Missionary Work, Temple, Gray Cars, and Old Ships

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. 

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.

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 40^th 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

Nelson's HMS Victory

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).

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.”