Staffa Island

<>Today, Thursday, we had breakfast and then finished telling our stories from last night! After that we had about 30 minutes before we had to meet up at the Abbey for our tour! The Abbey was beautiful! It was overcast but soon became sunny and a little warmer! In the Abbey you could see where people added onto the church back in the early 15^th and 16^th centuries! There were crosses carved in random floor tiles! We saw crosses that were from the five and six hundreds! There used to be over 300 standing crosses all over Iona! Well, once our tour was over we had Holy Communion in the Michael Chapel! This was the first time Fr. Jim had celebrated Eucharist since he left on his sabbatical in April. It was pretty Cool and fun because it was so small! When we passed the peace, everyone passed it with everyone else.

Tour in the Abbey

Outside the Abbey with our Guide

Communion with Father Jim in the Chapel on IONA

Around 1:30 we had a boat trip to Staffa Island! It was very chilly once we got out to sea, but the color of the water was like none I had ever seen! It was sapphire blue and the waves were enormous because it was windy! We arrived at Staffa Island and waited for the waves to give us a chance to dock and go look at MaClellan’s Cave! The rocks were so beautiful and very curvy and round! Only pictures can describe what we saw! The tide was coming in which made everything hard to get too! We got safely back into the boat and went to look for puffins which were much smaller than we expected. They look so big in the pictures. We did see a seal sunning on the rocks. We got back and changed into dry clothes.

Boat triptoStaffa

Climbing along the walkway to the Cave on Staffa – waves beating against the rock

Heading back to IONA

After dinner we went to the Agape service (communion) at the Abbey. We sang some songs, head the story of the Last Supper, said prayers and had communion. It was real bread and wine which was passed from the altar all the way through the congregation from person to person. We walked back to our hotel and got ready for an early morning departure.

After the Agape service Thursday night