Nearly Settled

Our landlord, having just returned from vacation two weeks ago, checked out our complaint of pet urine odor in the carpet, and we had new carpet 48 hours later (great response!).  While the old carpet was up we treated the worst spots on the floor with vinegar, then baking soda, but the odor returned when the new-carpet smell faded.  However, sprinkling half a pound of baking soda on top of the carpet and letting it work its way in may have finished the odor, though it’s a bit early to declare victory.   Febreeze helps too, but we’re giving most of the credit to the baking soda.  Why put this in a mission blog?  Well, you may need to know it someday.

With the carpet replaced, we have now added a dresser, a wardrobe, and a permanent bed to our furnishings.  Our Vauxhall station wagon is very handy for hauling furniture home.  We really feel for the couples in London with unfurnished flats and no cars in which to haul furniture.   On the other hand, gasoline (petrol) is a bit over $8 per US gallon.

In the past two weeks we’ve met with local church leaders to receive further direction on our assignment with the Center for Young Adults and have met a number of the young adults with whom we’ll be working.  We spoke in church on Sunday.  There are roughly 200 young adults in the three congregations with which we are concerned.  We are greatly impressed with the caliber, vision, and commitment of the church leaders here.  When we mentioned to the stake president that we are without Internet access until Aug. 1, he pulled a cellular wi-fi hotspot out of his pocket and said, “Here, use this.”  Talk about being prepared for everything!

New Forest Free-ranging Horse

The Andrews, our hosts and guides for most of the past month, took us to their place at the beach in Dorset via New Forest, a large park and former hunting ground of kings, where horses and cattle roam without fences.  The beach reminds us of the Oregon coast, where one may need a jacket in the summer.  A distinctive feature of this beach is that it has ocean-going swans.

Ocean-going Swans with Isle of Wight on Horizon

The Shopping Mission

We enjoyed our first meeting with our younger missionary colleagues this week.  I am very much impressed with their abilities, enthusiasm, and spiritual depth.  To me they seem better qualified for this work than I was at their age.  We also spent 2 evenings at the Southampton Center for Young Adults, being oriented and trained by Elder and Sister Andrews.

Our Living Room

Shopping:  We have spent most of our first 10 days in Southampton shopping to furnish our "flat" or townhouse (unsure whether a townhouse is a flat), with considerable success, acquiring a sofa ("settee") from Ikea, a nice used oak table and chairs, dishes, utensils and miscellaneous other items needed to fill a home.

Wheels turn slowly...  We should have Internet service in 2 weeks, until which time we get by with wi-fi at the church or by infrequently renting BT wi-fi for £5/day.  A week after opening a local bank account, we received a letter saying our initial deposit in the form of a check in US dollars would be credited to our account in 6-8 weeks, which seems rather slow for the 21st century.  We withdrew cash from an ATM with our US debit card and deposited it in the local bank in order to have a balance with which to qualify for Internet service.

Our Home for the Next 17 Months

We are settling in to what will be our home for the next 17 months or so.  We have a car due to the size of our area (a stick-shift Vauxhall station wagon).  Paul, due to some perverse genetic mutation, or perhaps just from being a guy, actually prefers a stick shift for driving in England, where the roundabouts require constant shifting.  An interesting detail about driving we learned last week:  a US driver’s license will do for 12 months, but after that we have to have English licenses, which involve mandatory lessons, expensive tests, and perhaps a 6-month effort to acquire.  This requirement seems to be safety-related until one learns it doesn’t apply to Canadians driving here.  One may perhaps be pardoned for suspecting that it’s related to an incident that occurred in the colonies in 1776.

Our House (blue door, on right)

Our house is quite nice, about 12.5 ft wide inside, two storeys (English for stories), two bedrooms, a washing-machine hookup in the kitchen, and a fenced back yard.  It was unfurnished (that includes nothing in the kitchen but an oven and hob), so we’ve done some shopping [understatement] and still have a lot to do.  We ate our first home-cooked meal here today, on a table consisting of two upside-down suitcase and a microwave box. Translation:  we have some pots and pans, dishes and silverware now; we do not have any furniture except a small chest and two patio chairs loaned to us by the Andrews family and two air mattresses we bought the first night (in retrospect, we should have also bought blankets and figured out how to turn on the heat the first night). We are trying to scout out used furniture stores, but they are widely scattered so shopping takes a long time.  Thank goodness for GPS!  And with church / mission responsibilities starting this week, we are hoping we can find something quickly.

Our Back Yard

Our address is

12 Quob Farm Close

West End, Southampton

England SO30 3HE

We have an inexpensive cell phone issued by the mission, the number of which is 07800 61 5397.  I believe to call from the US you precede it by 011 44 and drop the first 0 of the English number.

The church members here have been wonderful.  The Andrews, a local couple who have been working with the Young Single Adult center here, have fed us, showed us the stores and charity shops we are and will be frequenting for furniture; given us furniture and a refrigerator and dishes; helped us get established in every way, even offering us space in their home until we get settled (which we declined because we wanted to rough it just a little); and introduced us to church members.  Everyone we have met has been very gracious and kind.

Arrival in England

Hinmans, Ottleys, Bradfords, & Sorensens England-bound

After half a week of Church Education System training on teaching methods and working with young adults and Church leaders, we departed for England Thursday morning with two other couples (Ottleys and Bradfords.  The Sorensens come on Monday).  On the way to breakfast that morning we encountered Caleb West from our home ward, who arrived at the MTC the day before for his mission to Spain Barcelona.  He looked good.

Temple President's Home

Mission President and Sister Shamo greeted us upon arrival at London Heathrow and took us to the Staines stake center, where the president described the mission and our assignments.  They have missionaries from 47 countries.  Pres. Shamo shows great love for people and tears come easily to him.  He is easy to love, and we already feel we will miss him when he is released in a week. 

Our assignment will be in Southampton, on England’s southern coast, the home port of the Titanic, among other things.  Until our apartment becomes available next week, we are staying in the apartments on the beautiful London Temple grounds, once a large English garden, where the mission office is also located.

London Temple

Connie feeding resident AFLAC duck

I took out the GPS (“sat nav” to the English) we brought with us and verified that the English maps we loaded into it do work.  It says we are exactly 3900 miles from our home in West Virginia.  Here it is unnecessary to enter full addresses into sat navs, as the postal codes are precise enough to locate individual buildings.  Incidentally, the temple is only about 11 miles from Chartwell, Winston Churchill’s estate.

We are still recovering from jet lag.

The grounds just go on and on...

Gate House

Missionary Training Center Week 1

The MTC experience has been rewarding:  excellent speakers and teachers, extremely well organized, good lodging and food, and one makes friends here quickly.  We have more free time than the young missionaries and are free to leave campus when we want.  Upon our discovering that, Peter loaned us one of their cars to use while here.  The training schedule is a little tiring, especially the first half of the week.  Connie caught a cold yesterday from lack of sleep due to too many 8 am classes, but slept in today (Saturday), which is a free day and is feeling somewhat better now.  The first week is devoted to training as typical missionaries.  Next week's training is for specific assignments, of which there is quite a variety.  We've found missionaries going to do records preservation at the National Archives, facilities maintenance at Winter Quarters, Military Relations in Tokyo, seminary supervision in North Dakota, and Perpetual Education Fund administration in Portugal and Spain.

Our departure date was moved up from June 25 to June 21, to give us a bit more time to get settled in England before the new mission president arrives around July 1.

Note to self: the short-sleeved white shirts I bought at Missionary Mall wrinkle badly--better not to shop there again.  Fortunately England's short-sleeve season is pretty short.

Paul & Connie Prepare to Go to London

We had planned to go on our mission after Chan and Dede returned from theirs to Geneva back in 2010. Well, it takes a while to get ready, even when you've been planning on it. So, after physicals, shots, filling out resumes detailing church and other experience, and dragging Connie to the photographer (she hates being photographed), we clicked "submit" on our mission application on Feb. 2. A few weeks later we received our call to the England London South Mission, to work with a Center for Young Adults. Connie's a perfect fit for the assignment, having taught week-day early-morning gospel classes to high-school students for six years, and being fun-loving and a great cook (We hear from others that the assignment involves religion classes, food, and activities). Paul is looking forward to the food part.

It's a lot more complicated to go now compared to Paul's first mission in 1965: address change notifications, tax matters, health insurance, what to do with cars and house; at least this time I didn't have to notify the Selective Service. And visa applications for the UK--England has had several centuries more time than the US to develop its bureaucracy, and it shows--about 16 pages of forms (including questions about each child's whereabouts), fingerprints and biometric photos.

So, we are now in Utah, about to report to the MTC (Missionary Training Center) for 2 weeks before leaving for England.