Arrival in England

Hinmans, Ottleys, Bradfords, & Sorensens England-bound

After half a week of Church Education System training on teaching methods and working with young adults and Church leaders, we departed for England Thursday morning with two other couples (Ottleys and Bradfords.  The Sorensens come on Monday).  On the way to breakfast that morning we encountered Caleb West from our home ward, who arrived at the MTC the day before for his mission to Spain Barcelona.  He looked good.

Temple President's Home

Mission President and Sister Shamo greeted us upon arrival at London Heathrow and took us to the Staines stake center, where the president described the mission and our assignments.  They have missionaries from 47 countries.  Pres. Shamo shows great love for people and tears come easily to him.  He is easy to love, and we already feel we will miss him when he is released in a week. 

Our assignment will be in Southampton, on England’s southern coast, the home port of the Titanic, among other things.  Until our apartment becomes available next week, we are staying in the apartments on the beautiful London Temple grounds, once a large English garden, where the mission office is also located.

London Temple

Connie feeding resident AFLAC duck

I took out the GPS (“sat nav” to the English) we brought with us and verified that the English maps we loaded into it do work.  It says we are exactly 3900 miles from our home in West Virginia.  Here it is unnecessary to enter full addresses into sat navs, as the postal codes are precise enough to locate individual buildings.  Incidentally, the temple is only about 11 miles from Chartwell, Winston Churchill’s estate.

We are still recovering from jet lag.

The grounds just go on and on...

Gate House

Missionary Training Center Week 1

The MTC experience has been rewarding:  excellent speakers and teachers, extremely well organized, good lodging and food, and one makes friends here quickly.  We have more free time than the young missionaries and are free to leave campus when we want.  Upon our discovering that, Peter loaned us one of their cars to use while here.  The training schedule is a little tiring, especially the first half of the week.  Connie caught a cold yesterday from lack of sleep due to too many 8 am classes, but slept in today (Saturday), which is a free day and is feeling somewhat better now.  The first week is devoted to training as typical missionaries.  Next week's training is for specific assignments, of which there is quite a variety.  We've found missionaries going to do records preservation at the National Archives, facilities maintenance at Winter Quarters, Military Relations in Tokyo, seminary supervision in North Dakota, and Perpetual Education Fund administration in Portugal and Spain.

Our departure date was moved up from June 25 to June 21, to give us a bit more time to get settled in England before the new mission president arrives around July 1.

Note to self: the short-sleeved white shirts I bought at Missionary Mall wrinkle badly--better not to shop there again.  Fortunately England's short-sleeve season is pretty short.

Paul & Connie Prepare to Go to London

We had planned to go on our mission after Chan and Dede returned from theirs to Geneva back in 2010. Well, it takes a while to get ready, even when you've been planning on it. So, after physicals, shots, filling out resumes detailing church and other experience, and dragging Connie to the photographer (she hates being photographed), we clicked "submit" on our mission application on Feb. 2. A few weeks later we received our call to the England London South Mission, to work with a Center for Young Adults. Connie's a perfect fit for the assignment, having taught week-day early-morning gospel classes to high-school students for six years, and being fun-loving and a great cook (We hear from others that the assignment involves religion classes, food, and activities). Paul is looking forward to the food part.

It's a lot more complicated to go now compared to Paul's first mission in 1965: address change notifications, tax matters, health insurance, what to do with cars and house; at least this time I didn't have to notify the Selective Service. And visa applications for the UK--England has had several centuries more time than the US to develop its bureaucracy, and it shows--about 16 pages of forms (including questions about each child's whereabouts), fingerprints and biometric photos.

So, we are now in Utah, about to report to the MTC (Missionary Training Center) for 2 weeks before leaving for England.