This past week was our first experience with missionary transfers. Transfers for our whole mission took place on Tuesday and Wednesday. There were 11 missionaries who went home and 10 new missionaries coming out. We had one of our VC sisters who went home and that caused some shuffling in companionships for our VC sisters. All four of our companionships changed. But change can be good and so far everyone seems to be positive about the changes. The sister who went home is from Finland and we had one of our sisters who was serving full-time in a proselyting area come back into the VC. She is from Uganda and has a remarkable story of her conversion and her family's conversion. The international experience here is still unbelievable to us.

Even with transfers we did have a good week at the VC and had many guests come in for tours. We had a young man from Malaysia who is going to school across the street at Imperial College come in with a couple of his friends. He was very intrigued by our message and came back with two more friends three days later. He and one of his friends spent four years in the U.S. and graduated from Brown University. We had a father and his young daughter come in and were very taken by our message. They stayed for over 2 hours and want to know more. They are from China. We also had guests from Australia, Germany, Italy, France, New Calcedonia, and Poland this week (as well as the U.S. and the U.K.).

We didn't get to do any sightseeing this week as transfers and our administrative responsibilities took up much of our time. The Church is making several changes that affect us. One is that all missionary exchanges with mission leaders are now to be done in the leader's proselyting area rather than the missionary's area or splitting (one companionship to each area). The reason for this is so that the leader can show the other missionaries how the work is supposed to be done with their own investigators and members. These exchanges are for 24 hours which makes it difficult for our VC sisters to cover their assigned shifts at the VC (they have six-hour shifts every day). But we are making adjustments and it will work. Another change is with our sisters online teaching (VC sisters all over the world teach investigators online by telephone, email, and chat until missionaries in their local area can get to their homes to teach them). The software program that they have been using for years is being replaced. So that requires some extra training and adjustment as well. As we said earlier though, change can be good.

Although we didn't get to do any sightseeing this past week we did make some trips to other parts of London (by Tube and by bus). We still marvel at the intriguing buildings with multiple, tall chimneys and unique architecture along narrow, cobble-stoned streets. As we were walking back to our flat one time this week with the wind blowing and the light rain falling we marveled at how "Mary Poppins-ish"  it seemed as we tried to keep our umbrellas from opening up the wrong way. This experience sometimes feels a bit like a dream but we are loving it.