TheSecondTimeAroundEngland

 Being the cooking genius I am, I decided to make some more Carmelitas with the left over caramel dip I made a few days ago for the Reverend Teal lunch. I have had the caramel dip in the refrigerator since Monday and it was still lovely and delicious, but way too thick. So I heated it slowly and added about half a cup of light whipping cream. I made the oatmeal base, baked it, pulled it out of the oven and poured the caramel over it. It didn't soak in or sit on top....it just flattened it - completely. Undaunted, I crumbled the rest of the oatmeal on top and put it in the oven. A few minutes later, it occurred to me that I hadn't put chocolate chips on! I removed the pan from the oven, poured the chocolate chips on top, and stirred them up ever so gently (not wise), and ended up with-  mush. Soup. Oatmeal swimming in a sea of caramel and melted chocolate. I put them in the oven, and they baked for maybe an hour. Every time I took them out the entire pan jiggled like jello. Whe...

 It was difficult to settle down last night. The events of the day were so marvelous, and the miracles and the tender mercies of the Lord were had in abundance.  Which is why I expected that today would be kind of a down time....you know - time to process yesterday, and to settle down a bit. And it was a leisurely day. It was nice and easy. I cleaned a little (I am cleaning with more attention to detail these days - I know how fast two months is going to go - it is actually down to one month and 29 days!), because someone new will be coming in to live here in a few weeks. Yes, there is a couple who have been called and will be coming in early September. I spent awhile reading and grading assignments and then got serious about preparing a lesson/discussion. It was a beautiful one about how the Savior served and serves one by one. In the evening, during the class time, I asked the question, "Have you ever had an experience that confirmed that God and His Son Jesus Christ know yo...

 This seems like an appropriate time to use the old Danish saying that SK is fond of quoting: "To meet and to part is the way of life." There were several goodbyes said today, but it was a sweet day nevertheless. I went to bed last night at 2 a.m., and was up by 7:30 and I am dragging, but it was a such a lovely day that I didn't really feel too tired. I spent the last hour wrapping every cookie in plastic wrap.  It rained through the night and even when I got up this morning the forecast was 80% rain. I kept checking the weather app to see if perhaps the miracle had happened (the rain stopping so we could eat outside for our picnic.). Dave has great faith, and he works as hard as he can to make those miracles happen, but all the while trusting that the Lord will do what He will do. Dave and Deb came over around nine and then walked to Pembroke Chapel. We followed a half hour later. The problem is that when I wear a dress, I just really can't wear heavy-duty walking s...

 Rain, rain, go away. Yes, this is me speaking....the rain lover from way back. It has rained much of today and it has indeed, been glorious. But we need a miracle for tomorrow. I think we may have closer to 60 people at the meeting with Reverend Teal, who will train for nearly 2 hours. That is amazing. The plan was for everyone to pick up sack lunches and walk over to Christ Church Meadow, which is right across the street from Pembroke College. This would be done midway between 10 a.m. and 4:00 p.m. It sounds like a wonderful plan, and on one of those past perfect days it would have been....well.. perfect. I am pretty much expecting a miracle, truly. Whether that miracle comes in the way of a perfect day showing up instead of constant rain, or whether we find a great indoor place to let that many people gather to eat - during a time when we are not allowed to do that indoors, it remains to be seen. Perhaps we could eat through lunch and then hand everyone a sack lunch on their way...

One of the sweetest pleasures here on June 26, 2021 is standing in the kitchen fixing food, with the window open, feeling a cooling breeze wash over me, the clean crisp air whispering through the kitchen. Its one of those simple joys, and I love it. Rain is predicted for the rest of the week, with temperatures in the 60's. For the first time in several days we took a walk! Life seems to get away from us....me mostly, and I deal with things by taking care of the most pressing things first...focusing in on them and only them. So I let all kinds of things go in the meantime, and when an event is over, I dig myself out and deal with everything that I have on hold. So this coming week, I have a large stack of papers that need attention and some filing to do. I did some cleaning, and some baking. I made carmelitas yesterday and refrigerated them. Today, I cut them up and put them in little bags. They are the size of a small brownie and they are rich. But they look so puny. With the way p...

 Uneventful and productive is the way I would describe this day. I spent three hours cleaning the oven and the racks. I didn't use oven cleaner. I used a sponge and baking soda. I feel better about that. The fumes of the industrial stuff get to me. I am grateful to have that done. Little by little, I am trying to get this place in shape for someone else. Dave said that he had word that a couple will be coming in on September 6 to replace us. I am so glad. They really need a couple here to provide a sense of stability. We have so few in town now, and there will be fewer next week as more will be leaving. But come October, I am certain that there will be an influx of students that will make it very exciting to be here. It has been a beautiful day, with temperatures getting slightly uncomfortable if you expend any energy at all. That lasted a couple of hours, and then the temperatures dropped down again. As you can see, we will be having rain for the next few days, which should make M...

 Fifty-three years ago, we knelt across the altar in a Salt Lake Temple Sealing room and were pronounced husband and wife. If you had asked me then, I would have said, "We'll never be married that long!" I couldn't even imagine what it would be like to be age thirty, much less seventy-two, and it was certainly beyond my comprehension what it would be like to pass away (as it were in a dream) - fifty-three years of married life. It has been a grand adventure. We are still learning how to be married, and to be one yet separate. The mission in combination with COVID has really upped the learning curve. SK started the day by following the elders over to Whitney where they left their car to be serviced. He brought them home and then went to the grocery store. In the meantime, I was fixing lunch. Our two new Young Adult reps came over at noon to have lunch with us and to have a planning session for the next two months. Emma and Trish are both amazing young women and will be...

 Surrey - it says on the map - is a "designated area of outstanding natural beauty." What an understatement! We were in the county of Surrey the better part of the day. We wanted to make it worthwhile to spend the money to stay overnight. SK looked on the map and found a place called "Hastings" nearby. I use the term "nearby" somewhat casually because it was within thirty miles (as the crow flies) of where we stayed, but there was no simple way to get there. We drove through some of the most beautiful forested areas I have ever seen. We both kept exclaiming about it, because we couldn't not. The greens, from light yellow green to the deepest darkest forest green was enough to assault your senses. The trees are magnificent. The shrubs that line the roads, sometimes 12 or 15 feet tall are thick and dense, and would clearly be the winner in a tussle with a car. Sometimes they were dotted with pretty colorful flowers and other times just massive walls of l...

 Late last night as I turned on the computer to write the events of the day, the computer just kind of checked out on me. It wouldn't connect with the printer, it wouldn't show me my email, and it wouldn't let me sign in to the blog! I had hoped to have an entry every day that we served, but oh well. I think I'm doing OK with this. Briefly, yesterday I made taco pileups for Family Home Evening. We had ten people there, and had a grand time. Two were completely, utterly new to the church. One of our young women had run into an old classmate and invited him and his friend to join us. They were quite fun.  We got to the church, set up tables, set out the food, and dished up our plates. We sat at four tables set up in a square, so that we were a fair distance from each other, but were all able to hear and see everyone as we ate and talked. Everyone was having such a fantastic time talking that we didn't even take out the new games we brought (which we were pretty excite...

 This was a day among days. Sundays are always lovely, but today was even better. Oddly enough, we attended on Zoom. We go to church in person every other week. On the odd weeks the 2nd Ward meets. We would very much love to attend both wards, but they are always at the same time, and we would have to miss one or the other. Since nearly all of our young adults attend the First Ward, that is where we are on Sundays. One of our young adults spoke in Sacrament meeting. She is on the last lap of her PhD, and she has been swamped. She grew up in Haiti and went to school in the States, specifically Harvard as I recall. I love her dearly. Today, she spoke about her conversion, which happened about six or seven years ago. She wove the story of her search for a relationship with God seamlessly into the knowledge we have of God our Father in Heaven. She went back and forth from her desire to know more, to why our Father loves us so much. She showed a clip of a bible video from the Church. It...

 It has been cool and has been raining on and off throughout the day. SK and I went shopping this morning to get a few things for dinner this afternoon with our district. We also went over to the church on St. Thomas where we each filmed a video of less than a minute for Dave and Deb. Their daughter asked each missionary to film something that they learned from them. Happy to be a part of that, we filmed and I will submit our film in just a few minutes. Elizabeth has a huge task in front of her. There should be well over 300 missionaries who will submit a short video. That could take a while to watch. It was glorious to be outside again. We walked not quite two miles but that felt good after a week of inactivity. It is so very lovely here. When we got home, the elders called to ask if SK could possibly give them a ride to a family's home on the outskirts of town. SK happily complied and then stayed with them until they were ready to return. The family ended up feeding them a Brazil...

 SK has just left. He will pick up the sisters, and meet the elders at Angie's flat. She is so cute. She has been planning this for weeks. She wanted to fix all the missionaries a dinner of Dominican Republic food. We ate there once with Leticia - her sister. It was excellent, and food that we hadn't tasted before. They will spend a few hours there just enjoying each other's company. I will work around here - preparing a few things for the meal for our district tomorrow, and beginning a book I have been wanting to read. I need to write some letters too. More people leaving Oxford and I like to write out by hand what they have meant to us. Maybe when SK gets home we will watch a movie if it isn't too late. We haven't done that in weeks and weeks. Nights are our busiest times it would seem, and it just doesn't seem right to sit down and watch a movie when the sun is up. Tomorrow we will walk to one of the nearby stores to pick up some things for the dinner. I'...

 I have nearly finished with a task that I have been meaning to do for some time. The carpet here is beige-colored, and all around the apartment, where it abuts the wall is black. I don't know what exactly has caused that, except in some cases the pad beneath is black and shows through. In other places I think it is dirt, a slow-buildup of dirt that was never quite cleaned thoroughly. I have scrubbed with carpet cleaner and have improved it greatly, but it is still dark around the edges, and I think will never come clean. Several loads of laundry and work on my lesson. The lesson this week is about Jesus Christ between His death and resurrection, and temple work. I love it!  This little apartment is kind of - well - little. I'm looking forward to freedom on Saturday. In the meantime, (don't tell SK), I have been perusing buying sites online and have placed a few orders.😉 But I've also been planning several meals that will be coming up next week. One more full day and n...

 The time is passing, and I keep thinking of things I want to do - out and about Oxford. But it hasn't been bad. The temperature got up to 81 today, and right now, 20 minutes before sundown, it has dropped to 73, on its way down to 61 at sunrise - which will be slightly over seven hours past sundown. We are days away from the longest day of the year, and it is interesting to see just how much light there is. I remember in Denmark being amazed at the look of twilight at 11 p.m. and how that same kind of a twilight lurked in the skies an hour before sunup. The nice things about it here is that as soon as the sun drops down low, the temperature begins to as well. Now that we are past today's high temperature, the next ten days will see high temperatures in the 60's and high chance of rain (Friday is 100%). SK walked to the mall this afternoon to return a dress I had ordered. I loved the fabric, and the style, and it fit. But who wants to walk around looking like a potato sack?...

 As you might imagine, it has been an uneventful day. I got a lot of laundry done, cleaned and organized a couple of drawers. Did some reading. Finished up preparations for the lesson, which I gave from here in the apartment with its "unstable connection." Despite the weak internet, the lesson went off without a hitch...a miracle.  I used basic PowerPoint - nothing fancy like videos, and everything worked!  I'm so grateful. The comments people make are incredible. There is a young woman from eastern Europe who served a mission in Russia and who is now a young wife and mother to two little girls. She is taking Pathway to receive and education and she is such a source of faith and testimony in every class. There is also a young man from Zimbabwe who has to be one of the most spiritual twenty-two-year-olds I have ever met in my life. Every time he makes a comment, I think heaven has opened up through him. There are so many wonderful people. I feel very blessed to be a part o...

 Day one down, and four left of staying in this flat to go. I am still in a state of confusion about this. There is no phone number, only the orders to be quarantined. The phone app gives a lot of links with a lot of information about COVID but I can find nothing about what to do if you have been exposed. I guess the quarantine is a good idea to keep it from spreading, but I wish they could tell me exactly where and to whom I was near to be now under house arrest as a possible risk to the general public. I think I will spend some time again tomorrow trying to find out more about this.  Boris Johnson made his announcement tonight. The restrictions will not be eased for at least another two weeks and perhaps longer. In two weeks they will reassess to see if the new variant - which is responsible for the overwhelming majority of new cases in UK has quieted down. In the meantime, the National Health Service will double their efforts to see everyone over eighteen is vaccinated with...

Sundays are always a boost. We went to church in person today, along with perhaps 40 other individuals. We got there in good time because compared to the last week with the streets thronged with people and cars, it seemed like a ghost town. Perhaps everyone was hung over from a night of celebrating. We heard some ugly rumors today. Apparently there will be an announcement from Boris Johnson tomorrow about COVID restrictions here, and from all indications, it seems that we will be told that current restrictions will be in place for another 4 to 6 weeks. That means millions lost on a daily basis for businesses around the UK. Here is the latest news release: The Prime Minister is expected to announce a delay to the lifting of lockdown restrictions tomorrow (June 14) amid growing concerns about the surge in cases of the highly transmissible Delta variant. Boris Johnson is expected to delay the June 21 deadline by up to four weeks when he meets senior ministers and officials on his return f...