Mission Christmas Holiday! - Part 2

Town Hall Interior

So as poor, lost expatriates we are managing to survive the Christmas Holidays away from home.  Lest you think all we do is play, we do put in a full day at the Mission Office each day.  But we do try to savor the culture of the Yorkshire area.  As it got closer to Christmas, we realised that this is the home of most of our cherished Christmas images.

Leeds Town Hall

As Christmas grew closer we went back into the city to the Leeds Town Hall to see a production of Handel's Messiah.  It was, of course, beautiful.  I was whistling those tunes for days. 

Christmas was getting close.  On the Tuesday before Christmas we had the mission Christmas Party.  President and Sister Lindley spent a great deal of effort to bring the entire mission together for a day.  It was held at the RAF base in Harrogate. That base is host to about 2,000 USAF personnel and welcomed our group of about 140 missionaries to their facilities.  The young missionaries love to be together and enjoyed an opportunity relax a little.  In the morning they bowled and played various sports.  In the afternoon was some entertainment and fun.  In the evening we dressed up for a lovely dinner and the movie, "It's a Wonderful Life."  It was great fun.



We gathered a few of our friends around us!



So I guess you can see that we are filling our time.  We do miss our family and friends but we are enjoying the wonderful experiences here.  The greatest of which are the wonderful people we meet.  For our Christmas dinner we enjoyed the company of a missionary fron Scotland, a missionary from Germany and a young man from South Africa who had just joined the church. We fed them Mexican food (my request).  We had a wonderful time and then talked to family on Skype. So we continue to totter on in our retirement having experiences and blessings we could not have imagined.  We love our Savior and rejoice in His gospel! 

Missionaries

Catching up

We love to see the young elders and sisters!   They are so dedicated to the work and inspiring.  They work and study so diligently and love to get together.  Zone Conference was great!

Serving one another

Sweet Sisters

One of the most enjoyable parts of being here in England is our association with the young people who have been called as missionaries here.  They come from many parts of the world and are dedicated and purposeful.  It is amazing to watch these young 19-25 year-old people be so self-sacrificing and noble.  I know they are just regular people, but they push themselves from a deep faith in God to become more than regular.  They overcome discomforts like cold, damp weather and long, hard days trying to get people to listen to their message.  They learn to live with a companion.  We love them!

Our House

Lorraine in the front garden

Is a very very fine house..just like in the old Beatles song. It is tiny and kinda like a doll house. We have a tiny frig and freezer and a washer/dryer combo that both washes and bakes our clothes into a mass of wrinkles. The kitchen is so small that we have to move in and out one at a time.  We have some delightful intimate moments as we clear the table and put the dishes in the sink.

There is also a living room and a dining room on the ground floor.  They are pleasant rooms with nice, rounded corners and substantial window coverings. We enjoy views into our garden both front and rear.  In England we don't have yards, we have gardens.  Since our building is semi-attached (that is we share a wall with the house next door),  our garden is not very large.  It is more garden than we really want to maintain, but we get to maintain it anyway.The plants stay green most of the time.  It is always slightly damp everywhere.  Even the concrete walk stays green (moss).

Crazy washer/dryer

String pull light switch

As you walk in our front door, you can walk to the right and go up the steep stairway to the second floor that has three bedrooms and a bath.  The third bedroom is a 5 by 8 closet that has a single bed in it so it IS a bedroom.  The bathroom is nice but one difference is that there are no light switches or electrical plugs.  You turn on the light with a pull switch that comes down from the ceiling.  Evidently we feel that a wall switch in the bathroom might create an electrical accident...makes sense.

Kitchen to front door

Down stairs to front door

Living room (TV is not connected to anything-just DVD)

Dining area

Our house is on a hill so that we can look down into the valley created by the River Aire and is in an area called Kirkstall. The area is named after Kirkstall Abbey which is a beautiful 12th century abbey built by Cistercian monks.  Of course there are only ruins of the abbey remaining.  We love to walk there in the mornings.

Driving on the RIGHT side

   One of the activities I have been challenged by and enjoyed is driving here in England.  I have always enjoyed driving.  We put lots of miles on our cars at home and as we came here I was looking forward to the challenge of driving on the "wrong" side of the road.

   Looking back a little,  I had an infatuation with British cars as a young man.  We had a Rootes Group Hillman when I was in high school and enjoyed the British attention it attracted, especially after my Dad painted it a bright green (not British Racing Green, a bright ugly, not very shiny green).  I later had a white 59 Austin Healy Sprite (Bug Eye) and I captured my bride with a beautiful, red 57 Austin Healy 100-6.  So I looked forward to driving in England.

   Our car here is a Vauxhall Meriva. It looks like the one below.  It has a diesel engine and except for a dead spot when you accelerate from a stop, it goes pretty well.  The hesitation is a distinct disadvantage when you come to a ROUNDABOUT!

A roundabout is the British concept of an intersection.  During my first forays the roundabout was a major point of trepidation.  Here I was, driving on the wrong side of the street and steering from the wrong side of the car and I approached what seemed to me to be the Carosel of Death!  As you approach a busy roundabout you look to the right to see if there are cars coming (cars from the right have right-of-way).  When there is a break you accelerate into the roundabout in 2 or three lanes.  If you want to turn left you must align yourself with the first exit.  If you want to go straight you must find (usually) the second exit.  If you want to turn right (an American left turn, except to the right because, remember you are steering from the right side of the vehicle) you align yourself with the third exit which is three quarters of the way around the roundabout.  I know you should use your turn indicators in some way but I haven't mastered that quite yet. 



After a couple of weeks I got the rhythm of it and now I am a proponent of the roundabout.

Anyway, driving here is fun.  I can never relax and drive, I always have to be focused.  Lorraine is having fun being the navigator.  She has not yet driven here, she is content to be the control force from the side seat.  We make a pretty good driving team.... 

Kirkstall Abbey

We love to go walking at the Abbey. It's not far from our little house and is amazing. The ruins of the abbey date from 1220 a.d. and it is huge. It's located on the banks of the River Aire and we often take walks along the river or on the footpath around the abbey.

Here's What We Do....

We work in the office of the England Leeds Mission. The Mission Office is called the Lister House. That's its address. No number, just Lister House. Conveniently it sits on Lister Hill...and so that is the second part of our address. Here is a picture...lovely building isnt it? Not what you expected, wot? This was taken on a sunny morning just as we arrived. That's our Vauxhall on the left.

So, it does sit on a hill.

This picture shows the valley looking toward the River Aire.  

 The street coming up the hill is called Low Lane. I don't like to drive on it because there are lots of cars parked along it and so a busy street becomes a virtual one lane road.  Kind of like all the other streets around here.  But I will save the driving experience for another post.



So here are some pictures of our office and us doing the things we do

Opening up the office

Sister Barron at her work station.  She is the Executive Secretary to the Mission President.

Elder Barron at the door to his office holding the keys (they are the old keyhole type keys).

Here is Sister Barron working.  Out the window is the Vauxhall van.  It holds 11 passengers.

Meet Elder and Sister Jensen.  They are from Logan, Utah.
 Elder Jensen is in charge of  vehicles and apartments.  Sister Jensen runs the
bookstore and knows about everything.

Meet President Lindley.  He and Sister Barron are making sure 130 missionaries
are well cared for.  

The Assistants to the President.. Elder Wadsworth and Elder Turvey are
seen here plotting the take-over of Scotland (2 hours north).
So that's what we do--any questions?

Ya Alright?

We delight in the differences in the language. We were walking along the street today listening to the lady behind us talking Yorkshire loudly on her MOBILE.  I wish I could write the way she spoke--roughly:
"I wa' te taw te yeow."  (I want to talk to you.) 
When we hear someone speak we try to mimic the way it sounds but our mouths don't form the words properly.  They hold their face and bodies different -- it looks rather formal.  I wonder if we look too casual when we talk.
There is a delightful little waitress at the local carvery that I would like to record.  She has a sweet little voice that makes the Yorkshire accent such that we can just barely make out the thought.  We walked in the other night and she snuck up behind and sang, "Ya alrigh'?" That is the phrase that is equivalent to "How are you?" or "How ya doin'?" at home.  I like the way the maintenence guy at our building says it.  He says: "Ya alright!" without the question mark.  I feel like I am alright.
So sometimes when I am talkin' wi' sumun on the tele we both have to slow--down---real--slow to communicate.   T'is brilliant tryin' to learn the lingo!!! ;