Friday’s excursion to Dublin for the ACE liturgy was a success and after a beautiful Mass together we thoroughly enjoyed what the Irish like to call “the craic” at dinner with many friends of the ACE and Notre Dame communities.

After three days of absolutely gorgeous weather, the famous Irish mist/rain finally set it on Saturday. We were still able to enjoy the weekend catching up on errands and taking care of other business around the house before attending the 7 pm Vigil Mass on Saturday night. In a few weeks we will actually be leading the choir at this Vigil Mass but will have to wait until many of the parishioners return from their summer holidays and we get the chance to rehearse with our group. It was great to attend mass and just be able to observe and participate with the congregation who is already quickly becoming our new family. Fr. Martin presided over Mass and introduced us to the congregation who gave us a wonderfully warm welcome. And thanks to the brilliance of the internet, we were in fact able to have our own little House of Brigid game watch and saw the Notre Dame Irish beat Purdue in the season’s opening game on Saturday night! Sunday was another great sports day for us as we went into town to watch the broadcast of the All-Ireland match in Hurling (apparently the Irish equivalent of the Super Bowl.) None of us had ever seen the Gaelic sport in action but it was an incredible match and we all went home quite excited about our newly discovered sport that means so much to the country of Ireland.

Today we attended the morning rosary and Mass at our parish for the first time. This is a daily tradition started by last year’s community and something we will carry-on this year in Teach Bhríde II. We also had a delightful lunch out with our three parish priests who are so great to us and really doing everything they can to make us feel at home.

Tonight we are providing the music for our parish’s second ever ‘Stepping Out into Secondary School’ prayer service. This will be our first interaction with the youth of our parish and I’m definitely excited about it! We have a busy week ahead as tomorrow we leave on retreat to Ballyvaloo with the parish priests where we will have the opportunity to discuss the goals of our mission for the upcoming year. This weekend also brings some excitement as we will be going on pilgrimage to Knock in County Mayo with many of our fellow parishioners.

All in all, the transition is going well and Wexford is really starting to feel like home!