The work goes on!

Spring is coming!

There is an interesting phenomenon that happens when you are a missionary. When Bill retired a year and a half ago we had to get used to the idea that everyday felt like Saturday. Now every day feels like Sunday! Sometimes that disoriented feeling plays tricks with your mind!

So right now while I am typing we get a package full of Valentine love from all the grand-kids who are currently living in our house back in AZ! What a wonderful way to start and add joy to the day! I am wiping away tears of love and of missing.

This past Saturday a sister in our ward from a part-member family was baptized. It was a great occasion. You could feel the joy from all of the family. I do have to share a very humorous incident relating to this event however.

The new Southmead Elders have never had a baptism in our building before and we have never had anything to do with filling the font. The missionaries and ward mission leader had a teaching appointment so they asked us to go over to the chapel and start filling the font for them. We did, we put in a plug and stayed around for a while to make sure that the water temp was good and that the level was rising. We nervously left the building with the water running. You can kind of see where this is going. When the members came to start setting everything up for the baptism the water was just starting to run over the top.  We had mistakenly put the wrong plug in so there was no way to get to it and let some of the water drain. An unnamed person had to strip down to the buff, while the doors were being guarded, in order to climb into the water, pull the plug and let it return to a workable level and re insert the correct plug. Needless to say we were mortified but the family of the convert now have a story to tell forever!

The rest of the weekend was great. Georgia gave a talk in Sacrament meeting. I substituted for Primary and Bill taught the Priesthood lesson. Saturday night we were all sitting in our flat busily preparing for our assignments!

Sunday evening was another great highlight of the week. Elder Alan Packer of the 1^st Quorum of the Seventy and two other members of the Seventy were presenting a devotional in Hyde Park Chapel, London for all YSA. We had already purchased train tickets for the event. We so much wanted to go and say hello to Elder Packer who was in the Stake Presidency of our Sandy Utah Stake. We are so glad we went. We invited Georgia to tag along and it was a great evening. We all three had the privilege of shaking hands with and meeting these good men, including Elder Kearon, also of the Seventy, who used to be the Stake President in Bristol.

Sunday night at Hyde  Park Chapel

The message of the devotional was the importance of Family History work as a part of The Hastening! They are traveling all over Europe giving Family History seminars and devotionals to launch new ideas and approaches to help motivate us all to become more involved. The whole message of the meeting was teaching us how to search out and share stories from the lives of our ancestors so that they become more than names and dates on a page; to help us make a connection to the people that we owe so much to.

This whole FH group of leaders had just come from Kiev. They had to be moved to a safer Hotel while they were there but they were still able to hold a seminar for members from stakes all over Russia and the Ukraine.

Of course the best news of the week is that Georgia is getting baptized this Saturday! Not without challenging opposition but with great faith and determination. I am sometimes amazed and even overwhelmed by the courage it takes to listen to the truth and then embrace it with commitment. My perspective of the conversion process has changed and deepened.

Also this week President Millar sent out an SOS! In the next few months the mission will be sending home about 5 senior couples but only 2 are scheduled to replace them. Apparently applications from senior couples is way down according to the Missionary Dept. I have already sent out to many an invitation to consider serving a mission, particularly in the London South Mission. If anyone reading this knows of seniors who would be interested, let me know and I will tell them how to get a hold of President Millar.

Our grandson Jacob encourages you to catch the wave!

Tuesday we went to Taunton and Weston-super-Mare. One of our jobs in the mission is to periodically inspect the sisters’ flats to make sure they stay tidy. We love this job, because we get to build a relationship with those lovely girls! This last transfer Elder Preece’s sister’s niece is now serving in Weston. She is a doll. I can tell she is related to the Clarks! We are so happy to be working with her!

Sister Clark, Sister Varga and me

I would like to close this week with my testimony of this wonderful gospel and the power of the Atonement! Here is as quote from Elder Bednar taken form the B of M institute manual that describes how I feel about my ability to do this work:

“‘… It is likewise through the grace of the Lord that individuals, through faith in the atonement of Jesus Christ and repentance of their sins, receive strength and assistance to do good works that they otherwise would not be able to maintain if left to their own means. This grace is an enabling power that allows men and women to lay hold on eternal life and exaltation after they have expended their own best efforts’ (p. 697).

 A quote also from the lesson by Gene R Cook:

“The grace of the Lord through the Atonement can both cleanse us of sin and assist us in perfecting ourselves through our trials, sicknesses, and even character defects. … Christ can repair our flaws and failings that otherwise are not repairable (see Genesis 18:14; Mark 9:23–24).

"Bubble and Squeak" with ham and egg...