24 November 2018

Rodriguez Family at York 

Elder & Sister E at Chatsworth

bonfire night

The Family at the Institute Building 

Tea at Bettys in York 

Well, this month has gone by so fast!  We wish a belated Happy Thanksgiving to all of our friends and family.  Of course, here in the UK…..Thanksgiving is a holiday most have heard of but is not recognized as an official holiday….so it was business as usual this past Thursday.  We are invited later today to a member’s home in Wakefield (30 minute drive) who is hosting a large number of senior missionaries serving here for a traditional American Thanksgiving dinner.  It was one of the first events we attended after our arrival in England last year.

Monday November 5^th was Bonfire Night.  It is a British Holiday commemorating the unsuccessful bombing of Parliament by Guy Fawkes.  Consequently, it is celebrated by a huge bonfire in many locales and neighborhoods with accompanying fireworks!  We all walked to the local park called Hyde Park and watched a 30 foot high bonfire followed by a 30 minute fireworks display.  The poem for the event goes: 

Remember, remember the Fifth of November,

The Gunpowder Treason and Plot,

I know of no reason

Why the Gunpowder Treason

Should ever by forgot.

Our lives have been kept busy just keeping up with all of the activities and meals associated with our assignment here at the Institute.  We are still averaging 25 to 30 attending our Home Evenings on Mondays, just a handful (1 to 4) at our Tuesday class for friends (investigators) and new members, but are maintaining 15-18 at our LDS Hymns class on Wednesdays.  On Thursdays we end up preparing meals for about 25-30 which they (mostly anyway) sign up for in advance and pay a fee of £1.50 for meal and dessert.  There will be about 55-60 here to attend the various classes taught by our Institute director Brother McMorn (Foundations of the Restoration, Doctrine & Covenants, and Mission Preparation).   This month, we have also added an Institute Choir rehearsal for our upcoming Christmas Carol Concert which will happen the evening of December 2^nd as a Fireside for the Stake.  (The First Presidency Christmas Devotional is live at 1:00 am on Monday our time—it is broadcast the following Sunday evening for the Stake).  And our Friday morning Pancake Breakfast and Devotional continues to be well attended with 15-20 showing up at 8:15 am for that class.  That means we start cooking pancakes at 7:15 am and keep them warm in the oven until everyone arrives.  Not a lot of extra sleep on Thursday evenings as it takes a while to clean up the building after the 55-60 YSAs leave at 10 pm when we close the building.  But we love it even though we stare at each other at the end of the week and are always grateful for our Saturday “Preparation Day”.   Our Friday night movie nights remain quite popular and we’ve been showing some of the Harry Potter movies this month in sequence.  They all love them.  We’ll get anywhere from 10-20 who come to these events.  Last night we had about 20 for Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and they all decided to go bowling afterwards, so they were probably out until midnight or 1 am.  They are all accepting and friendly with each other and we are grateful to serve in such a welcoming place.

          Sunday November 11 was the 100^th anniversary of the signing of the Armistice to end World War I.  It is a significant holiday here called “Remembrance Day” and rather like a combination of Memorial Day and Veteran’s Day.  Most wards in the UK held only Sacrament Meeting that day and everyone was encouraged to participate in their local community’s celebration of the day at 11 am.  Nearly every city, town, or village held a wreath laying at the monument to the war dead called a cenotaph (empty grave).  The biggest remembrance takes place in London with the Queen and Royal Family leading the service and a parade of servicemen and women marching by, a band playing, and many dignitaries laying wreaths at the monument.  The prime minister and many heads of state also participate as do religious leaders from 28 different faiths, including The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, as well as the head of each political party.  In all, it looked like about 60 or more wreaths were laid at the monument.  There was a countrywide moment of silence at 11:00 am to honor those who gave their lives.  Almost all of the families we know had a relative who served and many had one or more lose their lives.  Also, everyone wears a poppy and missionaries are encouraged to help sell poppies to raise funds for veteran’s causes.  That evening, the Leeds Stake held a commemorative fireside to honor the WWI veterans.  The whole rostrum was decorated with war memorabilia, songs and hymns were performed and several family histories were shared by those who lost family members.  It was very good and a much more reverential feel than we typically see in the USA for most such events.

          As far as Thanksgiving goes—we had a wonderful Thanksgiving week as Allyson, Billy, Cristian, Clara and Elena Rodriguez came to visit us for 4 days!  They arrived on Saturday morning and left for London at about noon on Wednesday.  In between we had a wonderful time together.  We showed the grandchildren around the Institute building on Saturday, and they had a great time exploring the many nooks and crannies of this place.  Of course, they enjoyed the pool table, table tennis and Foosball tables plus the many board games that are kept in our student lounge.  On Saturday evening we went to the German Christmas market which is set up in downtown Leeds at Millennium Square every late November through Christmas.  It was packed with people and very festive.  Lots of different food and drink were available and the girls all rode the carousel. 

          Sunday we all attended the Leeds First Ward, our home ward, where it was the Primary Program for Sacrament Meeting.  Our ward Primary is relatively small, so they invited any visitors to come up and sing with them…..so our two eldest grandchildren performed with them.  Cristian and Clara did a great job.  Elena chose not to go up, but a good time was enjoyed by all.  We spent the afternoon and evening visiting and having a nice dinner and visiting time.  We watched the Muppet Christmas Carol movie that night and read stories and scriptures and put together a puzzle of the British Isles, which helped them see where we live and where they would be going during their week here.

          On Monday, we traveled about 1.5 hours south to visit a heritage house called Chatsworth.  They have just completed a multiyear refurbishment of the building and grounds and it is very fancifully decorated for Christmas.  It was packed with visitors, but we had a wonderful time.  Each of the main rooms was decorated with a lighted tree and decorated after a children’s story.  For example, the decorations were Charlotte’s Web, The Elves and the Shoemaker, Cinderella, The Princess and the Pea, The Wizard of Oz, Sleeping Beauty, Mary Poppins, James and the Giant Peach, Bagpuss (British Children’s story), Aladdin, and The Snowman.  There was also a farmyard with live animals such as pigs, sheep, horses and chickens for the children to view and touch plus a big playground.  It had a large group of restaurants in the Chatsworth House Stables, where we had the closest thing to a Thanksgiving Dinner as it was a carvery type restaurant where you could pick the type of roast meat to be served with all the typical vegetable trimmings.  We made it back in time for our big Home Evening Group. 

          On Tuesday, we went to York and walked around the old town, including The Shambles area, where the grandchildren enjoyed visiting the 3 adjacent Harry Potter stores.  We also went to our favorite restaurant called Bettys and enjoyed with Swiss food (men) or Afternoon Tea (everyone else).  We tried to tour the Minster, but St John’s University in York was holding their graduation service that day so it was closed to visitors. 

          We are so grateful to each of you, our friends and family, for your love and support.  We wish you all a wonderful Christmas season as we remember the great gift of God’s son to be our Savior, Example and Redeemer.   Thanks for your emails, cards & letters.  We miss you all but are so grateful to be able to serve here at this time.

Love,

Elder & Sister Edvalson

Elena, Cristian and Clara at Chatsworth 

Sister E and Clara on the Carousel 

At Leeds Town Hall at Christmas Market

Great Hall at Chatsworth 

Fun times together at Chatsworth 

Chatsworth library at Christmas time 

4 November 2018

        This week marks our year’s anniversary of arriving at the Mission Training Center in Provo, Utah to begin training for our most excellent mission here in Leeds, England.  Since arriving here last November, we have greeted many new missionaries who arrive looking exhausted, confused, and too tired to be excited, but certainly eager to get to work….if only they could stop sneezing, coughing and get some rest.   “Ah, yes”, I reply to myself, “That is how I was just a year ago.”  I am certainly knocking-on-wood as I am reporting that a year later, I am feeling just fine about this adventure.  Here’s what we’re looking at now.

        The Institute is packed night and day with fabulous young single adults who are here to learn, make friends, serve others, eat some good food, read some great scripture, learn some inspiring lessons and generally improve their lives and their testimonies of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  We are merely the helpers, the mom & dad, the friends and the teachers.  We all watch and experience the many miracles together.

        The young full time proselyting missionaries are also our dear friends and many of them stop by and check in or come here to teach their “friends” or the people they have met who are taking the missionary discussions in order to learn more about the Gospel. Most of the time when they teach investigators here, it is because they are ages 18-30 or YSA age. They also bring them to our weekly Home Evening lesson/activity on Monday nights or to one of our classes or other activities.  We often attend their baptisms.  These are a couple examples:

        Charlotte is a lovely young woman who came to a few activities and I enjoyed talking about family history with her.  She came to a hymn class I was teaching about a week after her baptism which we attended.  In the Hymns Class, we do some singing and the night we came we were studying Eliza R. Snow who wrote some wonderful doctrinal hymns and we had some good singing that night.  Afterward, Charlotte came up and told me that after she joined the Church, her Mum asked her if we had a choir - possibly in reference to the Tabernacle Choir’s fame.  Wonderfully enough, we had just started a choir class. 

        A few weeks previous, I had been asked to put together a choir for Christmas and had spent much time and prayer trying to figure out how to do that.  I can organize and I know what I like, but I am not known for my personal musical prowess - that would be most of my relatives.  One day in desperation, I found all of the old programs of previous Christmas programs and searched though them looking for the someone who could lead a choir.  I just felt like if I could find someone that many of the students already knew and trusted, they would join the choir and once it was going, the new students would jump in as well.  In hopes of making it as easy for the new (unknown) person to take over the choir, I went through the Institute’s comprehensive music library and found several lovely Christmas numbers in which we had participated in our YSA days and also recently back home in West Linn.  I was ready to present the program to one of the names.  I had asked two who couldn’t do it and then I saw a name that I had heard mentioned frequently by one of the YSA here who was the choir director last year, but had moved to Spain.  She happened to be married to his brother, so I knew him as well.  I knew they were busy.  She had just started practicing medicine and he was in Med School, but I wrote a plea anyway. They wrote back immediately and were excited to do it.  The choir was born!  It was a miracle….of course.  I told Charlotte that we did indeed have a choir and we were rehearsing for 5 weeks in preparation for a concert on December 3rd. 

        Continuing in a musical vein, Tom was baptized the day after Charlotte and came to several activities - and also is interested in Family History.  He started taking some piano lessons from one of our wonderful YSA and told me he was impressed with how much music was a part of church member’s lives.  He is right.  From the scriptures we read, “For my soul delighteth in the song of the heart; yea, the song of the righteous is a prayer unto me, and it shall be answered with a blessing upon their heads.”  (Doctrine and Covenants 25:12)

We are excited that Allyson and her family will be here in a couple weeks and can’t wait to hear Cristian and Clara’s piano recital.

        That’s it for now.  We don’t have time to do too much more than prepare for our classes, activities and dinners.  As we approach the season of Thanksgiving (purely a USA holiday)  We are so thankful to be serving the Lord here in England where we both have family roots. We are thankful for our many friends and associates here and the lessons we have been able to teach and especially to learn.  And we are so very thankful for you - our dear friends and family back home. 

God bless you all and thanks for your love and friendship.

Sister and Elder E.

 

Happy Halloween 2018

Some of the gang

All together!

A morning in Leeds