July,
what a month to be a missionary.
President and Sister Jordan, gone.
Sort of slipped away in the night. We did have a really special lunch for the
Jordan’s and we even presented a song with special lyrics from My Fair Lady,
“I’m Leavin London in the Mornin” sharing our love and appreciation for them and promising to get them to the plane on time. President and Sister Stevens, arrived well and
happy. The Church is missing a General Primary
Presidency Counselor and the Tab Choir is missing one of its members, but we
have a new wonderful couple leading our mission. Day One they were off to meet
all of the missionaries starting with the furthest point north and working
their way down through the mission. We
shook their hands and said Hi, and that was all that we saw of them for nearly
two weeks. The life of a Mission
President is so demanding. They are so
dedicated to knowing their new sons and daughters and stepping into the
leadership roles that they now have.
They are going to be just Great!
. As PATHWAY
comes to London for the first time, the Church has asked us to wear a second
hat – Pathway Missionary Couple. Things
went really well, for about 20 minutes it seemed. The first week we had the assignment,
BYU-Idaho called to give us some training on what we would be doing. A Pathway Devotional had already been held
and a good number of people were excited about the program. In fact, before we had our training, we had
22 candidates already signed up. Then BYU-I called us to start
our training. First thing, they had us do was log onto the web site to see how the applications were going. We noted that names like Salim, Maphosa,
Espana, Oliveira, Bueno, Gomez, Massaquoi, and Luzon were signing up. During the devotional, it was explained that Pathway
is only taught in English, but that there were two versions of PATHWAY
available – a Standard
version and a Language
version for those who needed support learning in English. As we logged on, we asked where the Language version was and how do we assign students to
that course. The response from Idaho
was, “We did not make the L version
available. You are in England. Doesn’t
everyone there speak English?” A few
minutes later when we could finally control our laughing, we explained that
about 30-40% of the people in England speak English. Then you have all of the other languages from
every part of the world represented.
Immediately, they closed our training, cut the call off in
mid-sentence, and said that this had to get fixed – Right Now! They would call us back soon – when this was
fixed. We will definitely have a Standard and a
Language version of Pathway taught in London.
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| Happy 4th of July ! |
We had our July 4th celebration here in the
office. We taped up a few extra copies
of the flag, made some flag poles out of straws, and gathered all of the office
staff together to watch the patriotic presentation that our son Preston had prepared
for a flag raising ceremony he had presented as the guest speaker in Oregon.
It was really touching and a great way to reflect on the freedoms in the USA. Well done Preston!
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| Polish, Hungarian, & Chinese helping each other |
Work here is never boring. Always something new to challenge us. We are currently helping a Chinese member of
just over a year who is seeking asylum here in the UK. He is needed housing, food, support, legal
aid, and encouragement. He already feels
free from the bonds of his homeland. He
is so positive and happy. By the way, his name is Ben. We
have a grandson named Ben who is also learning Chinese. We will have to get them together one
day. Another fellow we are helping is a
Hungarian who is trying to learn English and find work. We are working with people to rewrite their
C.V.’s, guide them in their search for work, and we are dealing with people
from Portugal, Spain, Hong Kong, England, Ireland, and we even have had
requests for help from the USA. We most
enjoy working with the YSA. They are so
ready to learn and they really appreciate any help that is given. We have given many Work Choice Profile
assessments and that has given guidance and identified personal interests and
strengths.
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| Lord Mayor & Elder Baxter at Dedication |
It is not all work.
We have mentioned that one of our volunteers has been starting up her
own new business – a catering/restaurant business. She is located in a space
that is shared with a non-profit community service organization. She has been open a few weeks and decided
to have an official Open House. What an
event. Her little place can handle a crowd of 12-16 customers at a time.
We must have had 50 or 60 people show up for the Open House. The Lord Mayor of Islington was there dressed
in the robes of his position with all of the spangles and decoration of his
office. He spoke. Another person wrote a poem about the
new centre and its purpose and inviting nature of the place. We had some Jamaican men try to teach us some songs. Oh yes, they
asked me to give a dedicatory prayer and blessing on the new operation and
particularly for the restaurant. What a
day. Of course, it was topped off with
lots of very tasty food.
Just
thought of something. With all of the
new changes, there is not one senior at the Hyde Park Building that is legal to
drive, except one. That’s me. I am the only one with a valid driving
license for the UK. That will have to
change – real soon. Elder Ashby has
started his training, but you have to arrange for three hours of driver’s
training (we have a very good teacher in a local member), learn and understand
the rules, take the written exam, pass the “perception” test, and then you have
to schedule and take the actual driving test.
About a three month process. Driving
by seniors includes multiple trips to the airport to pick up missionaries, move
missionaries during transfers, and special trips to help out wherever needed
(like doing a transfer of a missionary with chicken pox who could not ride the
train J). Here are a
couple of driving test sample questions – really.
Here is one of the medical questions:
Do you suffer from bouts of disabilitating giddiness? Another question seemed serious, but it was a
bit tricky; “You cannot, should not, may not, or must not park near a zebra
crossing.” Choose the correct answer?
We were asked to help Elder Gale close a couple of flats
as the number of missionaries is fluctuating and realignment is needed. Remember, we are in England and there is NO
storage space, anywhere, so items are thrown away. So, we had furniture from two flats including
couches, chairs, tables, beds, a refrigerator, microwave, dishes, etc. (we
are voluntary missionaries, we did not sign up to be furniture movers, but oh
well….) We contacted the ward local
missionaries to see if they could find a home for the items, with no success. As we arrived to clear out one of the flats,
the Relief Society President showed up and informed us that the Bishop had just
heard from a young family moving into the ward from Spain. They needed a place to stay and they had a
very young child and a two week old baby. Nothing else. We were able
to make available just about everything that they would have needed to get
started. Such a tender mercy.
(Thanks, Charisse for sending this notice to us. Now we know what happened to summer and why our daily high is only 69 degrees at the end of July.)
One of the first wards that we presented the
Self-Reliance material to was the City Ward, a Portuguese speaking unit. After our 30 minute
presentation to the Ward Council, they went about the rest of their ward business. Of course, that was all done in Portuguese
and we had no idea what they were talking about. The meeting was very animated and comments
were coming from every single member of that Council. At the end of the meeting, we had to ask the
Full-Time Missionaries what they had talked about. Had the Ward Council understood what we were
teaching and were they ready to start one of the new courses of study? The answer was “Oh, Yes! They have grasped the principles.” They went on to explain that the Ward Council
thought the teaching was great, but that the greatest need in their ward was to
teach the ward members English. A class
has been developed and a teacher from within the ward is teaching English to a
class of about 25 every Wednesday. The
missionaries follow up on Friday evening with a workgroup and support
class. The best part of all is that we
have had one baptism so far and 8 prospective members actively participating in
the group. They are all so excited to
learn English and improve their job opportunities.
 |
| Hyde Park Flower Walk |
 |
| Feeding birds and squirrel |
Most days we get to enjoy wonderful morning walks in Hyde
Park. Close to us is what is called “The
Flower Walk” which has a gorgeous display of some very unusual flowers. This part of the park is irrigated so the
flowers are quite spectacular. The park
is about 4 miles long and about a mile wide and most of it is very
natural. We came upon one area where the
sign indicated an area of colorful and unusual birds. To our surprise, we walked up on an English
fellow who was feeding the parrots. He
has made friends with both the birds and the squirrels.
 |
| Hyde Park Gardens - Flower Walk |
 |
| Birds in both hands |
Lesson Challenge for July: My Foundation, Lesson #5. Work, Take Responsibility
“Wherefore, the Lord God
gave unto man that he should act for himself .… (and men and women are free) to
act for themselves and not to be acted upon.” 2 Nephi 2:16, 26
“Thou shalt not be idle; for
he that is idle shall not eat the bread nor wear the garments of the
laborer.” Doctrine & Covenants 42:42
For a complete lesson, see
SRS.LDS.ORG, My Foundation, Lesson #5.
In one of the mission areas, Elder J & C were preparing their investigator for baptism on November 30. Because he had some issues his baptismal date postponed. The Elders had to drive some distance for the interview. What happened was awesome! We taught him and through listening to the Spirit and through using the scriptures and being bold we helped him to prepare for baptism on the 7th of December. In the lesson he had a lot of misunder-standings that we had to help him resolve, but at one point we pointed out a scripture in Mosiah 3:19 that we read with him. Elder B asked him a great question and as we waited in silence for him to ponder and respond the Holy Ghost touched his heart and mind and he finally understood! It was so awesome to see how he taught himself from the scripture, or better how the Spirit taught him from the scriptures without us really doing a lot. We were just there to ask a question and to direct him on his way in his search for knowledge and understanding. I've probably never seen an investigator changing so suddenly from misunderstanding and stubbornness to humility and courage. It really was a miracle! I'm grateful for the power of the Spirit in conversion!!
Keep Calm and Carry On (as they say here in the UK)
Cheerio from the Baxter's.
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