Our "REAL" Mission Life

So much of what you see on our blog looks like we are tourists rather than missionaries. We are sensitive to the fact that it may appear we are playing all the time, which is so not true!  Missionary work is just that . . . work!  Generally speaking, we only take our camera along on P-days and we do indeed try to play on that day each week!  Our blog should probably be titled "P-day activities."  It’s difficult to take pictures of phone calls, visits to less actives, "teaches," baptisms, flat inspections, scripture study, lesson preparation, meetings, and many, many prayers. Plus we spend 40 hours each week in our camera room at the archives, which we’ve already documented in pictures previously on our blog. But these are the things that make up 90% of our mission life.  This post shows a flavor of some of our actual missionary life.

We completed our mission president's challenge to read the Book of Mormon together in three months underlining all references to Christ (including pronouns) in one color and direct quotes from the Savior in another color.  Any guesses as to those numbers?  We underlined 5,922 references to Christ and 197 direct quotes from the Savior.  It was a thoroughly enjoyable exercise and highlights how Christian we really are!

"T" and Sister Iverson in front of T's favorite picture.  We've spent many an hour with T and love her good heart, honesty and commitment.  Her life has been horrific but she has come through without bitterness or self-pity and wants to return to full church activity.  It's been a long, difficult process but she is winning!

Here we are at the New Haven harbor on the Firth of Forth.  This night we celebrated T's 58th birthday together at a little restaurant overlooking the water.  T insisted that she was treating us to dinner for her birthday (no small sacrifice for her!) and we enjoyed a long, wonderful evening together.  She will be a forever friend.

More forever friends . . . Peta and Hunter, mother and daughter.  These are less active new converts who are struggling in so many ways.  But the spirit and love between them and in their tiny little flat makes us look forward to any opportunity to spend time with them.  Our prayers get longer and longer each day as we work with more and more people in Edinburgh (and continue to remember our family and friends back home).  It's the contacts at nights with good people like these after our tiring days with old books at the archives that give us extra zip and energy.

      

This night the senior couples in Edinburgh and our mission president and his wife (first couple on left) welcomed a new senior couple (not in picture) to the mission from Cache Valley, Utah at Ratho Carvery.  The senior couples and senior sisters in our mission are diminishing in numbers since we arrived and not being replaced at the same rate they are leaving so getting a new couple is a BIG deal and exciting!  An event the mission president got us together to celebrate!

 

YSA Training in Dundee in June 2010.  Two of us (couples) from the archives were asked by the mission president to attend special training for the European Outreach Initiative about Centers for Young Adults being established throughout Europe and the UK.  The couple in front flew from the Area Offices in Frankfort, Germany to do the training and a newly called Area Seventy from England came along for training himself.  The four of us joined the new senior couple who just arrived and were called to fulltime CES work in Dundee.  We received lots of new information about the inspired vision for the YSA program in Europe and enjoyed a spiritual feast from our new Area Seventy.  At 42 years old, he has already been a bishop, stake president and now an Area Seventy and he's eons ahead of us in scriptural knowledge and tapping into the Spirit.  He opens his mouth and pure love, warmth and Spirit enters the room.  We met with these three good people again in Edinburgh the following night for more training with our Edinburgh stake leaders and felt so blessed to have been included in this training.  We love our YSA kids in our Sunday School class and find them the most hopeful and refreshing hope for the Church in Scotland.  Great kids!

The Young Single Adult program here is being heavily emphasized.  Scotland has qualified for YSA Centers in Edinburgh, Aberdeen, and Dundee, and Glasgow will soon follow.  But we only have the new couple called as fulltime CES missionaries.  So the Centers in every city except Dundee, must be assigned to senior couples who have other assignments (like archives).  We are not that couple in Edinburgh but were trained because of our YSA assignment in the ward here.  These young adults in the Church are desperately needed for church leadership now and in the future and the hope is that these Centers will contribute to more temple marriages and more of these kids' friends joining the church and building up the Kingdom throughout Europe.  To illustrate the need, in our huge Edinburgh Ward, our elder's quorum president and ward executive secretary are both single RM's, ages 24 and 25, respectively.  Other members of our YSA Sunday School class have been called as Primary workers and YW advisors since we arrived.  Our new counselor in our ward mission presidency is 18 and waiting to serve a mission after his birthday in December.  Another elder's quorum president in the stake is also a single RM and just home from his mission.  All of these are active YSA participants.  Our bishop is age 27 and has been the bishop for 2 1/2 years and our stake president was called at age 31 (now 32).  There is a huge need for priesthood leadership here, as in so many places throughout the world, and the church is focusing on these young people with tremendous support and resources so they will be prepared to carry the load.   

The Highlands get the press but the Scottish Borders have our heart!

You can't drive anywhere in Scotland without falling in love with this gorgeous green country of rolling hills, rivers and lochs. And there is no where we've found to love more than the Scottish Borders just south of Edinburgh. We can't drink in enough of it! But in addition to this country's beauty, we are noticing other wonders of Scotland. There are NO mosquitoes and very few insects of any kind. We've scratched our heads all spring and summer trying to figure out why. They have NO screens on their windows and we don't need them! It's totally amazing to us to eat a picnic outside without a fly to bother us. We have encountered midges once, but nothing more. We marvel daily at this bug-free environment. Scotland also grows few weeds and we can't explain that either. It seems like the flowers grow and the weeds don't! In places, it really does look and feel like the Garden of Eden. The summer days have been warm, but never hot (which suits us just fine as we're not big heat-lovers) and the daylight hours are lengthy. This week of the summer soltice, dawn breaks and the birds begin to sing at 3:30 a.m. and it is finally totally dark at 11:30 p.m. Another plus for Scotland is their delicious tasting, naturally soft water . . . at least in Edinburgh. The clouds overhead are also especially big, fluffy and pretty. I love looking into the Scottish sky when it's not totally clouded over. Lots to love about Scotland in the spring, summer and fall. Not so much in the long, dark, cold days of winter. Too bad our mission didn't cover two summers and one winter instead of the reverse!

Can you imagine a more beautiful or peaceful scene than our picnic spot last Saturday (P-Day) along the River Tweed in the Borders?

Stone houses are the norm here and we've grown to love them. This was near the River Tweed in the Borders and is one of our favorites. The castles and palaces are fun to visit, but we would never want to live in such massive, cold homes. The little stone cottages with their many chimneys, slate roofs, and quaint styles are what we love.

And here I am in the Garden of Eden. Someone built a convenient bridge to cross the stream, but otherwise, it felt like I had stepped into a very familiar film that we all see regularly if we hold the right recommend.

Ash Cloud Covers Scotland - April 2010

When Iceland's volcano erupted, Ireland and Scotland were blanketed sooner and more than most other affected countries because of their proximity to Iceland. Who would ever have thought that volcanic ash could stop or disrupt air travel throughout the world, but it did just that for nearly a week in mid-April. As the cloud covered the UK and spread over Europe, travellers were stranded all over the world.

Our stranded guest was this international school teacher here in Scotland on holiday for spring break from her school in Moscow, Russia. Dawn lives in the same ward as my brother and his wife and family in Moscow and had taken our phone number for "emergency purposes" from him (with our encouragement) before she left to come on holiday here. We met her at church the Sunday before the ash cloud became an issue and enjoyed a fun Sunday dinner with her at our flat. When she got stranded in Scotland a week later, we were the only people she knew in the country and she came to stay with us for the next five days while she waited for air travel to resume. My brother and his family were stranded in Utah where they had been for spring break trying to get back as well. Nearly half of the teachers in Dawn's school were stuck somewhere else in the world when school resumed in Moscow, but so were many of the pupils. The cloud closed Edinburgh airport on and off for the next month, but never for 5 days solid like that first week. We acquired a new friend and even took Dawn to the archives one day to help us paginate books so she wouldn't go nuts just waiting the time out.

This Microwave was meant to be!

Our flat is quite nice, but didn't come overly well-equipped for a furnished flat. One of the more essential things missing when we moved in late last November was a microwave. Yes, you're right kids, I do now consider a microwave essential! We tried for nearly two months to get the owner of the flat to provide one for us or let us go buy one and deduct it from our monthly rent. No go! I finally put my foot down and declared that I wasn't going to live for the next 16 months without a microwave so we went on a Tesco shopping trip. Below is the interesting story of our purchase.

We found one we liked on sale (low wattage and small by US standards but all we need here) for a good price (25 pounds or about $37) kicking ourselves all the time for doing without for so long at that price. We bought it along with other things and went home to enjoy our purchase. The next day as we filed the receipt for warranty purposes, I noticed that we had been charged twice for the microwave. So with receipt in hand, off we went to Tesco again to get one of the purchase prices refunded. Once again, we bought other things, paid for everything and left the store. A few more days went by before we got around to filing the microwave receipt and when we did, I noticed that this time we had NOT been charged at all for the microwave! How unobservant could we be? We laughed realizing that as new residents of Scotland, we were busy figuring out how to use British money when we should have been paying attention to the checker as she checked us out. We took our very lengthy receipts by now for the third time to Tesco's service counter to explain that first we paid double and then we didn't pay anything for our microwave. The employee kindly replied, "Oh it's our policy that if you get double-charged for an item, you get it free!" We smiled knowing all along that having a microwave provided in our flat was meant to be.

BYU Ballroom Dancers in Dundee 11 June 2010

The BYU Ballroom Dance team came to the UK for the international ballroom dance competition in Blackpool,  England.  As they have in so many years, BYU took first place in the competition and then went on to tour the UK. 

The Edinburgh and Dundee Stakes sold tickets to see the dance team at Whitehall Theatre in Dundee.  All the senior missionaries in Edinburgh went north to Dundee and watched this program.  It made us proud to be Americans, proud to be connected to BYU, proud of Church standards, and a tiny bit homesick! 

Entertaining program and a very fun night!

On the way back from Dundee, we went through St. Andrews.  This time we found the famous golf course.  Pictured above is the 1st and 18th hole on the "Old Course" - they share fairways and play it both directions.

This is where the 18th hole tees off.  Behind is the green for the 17th hole.  Beyond that is the fairway and the "Old Course Hotel."

 This is where they filmed the running on the beach scene in "Chariots of Fire."  It is on the Firth of Tay (where the Tay river meets the North Sea) and runs right next to the "Old Course" golf links at St. Andrews.

We had read about the "Secret Bunker" and while we were near it, thought we ought to discover it.  Well, it is not so secret now, but for 40 years it was and it was the headquarters for the Scottish government's preparation in anticipation of the Cold War moving to HOT - i.e. NUCLEAR WAR.  All but the entrance was underground and reinforced in 10 feet of concrete, which in turn was reinforced with tungsten steel - three levels, very interesting and in operation from 1953-1993.  The bunker is located in the middle of fields way out in the countryside not far from St. Andrews.

On the way back to Edinburgh, coming down along the North Sea coast, we always pass the train bridge, built in the mid-eighteen hundreds.  Very picturesque as it spans the Firth of Forth against a background of Scottish clouds.

Royal Botanic Gardens in Edinburgh - 5 June 2010

We chose a sunny Saturday and went to downtown Edinburgh and found we had entered the Garden of Eden. And best of all . . . the Botanic Gardens are always free! If we had more time, we would go weekly to see the changing blossoms and trees.

The rhododendrons all over Scotland in the spring are incredibly beautiful and prolific. We could crash the car noticing them along the roadsides as we drive along. But those in the Botanic Gardens were of every variety and size and color. A gorgeous colorful flower that I wish we could grow in Utah.

The guide on our tour told us the name of these blue flowers but we have promptly forgotten. Just know that they are the bluest flowers we've ever seen - noticeable and striking because of their unique color.

Another variety and color of rhododendrun.

Ned did a great job capturing these flowers on the camera. This is my favorite color and variety of rhododendrun of them all! We will go back to the Gardens and see what blooms later in the summer. The Gardens are a real treasure in Edinburgh . . . an oasis right in the middle of the city and in one high spot, you can see Edinburgh Castle framed amongst the trees.