"Cynthia, That was a Comma, Not a Period!"

We've had another party!  This time it was with our Senior Institute Class.  They were a Lot of FUN!  We introduced them to Pulled Pork Barbecued Sandwiches with "Bull's-Eye" Barbecue Sauce.  They Loved it!!!  In fact they all wanted to take some home for lunch the next day.  I was a little worried that they might not like it, but it seemed to be a hit.  They also were introduced to Congo Bars--they liked those too. 

 

The funny thing that happened at the party was Byron was telling a story and I was going to add some details and as I went to open my mouth, he said, "Cynthia, that was a Comma, Not a Period."  Everyone just busted up and laughed and laughed and laughed.  It was so funny that I couldn't help it and I laughed with them.

 

Anyway this is the third time we have cooked barbecue and every time it has been a hit!  So far American food seems to be quite popular.  I made two 7-layer dips last Friday.  One was requested by one of our YSA's for her 25th birthday party.  I also made one for the ward party the same night--thank you to Lindsay for mailing my package of Taco Seasonings!!!  The stuff here isn't the same.

 

 We made pulled pork for the missionaries this past Saturday and they LOVED it!!! One of them is from France and one from South Africa.  Then our Ward Mission Leader and his wife also came for dinner and he is from Portugal and she is from Poland. We also introduced them to Hidden Valley Ranch Dressing (Thank You Lindsay).  Our daughter also sent us packages of that and we made it up and the salad was a big hit!  (It's interesting, but people over here don't get too excited about salads--I think it might be the dressings available.  I'm doing a little study on that.)

 

 We had a Mexican theme for our party.  Hazel got a piñata everyone tried to break it.

 

 

 We didn't have a blindfold, so we just closed our eyes.  Byron was twirling me around.

 

 

I was the last one to try, so I peaked and broke it! 

 

This is Tina (red) & Sue (black) they are a lot of fun.  Tina is the one who has driven us all over creation.  She has an infectious laugh.  Behind you can see our chapel.  Our chapel and cultural hall are the same room.  When we're being "cultured" it's a cultural hall, gym, recreation hall, etc. and on Sundays or other special occasions, it's a Chapel.

 

 

This is what it looks like on the outside.  I don't know who that English Bloke is that keeps popping up in my pictures.  He is kind of Cute though isn't he!

 

 

This is what it looks like inside the gate.  It's really a beautiful building.  We finally have a KEY!!!  That has been so Exciting because we could never get into the building without having to make special arrangements etc.  Now we can lock up, open up, clean up, etc. etc. etc.  We're going to start doing some Family History at the church and open it up to anyone who wants to come.  We're excited about that! 

 

We are really Loving our Book of Mormon Institute Classes that we are teaching--Byron is doing most of the teaching and I am his assistant!  We do a LOT of studying!!!  (We LIKE it!)  We LOVE the kids (Young Adults) that we are working with!  We really Enjoy them!  It's Great to be here and we also LOVE the ward members!  We just feel very welcome and that's a nice feeling.  The ward is small but the people are very friendly.

 

 

I had to put this picture in because if you look real hard, you can see a ship floating down the "street."

If you look straight up the middle and see a "white" building, that's a Big ship sailing down the Thames.  We live just to the left--not in the picture, but our flat is really close to the one in the picture.

This is the view we see almost everyday when we walk "Up" the street to go to the church, town center, the train, the bus, etc.  That Tudor building is a Pub.  The cars parked on the left are all taxis.  This is our little town.

 

Bye for now.

London--Old People's Training

We got to go to London last Monday for the Old Folk's Training!  We went "all by ourselves."  We didn't have any help, and We made it & were there Early!  It was actually quite fun.  We visited with a couple that we went through the MTC with and that was fun to trade adventures.  Then the night before Byron was looking at the list of emails of the couples who would be there, and there was a name from his past--Long Past.  His name is Nephi Chad Watt and he and Byron served their missions together back in 1965-1967.  He's from Pingree, ID and he went to high school with all my old friends from my Elementary School in Moreland, ID.  It was really fun to see him and his wife.  We forgot to take a picture of them.  There was so much going on and we had a Great visit.  It was a wonderful day with the Mission President and his wife and the other couples.  After the training the Sills (who work in our Zone) offered us a ride home back to Gravesend, but they wanted to miss the traffic, so we stayed on London until about 9pm.

 

We decided to go see Harrod's after our meeting and we walked through the back streets for about 10 minutes and this is some of what we saw.  Beautiful!!!  This is a Very Pricey part of London.  These were the Mews in olden times--another word for Stables.

 

 

It was a little wet outside. Did wonders for my hair.  ha ha ha

 

 

That's Harrod's in the background.  The most famous department store in the world!  I picked up a leather handbag to look at it and there was a sales clerk right there and I asked her for the price--10,000 pounds (the exchange rate is about $1.70) and she told me there was another one which was all alligator for 17,000 pounds!  I told her that I didn't own any oil wells.

 

 

This is inside Harrod's.at the deli counter.  In this store you can buy Mink Coats, Leather Purses, Cookies, Groceries, Dine in, Eat out, Make-up, Designer Clothes, etc. I bought a tin of cookies there back in 1985 so I could have a green bag with Harrod's written on it.

  

 

We were almost to the Hyde Park Chapel and it's next to the Victoria & Albert Museum.  That's some old English Chap who agreed to pose for me so I could take a picture of the Museum.

 

This is Yours Truly in front of the Hyde Park Chapel.  The Mission President lives right across the street four floors up.  That's some Expensive Real Estate!!!  They're GREAT People!!!  They also have a Lot of Important (VIP) visitors!

 

 

These were a group of the London Missionaries who have been performing around town.  They did a few numbers for us.  They were Cute!  There's all the "Old People" in front of us enjoying the show.

 

Sunday night we had a dinner/fireside at our flat and I fixed "Café Rio."  I think the kids really enjoyed it.  They Love getting together and socializing.  We have a problem here that the only jobs the kids seem to be able to get is retail and that means they work on Sundays and evenings.  BUT, the stores all close Early on Sunday, so we had them over to our flat and fed them.  We Love these kids!!!  We have a few more that we're seriously working on.

 

 

Flavia had to work in London but she came anyway and we still had enough food for her.  She's our Albanian Beauty.

 

 

There's the entire group that were with us Sunday night.  Great Kids!!!

 

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This is Hazel and her boys.  Sunday night I cooked "Café Rio" and it called for 5 lbs. of chicken.  Well here everything is Metric and the chicken came in Kilos.  Well I put the Entire bag in and cooked it.  I couldn't understand why there was No Liquid in the chicken.  Anyway with All the people who ate here Sunday night, I still had half a crockpot of chicken, so I invited Hazel and her boys over for Family Home Evening!  I made Fresh "Pico" and Fresh Lime Rice.  It was delicious.  They have tremendous appetites and even they couldn't finish it all--so I sent the left overs home for their son who couldn't make it.  This picture was actually taken a few weeks ago when I tried out "Pulled Pork" over here.  There wasn't a "Taste" left!  I found "Bull's-Eye" at the grocery store.

 

Anyway we're doing well--we're LOVING it over here!!!  We're even handling the rain and the walking.  Byron is suffering a bit with his shoulders.  I think it's been All the heavy "carrying" we've had to do.  We have to walk everywhere or take the bus, but that means Groceries, Computers, etc.  It's Hard on these "Old" Bodies!!!  We're getting ready to go teach Institute tonight and we're loving that!  We're teaching the Book of Mormon and it's Wonderful!!!

 

We LOVE YOU ALL!!!

Bye for now!

Lehi Came to our Institute!

Well we are really getting into the work!!!  We have been asked to work with the YSA's (Young Single Adults) and we are holding Institute every Tuesday evening.  We have over 10 YSA's in our ward and seven committed to come and Two showed up Late!  We've got some Work to do here!  The Guys who came were Great though and we really Enjoyed them.  Our full time missionaries also came and lent their support, so that was nice.  Anyway we had a Visitor and he Enhanced the lesson!!

 

The single sisters heard that we were studying the Book of Mormon and they requested to join the YSA's, but that would conflict with the program we're trying to establish with the YSA's, so we are doing it Two nights.  One for the YSA's and One for the sisters or anyone else who wants to join.  We had seven sisters come to the lesson on Wed. night during Mutual.  We found a room upstairs away from the youth and had a GREAT lesson.  Lehi came to that one as well.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The ladies Loved it as well and immediately got out their iphones and took pictures.  One of them posted it on My Facebook page.  In spite of all that, there was a sweet spirit in the room and the lesson was very effective!  We won't be dressing up every time, but it was a good attention getter.

 
 This was our last District Meeting.  We ride to train to Gillingham and then take a taxi to the church.
We had transfers last week and Lost four members from our group.  We've been getting close to them, so it's kind of hard to say good-by.  Our Brazilian, Elder Torres (who looks like he could belong to the Tirrells in our ward) is behind Byron and he was transferred.  He is such a Great Elder.  We will certainly Miss him!  Sister Som (from Cambodia) next to me was transferred and the two elders directly behind her were also transferred.  Elder Yap is from Malaysia and Elder Orr is from Alberta, Canada. 

Actually this is what it really looks like.  ha ha ha  When our six weeks is up, we make guesses where everyone will be serving and then we take pictures.  Since there are no Extra people there to take them, everyone sets their camera on a table (which doesn't get the best view) and then sets the timer on their cameras and then Runs back to their chairs.  We don't always make it.  ha ha ha  Looks like I need to sit up straighter.

Byron with Elder Torres and Elder Palmer.  Elder Palmer is from Sugar House in Salt Lake.  He's just been out 6 weeks longer than we have.  This was in Canterbury.  (Beautiful City)

This is what we woke up to a few days ago.  It's called London Fog!  We can hear the fog horns on the river.  There was a 100 car pile up on the bridge just a few miles to the North.  We can see it on a clear day.  We'll be getting a Lot more of this.

I just can't get over how BIG some of the ships are that travel down the Thames.  It's so fascinating!
I can't even get the entire ship in when it's in front of our flat.  It's too large to see it all at once in the camera.  It looks like there's the equivalent of 18 semi's side by side and who know how high they go.

We spent the day with one of the sisters in our ward who was gracious enough to be our taxi.  We spent seven hours together driving all over trying to find less active members on our ward list.  We stopped at this restaurant for one of the Best hamburgers I have ever eaten.  Couldn't resist taking a picture on our way out.  Just to give you an idea of how expensive it is over here--our hamburgers were 9.5 pounds each. (That's British Money)  Then we shared an order of fries--they were delicious but large, and we each had a Fanta.  For three of us it was $60 in our money.

 

This is one of the areas we were working in.  It was a bit chilly that day.

 

 

 

This was a good looking English Chap that we picked up on the way!  He said he was interested in our message!

 

 

This is Tina at the end of the day.  We had a Wonderful time with her and she was so Gracious to drive us all over the countryside and down the little narrow lanes.  It's truly Beautiful over here. I like having a lady driver, then I can sit in the front seat and enjoy the view.  Tina is a hoot!!  We laugh a lot!  We found people (well they weren't there) who had moved over four years ago.  I guess what I'm saying is we found their homes and talked to their neighbors and found they hadn't lived there for over four years.  We got to one door the same time the cleaners were delivering the cleaning, so they had to acknowledge us, but the person we were trying to see was on the "phone" and couldn't see us.  But we did manage to have two GREAT visits and they were worth the Entire day!!! 

 

Well I could go on, but we have a LOT to do to get ready for our next Institute lesson which is this Tues.  We've had a Very Busy week, but We LOVE It!!!

Bye for now.

More Catching Up

 

One of our callings is to work with the YSA's (Young Single Adults).  This was a service project we had a few weeks ago for a member of our bishopric who was terminally ill.  He passed away last 10 days ago and we had his funeral last Friday. His wife didn't want anyone to wear black--she wanted to celebrate his life.  He had suffered long enough.  We spent a few hours cleaning up his "garden" (yard) for his wife and son.  Our bishop is the one in the front with his hands on his knees.  Our missionaries from our ward are the ones in the middle back--Elder Torres has a blue shirt on and has black hair and Elder Palmer is to his right with light hair.  Elder Palmer is right behind the Bishop.  We do quite a few things with these Elders.

This is a view from the back coming up to the house.  It's a nice sized garden

'

This is the view from the patio looking down the garden. 

We had a baptism a week ago Saturday for a little 8 year old girl--Odu Bolaji.  Byron was asked to confirm her and he did an excellent job. 

Her parents are from Nigeria.  Her mother gave her a "baptismal party" instead of a birthday party.  She served dinner to a hundred people.  Grace runs her own day care center and invited all her children and their parents, plus Odu's friends and their families.  The ward was supportive as well.  We had Great food--she hired a Nigerian caterer.  It was delicious.  She invited all the little children to come up and sing "Families Can Be Together Forever."  She had words printed out for the older ones.  It was a Great Day!

We are enjoying our mission!!!  We still don't have a car, but because of our "advanced age," we have free bus passes.  We can go anywhere in England on the bus; however, we're not supposed to leave our mission boundaries except for the temple and inside the M25--the London Ring Route.  For the "Elderly" missionaries, we're supposed to be able to walk 3 miles--we've Exceeded that!  But there's always a Rainbow--it's helping the waistline--right now at least.

We're Happy in our flat and very Excited to be working with the YSA's.  We're going to be Institute teachers starting next week--scary!  We have around 10 that we think will support us and we Hope we can make it a wonderful experience for them!  We're teaching the Book of Mormon and we're studying like crazy!!!  I've also been trying out recipes on the Elders to see if I can make Young Adult Food over here.  We've had a few successes.  Well I have to go to bed--I'm breaking "Mission Rules" right now.  (They're mainly for the young missionaries--but I need to get some shut eye.)
Have a Happy Everyone!!!
Bye for now.

CATCH UP

Just thought you might like to see how we do our shopping over here.  We have a little cart that's called a "trolley."  It makes it much easier to get to and from the store when you have heavy items or too much to carry between the two of you; however, we forgot that we have TWO flights of stairs that we have to drag it up.

I'm having trouble posting pictures so will post some more later.

Bye for now.

  

 

 

 

The DOGS

We had an appointment to visit a couple in a neighboring town.  We had to take the train and then a Long Walk.  We weren't exactly sure how far it would be and asked a man on the street who immediately suggested that we needed a taxi.  Well since someone is being a "penny pincher, " we Walked!  Anyway we finally got to the person's house and he had Two Massive Dogs and said, " I hope you don't mind dogs.  They're very friendly!  I can put them out if you like."
Byron (Dad) said, "No that's not problem, we'll be fine."

Well we walked in to this smallish living room and the dogs were jumping up and down and wanted to jump all over us.  One was half golden retriever the other half was some kind of bull dog--a Big one.  The other dog was half border collie & half Rottweiler.  We were trying to visit with this couple, but the dogs wouldn't leave us alone.  I had on my Favorite skirt, which is a skirt of many colors and is also a very light weight soft fabric, & a short sleeved top.  They were putting their heads in our laps and licking me up and down my arms--those who Know me, know that I rarely even Touch dogs.  I could hardly stand to be by myself--I SMELLED like DOG!!!

Now if that wasn't bad enough,  I happened to look down at Byron (Dad) and he had on Dark slacks, butt they had what looked like Thick powder all over them, and then I realized that is was Hair--Dog Hair!!!  We were trying So Hard to be cordial and have a nice visit, but I was trying to disappear into the couch at the same time holding my breath.  They were constantly calling the dogs and I was trying to protect my skirt--it was Some visit!!!  They were Great people and we liked them a lot.  Next time we go there, I'm wearing Levis!!!

I thought I would post a picture of our flat from the outside.  We are on the second floor.  We look
out over the Thames--I know I've said that before, but you'll see the retaining wall in the background.
It's pretty cool!!  Definitely will be when it gets colder!!!

 

 

 

Now you see that we're actually behind the one that Brian had thought we lived in.

 

 

 

 

This is looking down the street from our flat.  I was across the street taking most of the shots.  We walk down the street to where that girl is and then cross over to her side to go to the town center and to church.

 

 

This is the way we walk to go to the grocery store.  We even bought a little "trolley" to go shopping with.  The biggest problem with that is that we have to carry it up Two flights of Stairs!!!  It isn't bad though.  We don't mind.

 

 

A week ago Saturday we were walking home from the grocery store and saw a big fire.  We decided to go and check it out, since we were on foot.  We almost got there. It was a tire fire.  When we first saw it, the whole sky was covered with smoke.  We walked a Long way but  couldn't quite make it.  We ended up an and got the history of Gravesend.  It was actually very enlightening.

 

 

This is what it looked like as we were walking.  It was actually worse when we came home from the store.  That little church you can see in the smoke is the resting place of Pocahontas.  There's a statue to her in the park by the church.

 

 

This is a view of our walk on the way back home.  We had to hurry because we had a dinner party with the missionaries and the Jacobsons that night.  I made "Café Rio" for them and they Loved it.  It was really fun having them over!!!

Bye for Now. 

A Couple of Weeks Ago

Byron & I went back a week later by ourselves and did more than this--we knew what we were doing the second time.  There is STILL a LOT of WORK left!!!  Saturday we're going to have a YSA activity and work on this garden and one other one.  It's quite an Adventure!

We had a great day at church today.  A lady came into Relief Society and sat with another sister.  At the end of the class I was talking to her and found out that she had just walked into the church because she was looking for a church and she had seen ours several times.  She said she was praying to find a church and she was directed to ours today.  We had a Great lesson in Sunday School.  We have an outstanding teacher.  She participated.  I introduced her to the missionaries before Sacrament Meeting (our Sacrament is last) and they took over.  I think she really enjoyed being there today.  She said she would come back next week with her husband and son.  She is from Nigeria and very classy.  She just moved to Gravesend from London.  I was having trouble with her name and she just said to call her MJ. (She hasn't come back--we're all disappointed.)  By the way I am playing the piano in RS & Sacramento Meeting--at least I have been the last two weeks. (Our first two weeks.) Still am.

Today Tuesday August 20, 2013 (I think) we went to COSTCO.  Hazel Jacobsen in our ward was kind enough to take us as we don't have a car.  She brought her son David, who is 14 and a very nice boy.  It was interesting going to COSTCO in England.  I was Hoping to get a few things that we can't get in the stores.  I was lucky and bought 10 lbs. of chocolate chips.  You can't buy them in the stores over here.  I was Hoping for some C&H brown sugar, but alas, it wasn't there.  The brown sugar over here isn't the same as home.  It's much dryer.  I think they just pour molasses over it.  They still had some great things and we were grateful to Hazel for taking us.  We went to Subway after.
Afterwards we went and visited a member of our ward whose husband is very ill.  She is a school teacher and it was good to visit with her.  She and Hazel are good friends.

I am still trying to play catch up from not having internet.  I will write more later--I have a story about the DOGS!!!

By for now.