TheSecondTimeAroundEngland

 It is here!  The new year that we have all been waiting for - a reset - a new beginning - a hope for better things to come.  It is odd isn't it, how we set such store by the ticking of the clock, the turning of one day into a new one, one minute into the next? Yet, it is such a wonderful time to reevaluate and to take stock.  It is a wonderful tradition - this starting fresh.  It is a delicious gospel topic....one of my favorites, otherwise known as repentance, this idea that we can be better tomorrow than we are today.  That is the great hope of my life.  At 71 years of age, I find some days that I almost despair of ever improving, but something within calls me to try, and I look for a new day, a new week, and yes a new year. We contacted 27 young adults today to let them know we love them and to wish them Happy New Year.  We received in return some lovely notes from many of them.  With COVID raging through England, it is probably the best ...

 Once again, we anticipated snow, and once again, it was COLD.  But no sign of the feathery white stuff falling from the heavens. We had a district council meeting today over Zoom.  Our district leader sent out the agenda yesterday, and it was comprehensive and lengthy.  But we still managed to finish in an hour.  It was all handled so officially and almost professionally that it - even after months of meeting with them - leaves me in awe of these young people.  We go over all the business of the day, there is a training session, another kind of a training session, and finally we account for the tasks we agreed to last week.   One of the training sessions is called a GAP.  If you have ever traveled by train in the UK, you know that as you get on and off, you are reminded to "Mind the Gap."  That means watch out for that few inches of space between the platform and the train, where, if you misstep, you could cause serious injury. I don't ...

 What a Red-Letter Day!!! We have a mail slot in our door (what a wonderful invention!) and on some mornings we hear the clink of metal in the entryway as mail is dropped through on to the floor. Here it is - Home Sweet Home #40 - and of course the slot for mail. We troop up and down these stairs several times a day....8 stairs X 4 = 32 stairs! Today was such a day.  But there were two cards put through the slot and a package on the floor outside.  The notes informed us of two packages waiting for us at the local post office.  That was an exciting way to start our day.  We got dressed and walked over to pick them up.  Was it a long walk?  Think of walking from our house on Lexington to Erin's house.   It was about 34 degrees.  That is pretty cold for two Arizonans, but I am still loving it.  SK - not so much.  We bundle up pretty well.  We have this layering thing down. SK Rejoicing About the gifts from home.  The sec...

 I was excited to wake up this morning because it was supposed to snow.  I opened all the curtains and blinds and turned on the Christmas tree lights and settled into a chair where I could see outside.  I checked my phone to see what the weather was saying.  It kept moving the chance of snow back.  I sat here doing my morning study  for nearly a couple of hours waiting for the snow, and finally gave up.  At one point, there was a 90% chance of snow!  But not a single snowflake fell from the sky. At this rate, I will be able to get some serious study and reading in.  If only I could stay awake.  I'm afraid that I'm doing what a lot of "older" people do, and that is I fall asleep whenever I sit down to read....and sometimes when we watch a movie.  Oh well. In the afternoon we went for a walk.  I think we went for all of a mile and a half.  But that wasn't bad.  It was in the 30's and there was a light breeze and it was ...

 The last Sabbath of 2020, we had a nice leisurely day, a portent of things to come no doubt.  We had our own Sacrament service, watched the ward Sacrament Meeting and participated in the young missionaries regular half-hour inspirational service for the people they are teaching.  It was all good. It is 34 degrees outside with a 50% chance of snow by morning.  We'll believe it when it happens!  But I do love the cold weather. SK has been blessing the Sacrament for us now for nearly 9 months - give or take a very few Sundays when we shared our meetings with the LeSueurs (We lived in their basement for 5 1/2 months) and the two meetings we attended here in Oxford.  He still gets emotional when he blesses it.  It is always a sweet experience. Our young sisters dropped by bearing gifts.  I was in the kitchen assembling cream puffs for them....we were going to walk over to their place with the puffs, but they beat us to it.  When anyone comes to s...

  Observed annually on December 26 in Canada, the U.K. and Commonwealth countries around the world, Boxing Day was traditionally the day employers would give their staff  Christmas presents , called "boxes," to celebrate the season.   But since the day after Christmas is now usually a statutory holiday, in our modern society, we now often give those boxes to ourselves. There you have it in a nutshell.  We haven't ventured out at all today, and I think that is probably true of many living in the UK here.  Looking out our windows, I see that it is very quiet out there.  There are usually vans and trucks out in the parking lot - but not today.  Boxing Day is typically a great shopping day, but obviously few are out shopping.  With only grocery stores and pharmacies open, there isn't that much to buy.  I imagine there was a lot of buying on internet. We were up until four last night, speaking with all of our children, and communicating with ...

 Merry Christmas! This was the one and only day when COVID restrictions were relaxed.  At midnight this evening, we officially went into Tier 4, which is quite strict.  As of tomorrow, we will be pretty much isolated. Today,  we were allowed to have people here from two other bubbles (households) but we were strongly cautioned to be very careful about socializing.  In other words they were saying, "Go ahead and have a small party, but you would be better off NOT socializing at all." We invited Angie.  She is a researcher from Dominican Republic who lives here in Oxford.  Her sister is Leticia, who was baptized a year ago.  She lived with Angie until her visa expired in March, but she was able to stay until August.  Angie was baptized shortly before Leticia left.  Her testimony is strong and she articulates her understanding of the gospel so beautifully that I keep thinking she should be teaching at BYU! Last night, we got into bed very l...

 We had a district meeting today on Zoom with our cute young missionaries.  As usual, it was conducted with great care.  Our district leader is amazing and keeps us all accountable for what we have committed to.  He is a kind and gentle young man, but he is serious about missionary work, and he is causing miracles to happen in lives of individuals.  Our ward mission leader said that we have never had missionaries who are so diligent....and we've know a few sets here in Oxford that we thought were the best of the best. They asked me to share a "treat" at the end of the meeting - a spiritual thought!  So I talked about light.  I told them how painters did not have the ability to adequately portray light until the advent of oil paints in the 15th century.  Since then they are magnificent showing light dispelling darkness.  Relating that to the Savior who is the Light of the World, we looked at some scriptures together. As soon as that was over, ...

 Dave called this morning to say they were coming to Oxford to deliver some more Christmas packages to our young missionaries here.  He said they would like to stop by and say hello.  It was so wonderful!  I thought we wouldn't see them again for a few weeks.  Christmas is important to Dave (consider that he spent his day today visiting and delivering gifts.) He had several stops to make before getting here.  They came in for about 5 minutes.  I made them a lunch to eat in the car on the way back home, and then they were gone.  They still had 4 stops to make and it was 2 by the time they got here.  I know they had a lot of things yet to do, so I asked if we could deliver to three of the stops. They were both tired and accepted the offer gratefully, even though I know Dave was disappointed because he really wanted to see every missionary in person. We took off and traveled the Newbury and back, which took a couple of hours.  It would have...

 We have been cautioned to keep the gas tank in our car full, to not let it get below half a tank.  So our first order of business today was to fill up at the superstore on the edge of town.  It takes about fifteen minutes to get there.  We got in line for the gas, which wasn't long, and then decided we would go in the store if it didn't look too busy. I had read that there was going to be a rush on all the grocery stores because the food supply in the UK has been interrupted.  With the UK deep in new surges of the mutated virus, we have been cut off from most of Europe.  No flights in, and they will not accept flights from here.  As far as I know, the U.S. has not closed its borders to the UK. The parking lot seemed pretty full, but we didn't see crowds waiting at the door.  We parked and went to the front door, only to discover it was the "out" door.  We walked around the corner and discovered a line of people that extended back to the very...

 We traveled about 100 miles today to deliver Christmas packages to the elders in Reading and Newbury.  They are cute young men and so dear.  When we got to their apartments, we parked as close as we could and then called them.  Both times the missionaries excitedly hurried out to pick up their gifts.  I am sure they received some nice things from family and/or the mission.  Each got 2 packages.  I find myself hoping that they have a very nice Christmas, and wishing I could do more. We were a little concerned about traveling into both areas which are in Tier 4 - which is essentially lockdown.  Even non-essential businesses are closed up tight now, just less than a week before Christmas.  I can't imagine what is happening to the economy in the UK. Here is the latest on travel for large parts of England (Tier 4): Unless there is an essential reason for you to travel – for work, education, medical treatment, caring responsibilities and urgent co...

 How often the Sabbath rolls around!  It is always a beautiful day. We attended through Zoom our Oxford 1st and 2nd combined Christmas devotional.  Various people in the ward sang and gave brief messages and/or scripture readings.  It was awesome to be able to assemble together but so far apart.  It brought the Christmas spirit. Later, our cute missionaries had their usual 20 to 30 minute Sunday devotional.  They always give a spiritual thought and play some music.  I so admire them, their spirit and their eagerness to lift us all. In the evening, we had our mission-wide devotional.  Dave had high hopes of gathering the missionaries from all over the mission in four groups for four separate sessions in the church at Hyde Park.  He and Deb love these missionaries and are keenly aware of the difficulties they all face.  Most of the mission has gone into a higher level of security as of today, which means they are on serious lockdown throug...

 My back kind of went out - again!  So we have been indoors nearly all day.  I have hobbled around and SK has been doing indexing.  He has a large goal to finish by the end of the year, and I am certain that he will make it. He does reviews, meaning he looks over the indexing that other people have done.  Indexing is typing into the computer what you see handwritten into old records that have been faithfully photographed record by record.  We knew several senior couples in the Copenhagen Denmark Mission who were tasked with nothing more than doing that for 8 to 10 hours daily, five days a week.   When one couple left their mission to return home, the mayor of Copenhagen provided a wonderful party for them to thank them for their stellar work.  It is truly valuable for anyone researching ancestors.  Once they are typed or indexed into a computer program, then a reviewer (SK) looks over their work to make sure it is correct, and then it go...

 One week from today is Christmas!!!  The days are still growing shorter.  It was nearly dark at 3 today..  I watch the weather in Gilbert, and see that the high is ten degrees higher than our high here in Oxford and the low is 6 degrees lower than ours.  That is not always the case, but it doesn't seem unusual since Oxford often has no more than a few degrees difference between day and evening.   We tuned into the Zoom Transfer Devotional at noon.  We were taught by 4 young missionaries, and the thoughts they shared were marvelous. One young sister quoted from an unknown source, "Our greatest weakness is not knowing our greatest strength."  She elaborated about the need to recognize our dependence upon the Lord.   A young elder told about starting his mission in Brazil, where his companion came down with Malaria.  They were quarantined for a week, without telephones or any reading material except the scriptures.  So he re...

 This was a very long day!  A beautiful one with brilliant sunlight playing down over wet surfaces.   We were on the road for several hours.  We met Dave and Deb at a missionary apartment about an hour and a half from here.  But SK was nervous that we would miss them, and we ended up waiting for them outside of the apartment for 2 hours!  I mostly slept and trolled the internet for recipes. When Dave and Deb arrived, they unloaded their van into our car with Christmas presents for the elders and sisters in our zone.  Deb asks for all gifts from families to be sent to the mission office so they can be distributed at the same time, and because it helps her to see who among the young missionaries will not have anything to open. She then wraps everything up, labels it and gets it out to each missionary.  So far this year she has purchased gifts for 22 young missionaries.  Either their families don't give gifts at Christmas or they cannot aff...

 Our district consists of the Oxford Elders, the Oxford Sisters, the Reading Elders and us.  The six young missionaries are 18, 19 and twenty-year-olds.  The Oxford Elders are the District Leaders and set up this meeting on a weekly basis.  Our district leader is from Ghana.  He is energetic and enthusiastic and makes a wonderful leader.   He has an agenda which he follows carefully (and which he sends out to each of us the night before).  It lasts an hour and is an orderly and inspiring meeting.  He assigns two missionaries to train on a specific topic for five minutes each.  At the end of their training, they give us something to do - to follow up on the training for next week.  Elder Preston asked us each to pray in private asking for specific help, and Sister Tizard asked us each to trust the Lord by remembering how good He has been to us in the past. The last few minutes of the meeting was spent discussing how these young missi...

 A glorious day!  When the sun shines here on a winter day, it seems to bathe everything in a clarifying and crisp light.  It was in the 40's when we embarked upon our walk.  We went about four miles today which is pretty good.  We both had jackets on and were nice and warm.  We tried a path along one of the Thames tributaries, but it was so muddy from the rain in the last few days, we abandoned that idea and stayed on the sidewalks along major roads. We happened upon a little shopping area that mostly consisted of home improvement stores, but there was one that I am certain is a cousin to the American "Hobby Lobby."  SK thinks it was much larger than the U.S. version but I don't think so.  SK has spent very little time in Hobby Lobby, but he was excited to conduct me through this store, pointing out the paper department, the pens and other art aisles.   On the way back we passed a little fresh produce store.  It had a gorgeous disp...