Edvalsons in England: 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.