Saturday, February 23, 2013


 On February 22, 2013 our 16th grandchild was born.   Her name is Marley Vorelle Martinson and her parents are Amberly and Mike.  We were able to see our new granddaughter by Skype and it was wonderful.  We are grateful that Nicole and Sonya will be able to help out.  She weighed 7 lbs and 15 oz was 20 1/2 inches.  She has lots of hair and long eyelashes.




Two bags each


LDS Canterbury England Chapel 
Location of Chapel Forty Acres Road
 
Elder and Sister Brown from Pleasant View
Utah.  They picked us up at the London
Mission Home and took us to Canterbury.
 Very helpful in getting us settled. 
We left for London on February 4, 2013 with connections through Chicago.  We arrived in London Heathrow on February 5, 2013 at 8 am.  The Allreds picked us up and we made our way on the tube to the mission home at 64-68 Exhibition Road South Kensington London.  It is a beautiful part of London.  The mission home is part of a 5 story building that has the Hyde Park Ward and visitor center as well as other administrative offices.  We had an interview with our mission president David Jordon and his wife Holly.  He told us about our assignment to Canterbury to work with the young single adults in the Canterbury Stake and we will be living in Canterbury.  Elder and Sister Brown picked us up and took us to our flat.  Our flat is on the third floor, 34 stairs.  It is very nice two bedroom, two bath, living room and large kitchen.  The only negative is that we need to move June 1 and we do not know where.  Housing is very limited since Canterbury is a university city.  So we are working with realators to locate something hopefully as nice.  We do not have a car so we are getting our exercise.  We did get our bus passes which for those over 60 you can ride the bus for free.   Our church is two miles away and we have walked it many times.  The weather has been very cold.  We will be getting a car in March so we are managing fine.  Canterbury is an ancient city.  It goes back to the Roman era and is the birthplace of Christianity in England.  It is also the headquarters of the Church of England.  There are many universities here and there are a lot of students from all over the world.  The Canterbury ward is very friendly and excited that we are here.  We have a good group of young adults to work with.  We meet on Monday night for Family Home Evening and Wednesday night for institute.  We also meet with the missionaries in weekly training meetings and correlation meetings with the ward mission leaders.  We have been very busy getting things for our flat and adjusting to our
 Living room of our flat
 new culture.  Elder Sill is somewhat struggling with the language.  You have to listen very carefully.  We met with our Stake President and he is very excited to build up the young single adult program.  In addition to Canterbury we also will be working with the Ashford and Deal wards and will be traveling Gillingham for stake meetings.  Currently there are approximately 85 young single adults and it is growing due to convert baptisms.  A lot of the young adults move out of area during the summer and when they graduate so we will be functioning like a student ward.  These are great young people and we feel very blessed to work with them and to help them.  We have two fine elders working here Elder Yenchik from
 
Missionaries from our District on
Preparation day.  Vorelle is cutting hair.
Young adults of the Canterbury Ward
 Holiday Utah and Elder Tan from Singapore.  We love the training meetings with the elders and sisters.  They are wonderful young people and are working very hard.  We have some awesome plans to grow.  We will tell you more as they unfold.  We had our first Zone conference with President Jordan on February 21 in London and it was great to be with 100 missionaries and feel of their testimonies and strength.  It took us 2 hours on the train each way to get there and London was very crowded.  We are looking forward to Spring.  We are tired of the heavy coats.  However we are really enjoying the food.  However everything is very expensive.