NEWS of the PAST TWO WEEKS

The England London Mission, and its missionaries including Elder and Sister Hawley, are entering a busy couple of months.  This past two weeks we have been quite "engaged" in the activities of the missionaries, whether they be coming or going or moving around the mission.  Last Wednesday President Patch finished MOVES and Sister Hawley made the new Transfer Scenario on iMOS, after which Elder Hawley made pre-imbursements and area adjustments based on the new scenario.  Most of the companionships had some sort of change:  nine missionaries [four sisters and five elders] are being honorably released this Thursday and will be flying home; one new sister missionary from Denmark via the Preston MTC is arriving by train on Wednesday, the 5th of May.  [We were planning on having another sister missionary + one elder also set to arrive Wednesday; however, the sister missionary's flight from Japan was cancelled due to the Iceland volcano eruption, and it was discovered at the MTC that our incoming-from-Scotland elder was sick and needed surgery, so he returned home to have the surgery and to recover.  Since this is a variable situation, we don't know if or when he will be sent to the ELM or reassigned or released.]  Our Japanese sister missionary has been serving in a missionary companionship with local [in Japan] sister missionaries and she will arrive at the MTC this Friday and then come here to London the last week in May.  

There is a lot of paperwork involved in receiving new missionaries and saying well-done/farewell to home-going ones.  We love both.  Missionaries lift us up, center us, inspire, encourage and thank us, and we watch them [and watch over them], and pray for them, and grow with them.  They give us many opportunities to serve them, their families, those they are teaching, and our Savior.

This past Friday Elder and Sister Stephen E. Snow of the presidency of the 70 visited several England missions.  When a general authority visits it is the only time that the whole mission gathers together in one place at the same time.  We held an afternoon conference that was so uplifting and inspiring and energizing.  We also had a professional photographer come and take a whole-mission photograph on the steps of the Royal Albert Hall, which is located just a few blocks from the Hyde Park Chapel building in South Kensington.  Imagine these scenes:

138 missionaries walking up Exhibition Road in London on their way to and from the photo op . . . drawing lots of attention with tourists and residents, workers and taxi cab drivers.  What a SPIRITUAL experience this was, to be in this group!

138 missionaries filling the pews in the Hyde Park Chapel, with all singing Called to Serve with such faith, conviction, and energy!

138 missionaries gathered in the cultural hall, joyful at being together, some with former companions they haven't seen for a year or more!

Instruction from Elder Snow:

1.  Define ASSURANCE as it applies to the Gospel/Missionary Work:  

     -- a positive declaration intended to give confidence; 

     -- a promise;

  -- certainty in one's own abilities or about something, such as assurance of faith that depends upon our trust in God.

2.  Steps:

     -- Desire to Believe

     -- Action:  Pray, Repent, Study/Ponder, Live the Commandments, Commit, Attend

     --  Witness

3.  Pyramid, Bottom Layer to Top Layer:

     -- Worthiness/Obedience:  Need both to receive the Spirit

     -- Effort

     -- Spirituality

     -- Excellence

     -- Faith

As I listened to these pieces of wisdom, and I believe them to be such, it seems to me as if these principles can guide us through stages of life, through challenges, problems, righteous ambitions, as we might find application for them.

Four quotes:  

     -- Our missions are our MTC for the Rest of our Lives.

     -- Elder Snow:  "Someone said, 'When I listen to Joseph Smith it is like someone put a heat lamp over my head.' "

     -- Sister Packer, and Elder Packer, president of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, were responsible for the inclusion of Called to Serve as a hymn in our current green hymnals.

     --  Joseph [coat of many colors] to his brothers in the Old Testament:  "See that ye fall not out by the way."

     -- Sister Snow:  I was driving my 2-year-old grandson to church one morning, and when he realized we had arrived at the church he shared a jubulient reaction:  "FANTASTIC!"

President and Sister Patch have had much to do, many places to be, and many things happening the past two weeks or so.  They could get stressed or worn out or both.  President Patch shared with us that the most Christ-like apostle to him [whom he knew while he worked in the Presiding Bishopric's Office] was President James E. Faust.  So when President Patch feels stressed or the need to stay calm and center himself and access the Spirit he thinks of President Faust.  I am thinking of getting a nice photograph of President Faust to put in our mission office.

We were notified that Salt Lake would shut down iMOS on a Monday, effectively disabling what Elder Hawley could do in a day.  So President offered us a "free", extra P-day and we accepted and went back to visit Lavenham again, and for us it was just as fun and interesting the second time around.  

We added to the trip this time a visit to an Anglican church built in the 1300s in Sudbury that is still actively used today for worship services, library, and nursery school, among other things.  

Inside this church we found an interesting addition of a rare and elaborately created baptismal font "cover", one of four of the oldest such covers, and made sometimes in the 1500's.  [See photo below.]  

We also visited the reconstruction of an Anglo-Saxon village , circa 420-650 AD being restored on its original site in West Stow.  This unique project tests out different ideas about the Anglo-Saxons who once lived there.  It assists the visitors in imagining what life would have been like at West Stow.  Anglo-Saxon tribes crossed over the North Sea and found a new place to live in Britannia in places left vacant by the Romans.  They came from northern Europe, from places we now call Germany, Denmark and Holland.  They traveled up the rivers in their small boats and settled on the land and mixed with the other tribes and local peoples.  These Anglo-Saxons became the first English.  The word "Stow" means "a special place."  

Various examples of thatched roofs

     Infant shoes, & carved doors

               Gathering places

                                                                                      Sample of pit dwelling [above]

Samples of women's clothing of the time [left].

We also made a day trip to the London Zoo in Regents Park on a recent April Saturday.  Although it was smaller than zoos we've seen in the States, it was well maintained, clean, and beautifully landscaped.  We had fish-'n-chips mid-afternoon, and finally found fish that was breaded and fried WITHOUT THE SKIN LEFT ON THE FISH!  Some of the interesting sites included beautifully feathered pelicans, intelligent gorillas, curious giraffes, fun-to-watch otters and meerkats, a tiger whose head is twice the size of ours, and, the piece-de-resistance . . . bearded pigs!

Entrance to Reptile House at the London Zoo --  does anyone recognize this from HP1?  [Left]

  Beautiful gardens

Last Monday we took a P-Day with three other couples and had a fun time traveling down the Grand Canal on a 8' x 30' canal boat.  We each took a turn steering/navigating "at the helm," and taking pictures of the water fowl and birds swimming alongside us [actually we were invaders in their home territory] and photos of the homes and vacation spots along the river banks.  There were many other boats and owners who live on their boats whom we waved and spoke to as we floated along.  We unlocked and locked 6 locks along each way of our journey, which was quite interesting and rather quite a bit harder to actually DO than we had supposed.  It was a fun adventure and an opportunity to do something a bit unusual that we wouldn't ordinarily do and we had a marvelous time.  We shared a picnic lunch on the boat, and stopped for dinner at a pub restaurant on our way home.  We four couples seem to be a congenial group and are planning other activities to do together.

Today is Fast Sunday, and we fasted for our children.  It felt good to fast, spiritually filling and fulfilling to partake of the sacrament, to hear the testimonies, and the lessons.  We had a large group of students studying abroad join us today.  Our Relief Society lesson was on the Blessings of the Temple:  Our RS president, Sister Paxton, gave the lesson:  "The temple is a holy place, where essential saving ceremonies and ordinances are performed to prepare us for exaltation.  It is a place where we can do work for our ancestors, be sealed as families, receive our own endowment and personal revelation.  Elder Russel M Nelson said  ' ....Temple blessings are most meaningful when death takes a loved one away from the family circle. To know that the pain of separation is only temporary provides peace that passes ordinary understanding. Death cannot sever families sealed in the temple. They understand death as a necessary part of God’s great plan of happiness.' "   

Any LDS temple is a place of worship, a place of learning, a place of faith, love, equality, glory, personal revelation, a place of order and a place of peace.  

When I go to the temple, I feel each time that "I have come home."  

There is one brother serving at the London Temple at the front desk who greets patrons with "Welcome Home."  Indeed.