List of Techniques

 We are both still dragging, but so much better than last week.  We took a walk that was a little longer in time and distance today and were happy to be out in the sunshine.  I took several pictures of a very iconic college/church in Oxford.  What a beautiful place this city is!

Look at the rosebuds - in January!

Late in the morning the elders assembled four of our newest members (young adults one and all) and one young man who is preparing for baptism.  He is currently in Norway, but will return as soon as it seems safe.  SK and I taught them how to sign on to FamilySearch, and showed them the basics of getting into family history.  They all seemed genuinely excited.  I tried to show them the app where it looks at your picture and compares your face to pictures of your family way back and then tells you who you look like.  That is such fun!  But our internet is very slow, so we missed out on that.  But I was able to show them several other things that were very well-received.

Britain has closed its doors to all travelers who cannot produce a negative COVID test within three days of travel, and won't agree to isolating for at least 5 days after arriving.  As hot spots of the new strains of the virus begin popping up all over the world, UK is battening down the hatches, hoping to slow down the spread.  All travel corridors which have been in place to allow arrivals from some countries to forgo quarantine are being closed.

There is a fear that the new strains from Brazil and South Africa are already here.  The big fear with those variants is that the vaccination will have no effect on them.  Of course, there are also fears that the travel industry will not be able to survive this latest restriction.

This is playing out like a B-grade disaster movie!  Reading/watching the news is just an exercise in anxiety.  

Speaking of movies, SK and I watched the new "Mulan" movie this evening.  It is based on the Disney animated movie and was released in 2020 - but who went to theaters this year?  It has live actors.  We thoroughly enjoyed it.  I thought it was very well done, everything from the acting to the scenery to the music.  

We got the apartment cleaned this morning - mopping, vacuuming - cleaning the bathrooms and dusting. 

I do better if I do all that kind of stuff before leaving the flat.  

The mission call this evening was so very inspiring.  Our speaker was a woman who was in the ward here in Oxford last year, so I knew her for 6 months before we went home, and then she and her husband lived in Utah for a few months and are now back in London.  She preached a sermon at Pembroke Chapel last year (The Reverend Teal's Church).  I so admire her abilities and her talents, her testimony of the Savior.  Her father was a diplomat so she grew up in Austria, Morocco, Venezuela, Panama, Philippines, and India.  With her husband and three children, she has lived in Indonesia, India and now London.  

She has a Masters in International Politics, a Doctorate in Arab Politics, and at age forty, after her youngest was in school went back for a doctorate in music.  She has taught music in high school in Massachusetts and India.  She had 30 minutes to prepare, and she taught from the scriptures, weaving in personal stories and quotes from President Nelson.  She bore a powerful testimony of the Savior and the Gospel.

Her father passed away a couple of months ago.  She was with him the last month.  In the final hours with him, she asked if she could read to him.  He answered, "Read to me from the Book of Mormon."  She opened randomly to Alma 7:23,24.  As she read this list of virtues, she realized her father had developed all those marvelous characteristics or as she called them "techniques for living a Christlike life."  

She has thought many times since, if someone could read that list when she is near death and could say of her that every one of those qualities were hers, she would die happy.

I would too.