for service. As it turned out, there was a guest preacher. I confess that I was a tiny bit disappointed, but it was still a good sermon. Justin really liked it! After service, they served tea and biscuits (cookies), and we got a chance to talk with some people. It's too bad we didn't get to spend more time with them!

As I mentioned in a previous post, the All-Ireland Gaelic Football final was today. We decided to watch the game at a pub in Dalkey, which is a village north of Bray, but still south of Dublin. What a fun and exciting game that was! Plus the atmosphere was awesome. I was a little concerned when it looked like an old person pub at first. But as it got closer to the game, more and more people of all ages came in. Just about everyone was rooting for Mayo to win, since they were the underdogs. I don't know much about Gaelic football, but it's kind of a cross between soccer and rugby. It's very fast-paced, and pretty high scoring. The whole game only took a little over an hour, and there was just one brief break in the middle. No commercial breaks was awesome!
Check out some highlights of the game if you're interested.

We caught the DART back to Dublin. By this time, Justin had developed a pretty bad headache, so we just wanted to get back to our apartment. The bus ride took a little longer, because there was a bit of a traffic jam due to an accident. Instead of going out to eat I walked to the nearby Tesco for some snacks to eat. We won't talk about the quality of the snacks. They were tasty though.