Monday - The work begins

Brett offered a phenomenal prayer this morning and then the world fell apart. Unbeknownst to us there was a bank holiday in Dublin today and so the records office and the national archives were closed. Woops.

Because of Brett's wonderful prayer we were still able to find several promising possibilities for Hugh's marriage date and parentage. We will do further work tomorrow to see if these leads will bear fruit.

We visited a monument dedicated to the famine victims of Ireland who emigrated to the West. The McKenna family participated in the sponsorship of the monument. It was touching to imagine the serious impact of the famine that started in 1845 and ended in 1850, but not before it claimed 1,000,000 lives and forced 1,000,000 people to emigrate. We also visited Trinity College and saw the Book of Kells. Also we saw the Dublin tower where Patrick O'Donnel escaped and took refuge with the McKenna Clan.

We ate dinner in the Hard Rock Cafe and Brett bought some T-shirts for his favorite people in the world. If you don't get one, so sorry, too bad.

Sunday in Ireland

We have arrived. Yeah!!!!

We landed safely in the emerald isle about 3 hours later than expected. But no matter, we had a great nights sleep on the plane and we are ready to go. We checked into our wonderful hotel and then went out to see the sights. Here are some of the pictures from our stroll around town in the afternoon.

We also took the opportunity to stop by the Abbey Presbyterian church for services. However, it was a Romanian Pentecostal congregation and the service was all in Romanian. It was an enlightening experience to worship with those of another faith in their mother tongue.

Dinner was Great!! As we had traditional irish food, including Irish stew, irish bacon and cabbage, guiness steak and potatoes, and venison sausage (in remembrance of the original Hugh McKenna who killed a mighty stag with his knife in 600 AD).

Tomorrow the work begins.

The day that would never end

Our plans included a 5 hour layover in Atlanta. But we had the pleasant opportunity (sarcasm) to spend more than 8 hours there on Saturday. Wow. It feels like we could have swum to Ireland. Look how tired Richard is in this picture. I think I notice a little bit of drool coming from his mouth. :)

We are on our way!

We started our adventure today in the Salt Lake City airport. We are so excited. Here we are waiting to get on our plane.

We were grateful to be able to land safely in Atlanta. Here we are checking out the garbage services.

In Search of Hugh

The second annual family history trip to Ireland is about to begin. Todd, Brett, Richard and Quinn will be leaving on June 4 to begin their search for Hugh McKenna and everyone else we can find. We will be using this blog to keep everyone updated with our progress on the trip.

We are counting on all of your support and prayers to help us on this trip. Thanks for everyone who has already contributed to help make this happen.