Helps Celtic Mission

Scone is pronounced "Skoon" when referring to last Saturday's activities, as opposed to "Skonn," a round, baked bit of pastry served with butter or cheese or jam and cream, and otherwise known as a "baking powder biscuit" in the US or a "Skoan" by people who don't know any better, but who think it is the people who call it a "skonn" who need a little more social polish; and also as opposed to a real "Skoan," a bit of fried dough otherwise known as a vetkoek in South Africa or the bread part of a Navajo taco in the western United States. I have done my best with that introductory sentence and sincerely believe that you must agree that the semi-colon in the middle confers a degree of legitimacy on the rest of it, even if you do not agree with all the opinions  expressed.  Certainly some opinions, upsetting or otherwise, were expressed at Scone on Saturday.  Firstly, whoever decorated the palace (Scone is a palace - di...

Book of Kells (Cute title, what does it mean? Wait, you'll see) We went to Dublin, but almost didn't. (There, that's half the title. The other half will be trickier) We decided that we needed to go to the all-Ireland Zone Conference to do a bunch of office-related things, but a major part of our objective was just to see how things were there. Every time we travel to a mission area and interact with the missionaries, we learn a lot about how things work in that area and it always helps us in our work back in the office. And of course, it's an adventure. We decided to leave Edinburgh at crack of yawn on Saturday and catch the mid-day ferry and so we booked it that way. We got some of the last bookings available on the ferry as it was a holiday weekend. The day before departure I was making appointments with missionaries as to when we would arrive to start doing flat inspections. I checked the ferry schedule to calculate when we'd be at the first flat and n...