Thirty new missionaries arrived in
the mission this week, and some old ones completed their missions and returned
home. Our district said goodbye to Elder
Manga (Australia), Sister Naseem (Pakistan), Elder Carver (transferred), and
Elder Bendall (transferred). Their
replacements are from Germany, Croatia, Italy, and the US. This is quite an international group of
missionaries.
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| Making Temples Out of Marshmallows on the Lawn |
Last Saturday was a notable day, and
a long one. We drove to the London
Temple to assist our Young Singles with babysitting primary children whose
parents were attending the temple. We
were able to attend a session ourselves.
We returned to Southampton in time for Paul to give a talk at a
baptismal service for a retired (the British say OAP, for old-age pensioner)
gentleman the missionaries have been teaching for the past year, and whom we
have grown to love and respect. After
that service ended we drove to Winchester for a baptismal service for a young
married couple. Then we came home to put
the finishing touches on a Sunday school lesson for the next day. It was a very good day. These baptisms followed a mission-wide fast a
few weeks ago for the progress of the work.
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| Perfect Weather at the Temple |
Other Young Singles activities of
the past few weeks have included service projects to clean up a derelict
English garden and to entertain primary children during a party celebrating the
40th anniversary of the creation of the Southampton Stake of the
Church.
The mission had an interesting
experience with a short-notice visit of an apostle, Elder M. Russell
Ballard. He was to have gone from
Sweden, where he had given a major address to young singles, to Russia, but
visa problems prevented him, so he came to London, and we were treated to an
impromptu mission conference of sorts.
We were alerted Sunday evening of the possibility of a meeting the next
day, and we left for London with a carload of young missionaries promptly after
it was confirmed Monday morning. We
arrived at the Hyde Park chapel after travel by car, train, and a brisk walk
from Victoria Station, where we were addressed by Elder Ballard and our mission
president et al. It was a memorable day.
The weather for the past month has
been so unlike last year’s weather that it’s hard to believe we are in the same
place. It has been DRY. Grass is turning brown. Today it is supposed to reach 82 F here and 90
in London. It has been above 80 at least
3 days in the past week, which rates as really hot here. Since there is no air conditioning most
places, it is fortunate that the humidity is relatively low compared to the
southern and eastern US. We’ve also had
some cool weather, such as a high of 59 F on July 2. One of the few times it rained was on a Young
Singles picnic we had a couple of weeks ago.
Cars: With mission president’s approval,
Paul has allowed 2 missionaries to practice driving our mission car before they
start taking professional lessons at upwards of £20/hour. The American missionary with a US license can
drive on it up to the 12-month point.
The Scottish missionary with a provisional license must have a 3+-year UK
license holder in the front seat, so we borrowed a licensed member for that. They got good enough before their transfer
that Paul was bored enough to start counting gray and silver cars. The English have a thing about gray and
silver cars. Our data show that 130 out
of 342 cars counted (38%) were gray or silver.
If Paul hasn't forgotten how to do statistics, that means over 5% of all 3-car collisions in England involve only silver and gray cars. Those colors seem to be best for not showing dirt or hard-water residue
(this south coast is underlain with chalk).
We don’t know if it’s to camouflage the dirt, or if something in the
British psyche prefers gray, perhaps to match the traditional weather.
Ships: we visited the Portsmouth Historic Dockyard
recently, where we toured HMS Victory, the ship on which Lord Nelson died. The decks were designed for short sailors,
with under 6-ft ceilings. We also visited
the Mary Rose museum, where are displayed the remains of the hull and artifacts
from the Mary Rose, a ship of Henry VIII that sank near Portsmouth in a battle
with the French. Its hull and contents
were mostly preserved by lying in the mud for 400 years, until it was
discovered and raised some years ago. It
is thought its sinking resulted from a wind gust catching it as it executed a
quick turn after firing its cannons on one side, in order to fire the cannons
on the other side at the French.
Apparently a ship could be turned around faster than a cannon can be
cleaned and loaded. Anyway, the doors
over the gun ports being open, the gust tilted the ship till water rushed in
the ports, sinking the ship. Since the
top deck was covered with a rope mesh to ward off boarding parties, most of the
500 sailors were trapped and drowned, only 35
surviving. It reminds me of safety reviews we used to
have in the chemical industry where we considered how many things had to go
wrong at once to cause a disaster. In
this case it took the combination of a turn, a gust, open gun ports, and a rope
netting to end the lives of nearly 500 men.
Other things we learned at the dockyard were that a navy surgeon could
amputate a limb in 90 seconds, which was good, considering there were no
anesthetics and that liquor wasn’t administered until after the surgery because
it thins the blood; and that in 1540 an act of Parliament merged the Company of
Barbers and the Guild of Surgeons into one group, at which time barbers were
paid more than surgeons (perhaps out of consideration of their relative
contributions to society).
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| Nelson's HMS Victory |
Language: A headline in the local paper, “Robber
Threatens Man with Catapult,” sent us to the dictionary—a catapult can mean a
slingshot in Britain. We are chuffed (pleased)
with the nice summer weather.
Syllabification is different here:
they emphasize the first syllable of “contributed” and “distributed”,
and the second syllable of “controversy.”
