Christmas Day at President Millar's home

On Christmas Day, we had dinner at the Mission President's home. Invited were all the office and visitor's center seniors (12 of us). Again we did Christmas Crackers to honor the English tradition. Dinner was turkey, ham, yams, Snickers salad (my favorite), potatoes, beans, and a variety of relish choices. Sister Millar made a fabulous English trifle (she is English).

  These are the English Crackers on each plate

  The seniors all went together to give Sister

Millar a Lladro nativity.

Trip to London

On Dec 20th, we celebrated Mark's birthday by going to London for the afternoon. We went up in the London Eye (the super Ferris Wheel), walked around a few landmarks, and had lunch in a crowded Italian dive. London is about 45 minutes by train from our office. It was our first Saturday to be able to get away from the office. Life has been busy, busy, busy.

This is the London Eye











The famous Big Ben
        some strange lady on the sidewalk

  At the top of the Eye

       Some strange man in front of Westminster and an impish looking Sister changing clothes in a phone booth

Missionary Christmas in the London South Mission

Over the holidays we hosted four Christmas dinners, each for 1/4th of the mission. There are just too many missionaries to have them all at the Temple at once. Missionaries would arrive and attend the temple. 1/4th of the mission is exactly one full session of 72. After the temple, they gathered at the accommodations dinner room for a Christmas dinner cooked and prepared by Sister Cannon and helpers. After the dinner, a short program was held where we sang carols and had an impromptu bell choir using our pipe chimes -- lead by Elder Cannon.

The crowd gathering at the visitor's centre for the Christmas Kickoff event.  We had some Christmas messages given and we sang Christmas hymns.

It's already December!

Well it has been too long since we have posted anything on our blog! We stayed so busy in November with our moves week and getting the new rosters out in between our various practices and performances with our "mo-trav" group! It was fun to travel to Brighton and Reading for other performances and a couple other performances back here at the visitors centre.There were several non-members that attended these firesides, but it did take most of our extra time. We could barely keep up with our regular work!
England doesn't celebrate Thanksgiving so we had a regular work week. Our office is staffed with people from the U.S. So after work on Thanksgiving day, we got together and had a nice little turkey dinner. It was nice to still think about how blessed we are. We had some kind of big problems with some of the mission credit cards and other financial struggles but "Salt Lake" was closed for 4 days and everything had to wait until Monday afternoon until it opened again! We thought a 4 day weekend would be nice! No luck!
Last Saturday we picked up one of our new office sisters from the airport. We spent most of our Pday helping her get settled, grocery shopping, showing her around, etc. she is Sister Lana Stewart from Midvale, Utah. She will take Sister Cates place. Sister Cates has been a good sport! She was supposed to go home from her mission the 9th of November, but graciously volunteered to stay an extra month to train a new sister. We were so grateful! None of us know how to do her jobs. There is another sister coming on the 13th to also work with us, but I guess Sister Stewart will have to train her!
Last Sunday, November 30, we helped with a Christmas kickoff fireside at the Visitors centre. It was held outside. The night was cool, but not raining or icy. They had asked me to play on a very nice keyboard which was set up with amazing speakers. I accompanied a couple who sang a duet in between some speakers. Then I accompanied people as everyone just sang Christmas hymns. The VC sisters passed around little battery operated candles to everyone. They held up their lighted candles as they sang. There was such a beautiful spirit and the lights shining in the dark added to the special mood.
We will try again to post pictures on Sunday. We have to go to the office to do that and haven't had the time we needed on weekends so I just decided to post a little tonight on my iPad. Hopefully we will get pictures and more posted! We are keeping super busy and definitely feel needed. The next few weeks will be extra crazy as we do our mission Chrsitmas temple and dinner events. We are grateful for your love and support. We need those prayers!

Break downs, Breaks, and bravery

Last week I told you about our van breaking down close to London. We were still able to do that show as well as our fireside in Brighton. Our van is still in the shop so we had to rent another van to help with our upcoming moves. We already had our other mission car in the shop for repairs and had a loaner car we are using. The other office couple own a car that was in for repairs after it broke down. During the past week the visitors centre printer broke down, so they were using one of ours, We have one big, "dinosaur" computer that has been amazing. It prints very quickly, collates, makes booklets, copies passports with the two copies we need, etc. well, you guessed it. This week it broke down and died! People were getting a bit crazy and some even broke down. But we picked ourselves up and worked things out. We have our "frog" car back. Most people name their cars according to their license plate and this one says FWG. That's the one the elders usually drive. We had our newest mission car delivered which is a Toyota! They are all the same gray/silver color. On Friday, we had a little break. The Sr. Mission couples have an outing nearly every month. This month the outing was here at the temple grounds. We could attend some of it! Elder Cannon and I made it to their opening devotional and later to a workshop on symbolism in the scriptures. We were even able to make it in the picture they took of nearly all the Sr missionaries. It was the most they have been able to get together at a time since some are so far away. We couldn't quite take time for their lunch or temple session, but we will do that every week anyway. Then Saturday morning we went to a goodbye breakfast for three of our VC sisters who go home this week. After doing our cleaning, laundry, and shopping, we left at 3:30 for our "Mo trav" trip to do our fireside in Reading. Thank goodness it is mostly motorway all the way there. So we got there in plenty of time to set up and warm up. We had a lot of investigators there with the missionaries and they seemed to enjoy the program..

At church today they had to take one of our Sr missionaries to the hospital. It appears he may have had a stroke or other cardiac problems. His wife is with him. They were supposed to be the speakers at a VC fireside tonight. It looks like we may have to do our program one more time to fill in tonight. We shall see! Life is exciting. Our moves week begins tomorrow and I will be cooking for 25 tomorrow, 30 on Tuesday and just picking up fruit and sandwiches for 110 on Wednesday. Hope to put up a couple of pictures on this entry if they will cooperate! Love you! Love The Lord! Love the Gospel! Don't want to "break" anything.

This wasn't posting yet so I am going to add a postscript. Elder Nielsen was the elder who was sick this morning at church. He did end up having a heart attack, but they got him to London where they put in a stent. He is resting comfortably. His wife couldn't stay the night with him in his room, and she still wanted to fulfill her assignment speaking at the fireside. So President Millar who had stopped at the hospital to check on them, brought her to the temple grounds. We had our dinner nearly ready and invited her to eat with us. She hadn't eaten all day so she came. Then went over to speak about overcoming trials and adversity. She told the story about losing a daughter to cancer. Then told about her son and his wife who were in a terrible plane crash burning their bodies all over. Christian was burned and broke his back. Stephanie was burned over 85 %. The doctors said she wouldn't live, but  she has and even had another child. She has become one of the most famous Mommy bloggers. She has been on all the talk shows. But the best part is how she has shared her testimony. She offered to send people a copy of her favorite book. So far they have sent over 3000 Books of Mormon and has heard from many people who have actually joined the church thru getting the Book of Mormon and reading it! It was a wonderful fireside and our group did sing the musical number at the first!

Small miracles lead to bigger miracles

We had an interesting experience last night. Some background information first. We have some very talented young missionaries serving in the visitors centre here. One of the sisters has written a couple of beautiful pieces of music. She is just in the last weeks of her mission and asked the president if she could put together a musical program highlighting the various areas in the visitors centre. She wanted to take it around to some of the areas in the mission to get people interested in coming to the visitors centre. President Millar gave permission and she began putting it together. She asked those of us in the office to participate. Our office elders, elder Cannon and I, plus sister Cates all agreed. I was asked to accompany most of the music on the piano, while a few songs were done with guitar. They prepared a lot of slides to show as well as a narration. We pulled it all together in a couple of weeks' time and have performed it at the visitors centre. Last night we traveled to Wandsworth stake which is in greater London. We had the big 12 seater temple van and the 9 seater office van with our 15 people and all the equipment. We left in plenty of time to travel a couple of hours and still get set up and warm up. Elder Cannon drove the big van and the office elders drove the other through pouring rain in the dark. When we were 15 minutes away from the chapel, the young missionaries in the office van called to say they had broken down in the middle of the intersection in one of the busiest cities. They had somehow managed to push the van off the street into a side street that just happened to have a place to park! We had to turn around to get them. Turning around and going back in a London area is nearly impossible, but thanks to the SatNav (satellite navigator) we finally found them. By the time we arrived they had figured out who could stay with the van and how to rearrange the program so everything was covered. We left three of the Sr missionaries to meet the tow truck and figure out a way to get back home. The rest of us piled in to the big van with all the equipment and drove to the church! We arrived only a couple minutes late and quickly got set up. We had an audience of around 60 people with several investigators. The spirit was strong and the program was well received. We were so impressed with these young missionaries! Their attitude was one of adventure, excitement and determination whereas we Sr missionaries were ready to cancel the show and get everyone home. We felt the guiding hand of The Lord to present this message to bring souls to Christ. Now if we can make it to Brighton tonight for our next performance!