End of the Old, Start of the New Year

Christmas Service Project YSAs

December’s Young Single activities included sorting and packing donated toys for needy families and performing a Christmas music program for the stake.  

Christmas was celebrated here much as it is in the US, albeit with more mince pies and some mentions of a character named Father Christmas.  We learned by experience that “cider” and “eggnog” are not generally available in non-alcoholic form here—some eyebrows were raised when we announced cider would be served after a YSA activity.  The mission held a London Temple session and dinner for missionaries the week before Christmas (actually three such events a day apart, to fit everyone into the limited space).  We enjoyed a great Christmas-day dinner at a fellow missionary couple’s place with 12 young missionaries from 10 different countries.  The London South Mission is like a small United Nations, but without the attitude.   

Missionaries from US, Romania, Pakistan, India, Australia, & South Africa

As we discussed the missionaries’ families with them after Christmas dinner, we learned of some of the sacrifices they make to join the Church and to serve missions.  One dedicated young missionary’s family, not Church members, thinks he is wasting his time here and wants him to come home.  His Christmas phone call home wasn’t very inspiring, he said.  Another missionary’s family was prevented from joining the Church by their father, until a teenage son took things into his own hands and forged his father’s signature on a letter granting permission to be baptized.  Now the entire family is in the Church, including the father.  Yet another missionary comes from a country where innocent people are beaten or killed on suspicion of discussing politics.  It makes us even more grateful to live and serve where we do.

How England is changing:  the 2011 UK census reports that 59% of the population of this country claimed Christianity as their religion, down from 72% in 2001; 5% claimed Islam; and 25% claimed no religion.  It is predicted the UK will no longer be majority Christian within a decade or two.  Paul just finished reading the journal of George Fox, founder of the Quakers, and concluded it’s safer to be a missionary in half-Christian England now than in all-Christian England in the 1600s when Parliament made it illegal for more than 5 people to meet if they weren’t members of the Established Church, and denying the Established Church’s basic tenets was punishable by death.  Now the biggest risk to life and limb is not one’s beliefs, but driving on English roads.

Snowbound in Southampton

It snowed last night and today, with about 4 inches of wet snow accumulating.  It is not that common here, so many schools closed for the day and the "gritting lorries" were very busy working the streets.