Our Young Adults & Local Sights

Our Young Adults

We are having fun getting to know the young adults with whom we work.  They put on a fine farewell party for the Andrews, the local missionaries who started up the Center for Young Adults here and who now have completed their two-year mission.  See accompanying photo of the group at the party.

Royal Victoria Military Hospital Chapel

Netley Abbey

Netley Abbey

This weekend we decided to go to a church picnic at the last minute when the forecast changed from 80% to 10% chance of rain.  We were late and nobody was there, so we had a pleasant lunch together in the car and took some pictures of the local sights.  The chapel is all that remains of what was once the world’s largest military hospital (Queen Victoria laid the foundation stone in 1856).  The abbey, across town from the chapel, was built in the 1200s for Cistercian monks.  Henry VIII shut down all the abbeys in the 1500s (known as The Dissolution, following the Act of Supremacy by which Parliament made him supreme head of the Church in England) and he gave this one to a friend, who converted it to a manor house.  It was abandoned in the early 1700s.  It is still impressive.

A couple of items of interest about how things work:  we opened a local bank account the day after our arrival by depositing a check from our US bank account.  It finally cleared, eight weeks to the day after we deposited it.  We are told the delay has something to do with preventing money laundering.  It has just about cured us of depositing a US check again. 

The other interesting thing is the TV license fee, a $230 annual fee for each household that watches or records TV programs as they are being shown on TV, whether on TV set, computer, or phone.  Calling up old broadcasts over the Internet is apparently permissible without a license.  We responded that we do not watch TV and have been informed that we may get a knock on the door to see whether we are telling the truth.  The fees go to the BBC.  Please do not pass this news on to NPR.

Tower, Winchester, and Missionary Olympics

Patti & Dave at Tower of London, Tower Bridge with Olympic Rings in Background

Dave, Patti, and unknown tourist at Tower of London

The highlight of the past two weeks was a 3-day visit by daughter Patti and husband Dave Edwards on Dave's way to a combustion conference in Poland.  Our fears of congestion problems the day before the Olympics proved unfounded, as they breezed through customs and immigration with no waiting whatever, thanks perhaps to extra staffing and the immigration-officer strike being called off a day earlier.  We toured the Tower of London, where Thomas More and some of Henry VIII's wives served time or were executed, and viewed the armory and royal jewels displayed there.  We also toured Winchester, England's capital city prior to William the Conqueror's arrival in 1066, with its beautiful cathedral.  Their last day here, we saw the Rosetta Stone at the British Museum and got a nice view of Big Ben glowing in the evening sunlight and the outsides of Westminster Abbey (which closed early), and Buckingham Palace.  It was a pleasant 3-day tour, though a couple more days would have been nice.

Westminster Abbey

Winchester Cathedral

Big Ben in Evening Sunlight

 The young missionaries with whom we work here are a remarkable group.  They are spiritually mature and serious about their work; they also know how to have great fun with simple things.  Last week, for example, our little district of 8 plus us held our own Olympics, with us as photographer and scorekeeper, having a hilarious time with such contests as a raw-egg-in-a-tablespoon blindfolded carry, marshmallow-eating contest, and Kleenex contest (how fast can one empty a tissue box one-at-a-time with one hand?).  Ok, it sounds silly--you had to see it to appreciate it.  If you had, you too would pity people who resort to alcohol to have a good time, if you don't already.