Spring Has Arrived

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Albert Hall London

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Advertising London Charing Cross Train Station

London Trafalgar Square

London National Art Gallery

St Augustine Abbey Canterbury

Daffodils City Wall Canterbury

Elders Yenchik and Tan

Trifle Pettman Family Dinner



Our Neighbors at Abbott Hotel

Pettman Family Dinner Ramsgate

 The British change their clocks on March 31 to start British Summer (not day light savings).  Spring has arrived.  Daffodils seem to grow wild here.  They are everywhere.  Have not seen any tulips. 

We watched Saturday's  morning General Conference session by satellite in the chapel at 5 pm.  Then went home and watched the afternoon session in our apartment 9 pm to 11 pm.  On Sunday I went to the chapel and watched the Priesthood session at 10 am, then came back and watched the Sunday morning session at 5 pm in the chapel and then back to the apartment to watch the afternoon session on the internet starting at 9 pm.  We had several less actives and investigators at conference.  We really enjoyed it.

We had to go into London on Monday April 8 so we were able to see the advertising in the Charing Cross Train Station and buses.  The  Church is doing advertising throughout London for the month of April to answer questions about the Book of Mormon Musical which opened in London on March 22.  The Church has taken out advertising in the playbills for the Musical stating now that you have seen the Musical read the Book.  We are excited about explaining the Book of Mormon and are working with the members to distribute copies.  We took the bus from the Mission Home to Trafalgar square and went pass the Ritz Hotel where Margaret Thatcher died.  We had lunch in the St Martins Church crypt which was really nice and spent time seeing the National Art Gallery.  There are 3 museums around the mission home, Natural History, Science and Victoria and Albert.  All of the museums in London are free.  Albert Hall is two blocks away.  It is really classy around the Mission Home.  Lots of Embassies and Hyde Park is only a block away.   We will be going to the London the end of April for a meeting with our area seventy.

On Sunday April 14 we had dinner with the Pettman family in Ramsgate.  Their daughters Naomi and Olivia are in our YSA and they are delightful.  The YSA are a lot of fun to be around.  As you can see the English love desserts.  They don't use the word desserts rather pudding.  Caught us off guard when they mentioned pudding we thought "pudding" but they meant dessert.  I am driving on the left hand side of the road and eating the British way with my fork in my left hand and knife in my right.  Seems very natural.  We love the people.  The members are very nice to us.  The missionaries are awesome.  We have a district meeting every week.  After one district meeting we went into the City center and sang hymns about Easter.  After we sang we paired off and talked to people about the Church and Book of Mormon.  It was a great experience.  The missionaries are not afraid to talk to strangers and are very enthusiastic.  Love our meetings.  We are excited about our new apartment which we plan to move into after May 14.  We are working on the paper work with the Church and the Landlord.


Brother Thapa member from Nepal
Manager of Chom Chom Restaurant

 Tomorrow is transfer day and Elder Yenchik will be transferred.  We will really miss him.  He has been a great District Leader.  I will miss our Saturday Morning runs.  He goes home the end of May.  Transfers are every six weeks.  You hate to see them go.




 















Our Mission Car 2011 Vauxhall Diesel



We are on the 3rd Floor of the
 Knights Apts 44 New Dover Road

Entrance to our Flat


On March 15 we traveled by train to Gravesend to pick up our car from the Brown's.  They have completed their mission and returned home to Ogden Utah on March 16.  They were very good to us and gave us a lot of supplies and items for  our flat most importantly a printer!!! 

On March 11th, Vorelle's father, Dale Powell passed away.  We did not go home for the funeral.  His service was held in Layton.  Our children helped Beth and Andrea with the funeral and our ward provided a family dinner.  We are so appreciative of all those who helped.  Vorelle was able to share her thoughts about her Dad and they were read at the funeral service.  We know that he is with loved ones in the spirit world.


 

We will still use the buses since we have
a free pass.  Diesel is $8.50 per gal

 

 City Bus Center

Our assignment is to work with the Young Single Adults in the Canterbury, Ashford and Deal Wards.  It covers all of the southeast area of our Mission with the North Sea in the north and English channel to the east.  There is good bus service to these areas and because we are seniors we can ride the buses free, however a lot of our meetings are at night and the bus schedules are limited.  The car makes us more effective.  Also a lot of our ward members live outside of Canterbury.  All of our stake meetings are in Gillingham which is 50 miles from here.

We took six of the YSA's to the London Temple to do proxy baptisms.  It was the first time for three of them.  It was a very special evening.

We have not seen any of the tourist attractions in our area.  We are waiting for spring which is long in coming.  This spring has been the coldest in 50 years.  We have had maybe one day when the sun was shining and it was warm.  The people  here do not complain about the weather.  Everyone walks and we find people to be very friendly and helpful.  We also walk whenever we can since it healthy to do so.  Vorelle said that when we get back home we will always walk to church. 

Melissa and Amy cooking for
the Elders and Sisters in our Flat

Clockwise Elder Tan from Singapore,
Elder Yenchik from Holiday, Utah, Sister
Cleveland from Olympia, Wash, Sister Stewart
from Hong Kong, Melissa Regan and Amy Musser,
students at Kent University



Our new District

Spring is coming

Old District

Zone Meeting before transfers
Elder and Sister Brown's last
meeting before leaving for home

Narrow streets in Canterbury

Pocahontas burial site
City of Gravesend 

Spring Flowers from our friend
Katherine

Family Home Evening with
YSA

Missionary shoes all sizes and worn
out from all the walking

Canterbury cathedral from outside
the wall.  It is visible throughout
the city





 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.



At the MTC in Provo Utah

We spoke in our Ward Sacrament meeting on January 20, 2013 and had an open house at our home.  The next day we drove to the Missionary Training Center (MTC) in Provo, Utah for 10 days of training.  There are 40 couples in training with us, going to serve throughout the world.  They have put us in districts and assigned us instructors which are recently returned missionaries.  Our instructors are Elder Keddington (served in England) and Sister Clark (served in New Zealand).  They are really good.  In our district we have 3 other couples, Wire (from Kanab, Utah) going to Russia to work in the mission Office, Miller (Centerville, Utah) going to Mongolia member support and Haugen (West Point, Utah) going to Norway to work with young single adults.

 

 

It has been a very spiritual experience for us to be here with all of the young elders and sisters approximately 2,000 all receiving training before they go to their assignments. Last night we had a devotional with Elder David Evans from the missionary department.   He told us about the increase in the number of the missionaries due to the change in age requirement 18 years old for elders and 19 years old for sisters.  He told the missionaries expect to be the trainers of these new missionaries after 12 weeks in the field and talked to us about faith precedes miracles and we all have received miracles in our lives.  That we should each day note what God has done for us so can recognize his love and guidance in our life.

The MTC provides the housing and food for our stay here.  It has been great.   We start at 5:30 am and end at 9:00 pm each day.

 

Left to right Millers, Haugens, Sister Clark our trainer and Wires



CES training class.  All of these are called to serve the young adults throughout the world.

Going on a mission for the LDS church as a couple has been a goal for us since we have been married.  (45 years on July 12, 2013) We love the Savior and look forward to serving Him for 18 months in the London England Mission.  We started the application process in May 2012.  Before we submitted our application to the Church we needed physical and dental examinations which took a couple of months.  We submitted our application on August 15, 2012.

We had planned on a trip to Paris France and England as a retirement trip before I retired on January 1, 2013.  We had thought that it would be our last trip to England and Europe and Vorelle wanted me to meet her cousins in England.  So we left on September 12, 2012 for two weeks and had not received our call.  We had a wonderful trip but was anxious to know where we would be serving.  I was standing at the top of the Broadway Tower in the Cotswolds overlooking the beautiful scenery of the Cotswold when I received a text from our Bishop telling me that our call was issued and it would be waiting for us when we got back from our trip.   Vorelle did not climb up the tower so when I came down and told her the news she was ecstatic.  She asked me where I thought we were going and I said England.  Her choice was New England.  We still had a few days left to our trip so the suspense was mounting.

We came home late Wednesday and our call was not in the mail. The next day on Thursday September 27 our call arrived.  We got the family together and opened the letter.  Each of us had a separate letter and when we read the words you have been called to serve in the England London Mission we were amazed.  The date of the letter was September 25 which was the exact date we were in London.  Our call is to serve the Young Single Adult members of the Church (18-30 year olds) in the London area and any other assignment our Mission President has for us.  We enter the Missionary Training Center on January 21, 2013 for 10 days of training and leave for England on February 4, 2013.

Since September 27 we have been working to get ready.  From yard work to organizing our finances and house care, we have been busy.  The highlight was that we had all of our family together at Disneyland and San Diego during the Thanksgiving week.  We had a wonderful time being with our children and grandchildren.

As I mentioned I retired in January 2013 from Security National Financial Corporation.  The Company had a open house for me on January 17, 2013.  I have really enjoyed my career and we look forward to serving the Lord in London.