MY AREA

My area is amazing! One of the great things I love about Dublin is the fact there is always something to see, always somewhere new to go. My area is huge. We have to take trains and hour long buses to visit some of our members. The first set of pictures is our Preparation day with Gabrielle Wynne (Win).

We found a store called "Candy Lab" It has American sweets, soda and cereal in there. Gabrielle saw the Wonka bars and we just had to take a picture. No Golden ticket.

These are some of the buildings that we passed. Aren't they beautiful!?! Seriously, i'm so blessed to be around such beautiful and creative architecture.

Sister Nicoll and I make a Balbriggan day. Balbriggan is one of the towns we have to take a 30 minute train to visit some members. Once a week we try to have a Balbriggan day which really is our faith in finding day because most of the day we try by people.

This past saturday was our Balbriggan day and what a success we had. We visited a less-active who lives next to the sea shore, which is where the pictures have been taken. Sister Nicoll and I were blown away at the sight. The pictures does a terrible job of depicting the beauty of Ireland, but we tried our best.

Also we were able to contact a less-active and discovered that he wants to come to church and his non-member wife wants to be baptized. We honeslty walked in said hello and within the first couple minutes brought up baptism and she said she wants to support her husband. I believe her words went something like this "If my husband wants to go back to Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day-Saints than I want to be baptized." I couldn't believe it. We taught her the Restoration and she came to church the next day and loved it!

It was a great way to end our week.

I know you all wish you could be with me, but I'm sure you are having fun as well ;)

Behind the Scenes of Sister Missionaries

A once in a life time opportunity. To see what Sister Missionaries do when no one is looking. This is a rare occasion so I hope you all soak it up like a sponge!

Ireland is cold and Nylons are required if we are to stay warm. We walk everyone (one of the things I love) which causes the nylons to sag a wee bit. When no is looking it's only practical to pull them where they belong!

Missionaries do their own laundry. It's a curse and blessing. A blessing that we are able to do our own laundry to insure that nothing shrinks. It's a curse when you don't have enough of light cottons and are forced to warm nude color nylons with darks. The result color is a faded purple which looks like a dead body. Sister Nicoll and I were laughing at my mistake and couldn't help but take a picture for memories. One of the YSA we were teaching was appalled when she pointed it out to her! SO FUNNY!

Companions are great! Being with a person 24/7 allows you to get to know them on EVERY LEVEL! One thing I discovered about Sister Nicoll is that she LOVES to take pictures of herself. I'm glad she is photogenic or I would be deleting pictures most of the day! These are two of her favorite pictures to take!


I couldn't tell you everything. That would be breaking the unwritten Sister Missionary code, but at least you have some of your curiosity resolved. Hope you have a great week

~Sister Garlock

FINAL MOVES CALL

Can you believe the day is finally here. Sunday was my last moves call of my mission. Every missionary says it comes quicker than you want, but I feel different. I feel like it's my time to get the call. It blows my mind that my mission is ending and that I have to put all my effort in these last weeks. Which reminds me, this transfer is 8 weeks instead of 6 weeks.

Due to the age change the MTC is only two weeks instead of three which interfers with our transfers. To get on schedule we have two extra weeks this transfer. Now that i've dragged I bet you are all waiting to hear where I'm spending the end of my mission. I've been moved......Just kidding. I'm staying in Dublin with Sister Nicoll!!!!!!!!

I'm looking forward to serving in Dublin a wee bit longer. I'll keep you posted on the next 8 weeks.

Hope you had a great new year

Til the Work is Done

The best way to end 2012

I have a little story to tell you. The past six weeks we have been teaching a part-member family. Little did we know that 9 yr old Victoria was not baptized, but wanted to be. Our ward mission leader gave us a push two weeks ago to find out more about the situation. We did and two weeks later Victoria was baptized and confirmed a member of the church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day-Saints!!!!

Victoria was glowing when she came up from the water. The baptism was amazing, the talks were never better and the spirit was SO unbelievably strong. No doubt that EVERY SINGLE PERSON felt the spirit.

We wanted the font to be spotless for Victoria on her special day. It's always worth the sacrifice to do what it takes to make ONE baptism special.

NEW YEARS EVE:

It was our day off so we spent the day with one of our amazing recent converts, Gabrielle. We toured a bit of Dublin
We went by the American Candy land

Stopped by a famous statue: Molly ( i can't fully remember her name, oops). Needless to say it was great to have an entire day and tour Dublin a bit.

Hope your New Years was amazing

Happy Christmas

 Sister Nicoll and I decided to make cards this year. Hope your Christmas was as enjoyable as ours was.

This past week has been filled with CRAZY exciting things. Our Zone had a zone development last friday and the activity was Dodgeball! If you don't already know I LOVE dodgeball. I'm not the best, but I enjoy it. In fact I was apart of the Provo Dodgeball Association (PDA). One of the best Associations I've joined!

Anyway, I was super excited to find that we were playing dodgeball with the zone. There are three districts in our zone and each of us had uniforms. The names were as follows: The Ugly knots styled celtic jerseys and ties, The stripling oneies fashioned animal onies,

 and We were the Dublin Dustbins 

 we fashioned bin bags! It was awesome! Our team chant was "We're Rubbish" It was hilarious! Despite our chant and our name we did quite well.

By the end of the game we only had one twisted ankle (ok this happened before the game started, but dodgeball made it worse).

One broken finger 

 a couple of jammed fingers and zone unity.

A great way to start off the Christmas weekend. It's a good thing we have Christmas to recover. I woke up with the best feeling; sore ribs, sore back, sore deltoid, sore core. A good sign of a successful dodgeball game! It took my body two-three days to fully recover. Every time I laughed my ribs would hurt, but I still think it's always worth it!


Christmas is always a happy time of the year and I would like to give a big THANK YOU to all who sent presents. It was so fun to be able to open a gift for Christmas. 

 I love how I look like I have one leg in the picture and how Sister Nicoll wasn't ready for the picture! As you can see it was a great Christmas for us!

Hope all is well with each of you and I hope you have an amazing new year!

~Sister Garlock

Seaside and Exchanges

Our area is HUGE! We cover part of the city of Dublin as well as small towns on the outskirts of Dublin. Most of our time is traveling, but it's well worth it. These pictures are taken by the Sea shore in a place called Balbriggan

We were able to place two Books of Mormon in twenty minutes along with teaching lessons. WE had a successful day in Balbriggan!

Sorry my brain is everywhere and can't focus. I realized that I haven't taken hardly any pictures these past two weeks and Sister Nicoll has. As I was looking at her pictures I realized I haven't missed out on a lot. Time and life is flying by and I haven't been able to keep up with my weekly reports. I'm repenting now and promise I'll give you a more uplifting, better post after Christmas.

For now enjoy the pictures

This is how cool Finglas Ward is: The picture with the older woman has a story: This happened after Sacrament meeting. Sister More(named has been changed) was waiting to give us our Christmas cards. As we were talking and figuring out which one goes to which member we all were a bit confused and getting tired. Sister More throws her hands in the air and lays back as she is in the picture! I couldn't help but laugh!!! Sister More is a character and she knows how to make Sister Nicoll and me laugh! It was a priceless moment for us!

Hope you all have a Happy and Merry Christmas

Wonderful things in Finglas, Ireland

This is my companion Sister Nicoll. She is pretty much the best!

This is a church surrounded by a graveyard. Creepy? a little. I would have a hard time leaving mass in the evening feeling uplifted when I was surrounded by dead bodies. However, It's a beautiful church in a beautiful area

Babs and me. This is a great story. Babs is our Irish mother, she takes care of us each week by giving us food and making sure we are warm enough each day. We were over for dinner. Babs doesn't like anyone to do her dishes, but I thought I would take a chance and try. Babs caught me and told me she would take me down. I told her to bring it! she said i'll arm wrestle you. I thought "I did push ups this morning, I'm pretty confident I could put up a good fight" So I accepted.

We got into position and clarified the rules so there was no miscommunication. One, two three. Babs had a good start but I resisted instantly. My arm was almost down when she started wiggling my wrist (totally cheating). Once she stopped I managed to pull her arm back over to where we started. We didn't move from the starting position for what seemed like two minutes  I would tease her a bit and push hard and than relax. We both knew we had to draw and that's what we did. When we released our grip we heard an usual sound. The only way I can describe it is......umm.. It sounded like someone wearing shorts was standing up off of a leather chair! It was hilarious!!!!

Here is the result of our arm wrestle. Needless to say, I think she will think twice before asking me for another arm wrestle! haha

This is Dorrie. I have one thing to say about Dorrie. She will always keep you guessing.

Have a great week!

~Sister Garlock