This past weekend Paul baptized one
of our young single adult men. He has attended
Institute and YSA family home evening faithfully all year and attended church
for the past couple of months. He is a good, humble young man. As a two-for-one bonus from the conversion
process, a formerly somewhat lukewarm young adult activated himself as he
fellowshipped Josh, and now radiates the light of the gospel for the first time
since we’ve known him.
We attended a wedding of two of our
young singles. British weddings differ
from US weddings in several respects.
For one thing, people cannot be married in the temple but must be
married in a public place (such as a church) approved by the government. Certain wording in the ceremony is
government-mandated (including the part asking if anyone objects to the
marriage). And the registrar is a key
player—part of the service includes bride, groom, and witnesses signing his big
book. There was a reception right after
the wedding, and then the bride and groom hurried off to the London Temple to
be sealed, to change their “until death do you part” to “for time and all
eternity.”
Other events pale in significance by
comparison to the above, but deserve mention nonetheless. We had a nice campout in July for our stake
YSA on the Isle of Wight, our first trip there, which strengthened ties between
YSAs on the Isle and here on the “mainland”, or whatever you call this bigger
island of England, Wales, and Scotland.
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| Isle of Wight campers |
That was followed in August by an
amazing (another oft-used word over here, but it really was amazing) YSA
convention at Ardingly College, on a 420-acre campus about 20 minutes from the London Temple,
attended by about 350 young singles. It
kicked off with American-style square dancing, complete with caller and live
band, which was a great way to mix people quickly. Paul’s favorite workshop was a talk by David
Bradford (former CEO of Fusion IO) on “How to Start a Billion-dollar
Corporation,” not that Paul plans to do it, but it never hurts to know how. Sunday evening featured inspiring talks by LDS
Paralympics gold medalist Jason Smyth and area authority Clifford Herbertson. The convention concluded with a session at
the temple on Monday. A “college” here,
by the way, is like a high school, though Ardingly has lower grades as
well. Students and teachers live on
campus, though the college also takes day students. Tuition, room and board run about $40,000 per year there. We are told that British colleges are kept afloat in part by the parents of
Chinese and Russian millionaires whose children attend. After college, to further their education students
go on to university, called “uni” for short.
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| Ardingly College |
We helped another couple and the elders furnish a
newly-acquired unfurnished flat for missionaries in the town of Romsey, and
last week we found a flat for missionaries who will soon be stationed in the Hedge End
part of Southampton. We suppose we’ll help
furnish it too, assuming the mission does indeed rent it.
In July and August we thoroughly
enjoyed visits from our oldest granddaughter, Adrienne Powell; our daughter
Christy and husband Ryan Cook; and Paul’s brother and Connie’s sister, Channing
and Dede Hinman. Places we visited with
them include the Tower of London, Buckingham Palace (which out-poshes any other place we’ve seen here—too
bad inside photography was forbidden), Windsor Castle, Westminster Abbey, St.
Paul’s Cathedral, Stonehenge, Salisbury Cathedral, Winchester Cathedral, Bath, Arundel
Castle, Carisbrooke Castle, Osborne House (Queen Victoria’s summer place), Portsmouth
Historic Dockyard, Oxford (where we ate at a pub once frequented by C. S. Lewis
and J. R. R. Tolkein), the British Museum, and the renowned Harrod’s department
store. A few pictures are shown below. Incidentally, we have been doing our missionary work too. We had a little more time to sight-see with Institute in recess for August.
This summer’s weather has been amazing: warm (usually in the 70s F with occasional
80s and a rare 90) and dry nearly all summer, in stark contrast to last year’s
record-breaking rainfall. And very
often, when it has rained, it has rained at night and been clear in the
daytime, just as they sang about in “Camelot”.
Paul considers it probably the best summer weather of his entire life. On the subject of weather, it was in April
2012 that the UK Meteorological Office predicted hotter and drier summers for
decades to come, which prediction was followed by months of rain that made it
England’s wettest year on record. Then
in June 2013 a newspaper article explained that ocean water temperature cycles
mean Britain can expect cold, wet summers for the next 5-10 years, but we had a
hot, dry one. It almost causes one to distrust
the decades-into-the-future predictions of climate scientists when they botch
3-month forecasts so badly.
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| Carisbrooke Castle |
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| Harrod's |
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| Us at Oxford |
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| Tolkein's and Lewis's Oxford hangout |
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| Windsor Castle |
