We enjoyed another great week in London. We made a trip out to the London Temple for the first time. The temple is about 35 miles south of downtown London where we live and work. We took the Tube from the station near our flat to Victoria Station just 3 Tube stops away where there is a major railroad hub. There we bought our tickets to ride the Overground (as opposed to the Underground which is the Tube) out near the temple. We got on the train and enjoyed a quiet, comfortable ride for about an hour. We were privileged to have Elder Martin Lock, Director of the London Temple Visitors' Centre, pick us up at the train station. We have become fast friends with Elder and Sister Lock as they were with us at our training in Utah and flew to London on the same flight with us from Salt Lake City. Elder Lock not only picked us up and drove us to the temple but he and his wife (see the picture below) showed us around their VC and the temple grounds, took us to lunch and joined us in our temple session. The Temple sits in a beautiful spot in a much more rural area than we have previously experienced in England. The grounds are green and lush with some flowers in bloom. The temple is beautiful and the Celestial Room is particularly stunning.

We also enjoyed another great week with our VC. We had a steady stream of visitors this past week. They again came from all over. Some come in because they are curious, others because they are genuinely interested in learning more about our church. Rod helped some young elders teach a 21 year old student who is definitely interested in learning about the church. We also gave a tour to a man from Guinea who had lots of great questions and we had an employee from the university next door come in and stay for over two hours watching videos and asking questions. These kind of experiences make our service very worthwhile. We had two more baptisms in the VC this week as well.

The Science Museum next door invited us to a Private Viewing of one of their "pay exhibits" (the museum is free but some of their exhibits require paid admission) this week. The exhibit was entitled "Cosmonauts: Birth of the Space Age." There were only about 10 of us on our tour which was given by the lady in charge of procuring all of the artifacts on display. She had some great insights about all of the displays. Many of the items had never been on display to the public as Russia does not have many museums or places that they would display such historical items. She found many of the artifacts in homes of children and grandchildren of the original cosmonauts and scientists. Some were stored in corporate warehouses of the manufacturers who maintained ownership of the things that they had made. The artifacts included early drawings of space craft and possible journeys, actual space capsules and space suits, and replicas of some of the earliest space vehicles (which never returned to earth). It was a very interesting morning for us.

If you haven't seen the news report on an event that we mentioned in our blog a couple of weeks ago you might want to click on this link about the school children from the Science Museum who came into the VC to get out of the cold and to eat their lunches:
http://www.mormonnewsroom.org.uk/article/hyde-park-visitors-centre-receives-evacuated-children-from-science-museum