Driving, Advertising, and Another Castle

It is gratifying to feel we are making a positive difference in a few young adults' lives, which is the objective of our mission.  There is no end of work to do, and we can't claim to have turned anyone's life around, but we see progress.

Burden Lifted:  A major accomplishment since the last update is Paul's passing the practical test for a driver's license (a US license becomes unacceptable after 12 months here).  It's not as easy as one might think, and it's expensive, too (over $500 for lessons, book, video, provisional license, and test fees.  The government got about half of it.)  But it's over, and he feels relieved of a great burden.  To see what it’s like driving here, watch some of the 16 video clips at the bottom of the page at this website:  http://www.driving-test-success.com/hazard/hazard_perception_main.html.   And if you want to see some skillful British parallel parking, try http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/odd/news/a469107/tightest-parallel-parking-guinness-world-record-broken-video.html.  

Incidentally, British drivers must be the most polite drivers in the world.  If a day passes without our seeing two or three drivers voluntarily yield the right of way, it must be because we didn't go anywhere that day.  It's not because they're taught it in driver training:  the manual actually warns against it because it can tempt other drivers to take risks.  

London:  Speaking of driving, Paul broke a vow never to drive in London when we took a couple of London university-student children of family friends to dinner.  Here are a couple pictures of strange things we saw in the big city:  a tiny car driven by a large repairman, and a musician whose instrument emits balls fire.

"I don't care what you say, so long as you spell my name right":  The most exciting Church happening right now is the ad campaign underway to capitalize on the publicity surrounding The Book of Mormon musical, a vulgar, blasphemous mockery produced by the creators of South Park that opened last month in London.  While the Church obviously had nothing to do with the production, our leaders decided to capitalize on it rather than whine about it.  Consequently, they

• Have rented every square foot of advertising space in the Charing Cross tube station for one month (a tube station seemingly has acres of advertising space)
• Are advertising liberally in several other tube stations and on signs on 250 London buses
• Have created a UK version of mormon.org featuring British members
• Have missionaries handing out Books of Mormon outside the theater
• Have three full-page ads in the play program itself with messages such as, "The book is always better than the play," and, "Now that you've seen the play, read the book." 

There were stories about the Church in four national newspapers just last week, plus radio interviews.  Google searches in England about the Church were reported to be up 10-fold a month ago, and that was before our campaign started, perhaps caused by the ad campaign for the play itself (a huge campaign with signs proclaiming "The Mormons are coming," among other things).  Our stake president commented yesterday that while negative things are being said about the Church amid all the publicity, it is not being originated by the media.  That may be some kind of a milestone in itself.

History and Culture:  The weather warmed up to the low 50s last week and we had a dry day, so we visited Arundel Castle, the origins of which go back to 1067 AD.  It is a magnificent structure, and its living quarters have been for centuries and still are occupied by the Duke of Norfolk (the premier duke and earl of England, according to Wikipedia) and his family.  Part of the movie, The Young Victoria, was filmed there.  We found it interesting that the family was and remains Catholic and that they and the castle survived, though they were not untouched by, the troubles following the establishment of the Church of England and the English Civil War between the Parliamentarians and the Royalists.  One item on display there is the quill pen with which the king signed the Roman Catholic Relief Act of 1829, which removed many restrictions on Catholics, only 8 years before the first LDS missionaries arrived in England.

Arundel Castle

Castle Tower

Arundel Castle Family Quarters

Arundel Castle Panorama View

Language:  The local paper headline reported a man convicted of flytipping, which we just had to investigate.  It means dumping rubbish illegally, not, as you might think, overturning insects.  In other news, a man was glassed in a pub fight.  We wash dishes with washing-up liquid.  Q-tips are called cotton buds.  Acetaminophen is called paracetamol.  And I had the most unusual conversation when at a church event a sister told me she had cut her finger on broken glass in the kitchen (she was glassed while washing-up) and asked, I thought, if we had a pasta in our car.  After repeating the question several times and seeing by my confused look she wasn't getting anywhere, she explained she needed a band-aid.  I had forgotten a band-aid is a plaster, and when pronounced without the “r” and rhyming with the way we say pasta, ... you get the picture.

This mission is a great experience.  We marvel at the caliber and dedication of the missionaries among whom we work.  The members are loving and gracious.  The local leaders are amazing.  We highly recommend the experience to anyone who is able to serve.

Food, Language, and History

A week ago Sunday we attended a wonderful fireside at the London Temple Visitors Centre, at which a sister missionary who is a Palestinian Arab with a Ph.D. told her conversion story and explained how the gospel completely changed her outlook on life.   Her account of how she used to sneak into Jerusalem to attend church each week makes any inconveniences we have experienced to attend church pale by comparison.  It is a marvelous work and a wonder to us to see how the Lord gathers His people “one of a city and two of a family” from places where the gospel has not yet penetrated, by bringing them to where they can receive it and then take it home.  This is how we have strong missionaries from such places as Karachi, Pakistan and from a very small village in Poland in our district.  We watch it happen as people from around the world come to England for study or work, meet the missionaries, accept the gospel, and return home with a strong testimony.

The weather has been too cold and wet to tempt us to sight-see, so this installment will address random topics such as food, language, and the Venerable Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of England.

How many kinds of chutney can you see?

Wow! Time to stock up.

Food:  Paul tried steak and kidney pie and decided once was enough (it’s hard not to attribute anything unfamiliar in the flavor to what kidneys do, and that spoils the experience).   Paul also fried some kippers he bought (to make them more like he remembered them from past visits), and his clothes and the house smelled strongly of fish the rest of the day (tastes good, but requires changing clothes if you’re going out in public).  Cumberland sausage is not bad.  The English eat a lot of vegetables, and Paul thinks they taste good even fixed plain.  Connie does not.  For example, rutabagas (called “swede” here) and parsnips are sold in large quantities in grocery stores.  This is the first time Paul ever went back for seconds on rutabagas.

Language:  “poorly” is an adjective meaning unwell.  We were poorly last week with colds.  A news story quoted a nurse saying that some patients returned to hospital “poorlier than when they left”.  A head teacher at a primary school in Yorkshire made the news when she sent a letter to parents recommending their children avoid local vocabulary in school and when applying for work—one sentence in the article that intrigued us read:  “Children growing up around Middlesbrough do not speak Geordie, and some elements of the Teesside accent sound more like Scouse.”  It turns out Geordie (pronounced “Jordie”) is a Newcastle accent and Scouse is a Liverpool accent.  One word they use up north for zero or nothing is “naught”, which is pronounced “nowt” in Geordie.  “Somewhat” is pronounced “soomit.”  Because of the way English slight the letter “r” in so many words, it was interesting to hear a news story on comets in which the scientist pronounced “iron” and “ion” exactly the same and hence had to explain to the reporter when he changed from one meaning to the other.

They gave the world Shakespeare, Milton, Churchill.  Is this what they got in return?

History:  Paul recently read Bede’s 8^th-century Ecclesiastical History of England to get a better feel for the history here prior to William the Conqueror.  It was interesting to read the troubles of the early Britons after the Romans left.  The Scots and Picts invaded, so the Britons, not being war-like, called on Rome for help.  The Romans drove the invaders back up north and told the Brits to build a wall.  The Brits didn’t do stonework well, so they made their wall out of sod, which didn’t significantly slow down the next invasion.  They called the Romans back again, who drove out the invaders again, built a stone wall for the Brits, and announced they weren’t coming back after that.  It was unfortunate for the Britons that the Scots and Picts also heard the announcement, so they invaded again.  This time the Brits hired the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes to come over from Germany and Denmark to defend them.  These people found England to be a nicer place than their homelands, so they sent for their families and stayed. The place where we live subsequently became known as the land of the West Saxons.

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.

Last month we had a wonderful trip to the London Temple with 30 of our young adults, spending some time in the visitors’ center and in the temple and having lunch in the accommodation center.  A thought to ponder from one of the temple presidency:  when we leave the temple we aren’t “returning to the real world” as some like to say; rather, when we leave the temple we are leaving the real world, because only eternal things are real.

Elder Read Goes to Malaga

A major event this week was the send-off of one of our young adults to his 2-year mission in Malaga, Spain.  He, being a talented musician, put on a farewell concert with his friends at the church in Winchester last weekend, before a packed house.  He is one of the best-prepared new missionaries we think we have ever seen.

Feeding 30 people on a budget, one can't be picky about salad greens.

We haven’t seen many sights (no more castles) since the last update, as we are more into our routine, which involves feeding supper to 20-30 young singles once or twice a week plus providing refreshments for them for other activities.  We also provide transportation to and from Institute class and family home evening for some (most don’t have cars and public transportation is relatively expensive).  We do a lot of grocery shopping and cooking.   We had a nice American Thanksgiving dinner for the missionaries in our district at our flat.  These eight young missionaries come from eight different countries (US, Scotland, Poland, Philippines, Samoa, India, Australia, and South Africa), so it was the first Thanksgiving dinner most of them have experienced.  The stuffing was quite popular with the first-timers.

From Scotland, Philippines, Australia, US

From Poland, South Africa

From Samoa, India

We have about six months before the law requires us to have UK driver’s licenses or start walking.  The requirements are quite rigorous compared to US standards.  We just acquired a 528-page driving manual to accompany our 144-page book on traffic signs.  One of the more interesting things is that over here you are not supposed to use “hand over hand” on the steering wheel when turning, but rather to “feed the wheel through” your hands.  Paul is trying to practice the recommended method without causing a wreck.  He’s only on page 46, and will surely have more updates in future blog entries.