We have been delinquent in posting anything for awhile. We have no good excuses. we just haven't done it. So we'll try and catch up. Work at the Visitors' Centre continues to be busy. We sent our first senior couple home this past Monday and we are now operating with just two senior couples (ourselves being one of those couples). Our new couple is not scheduled to arrive until May 12th. So we will operate short handed for awhile. We are required to have a priesthood holder at the VC in order to be open. So that means that Elder Hulet or Elder Neeley has to be there from 9:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. No days off, no time to be ill. But we should be fine with that. We also have a young sister completing her mission in two weeks but her replacement will come out the day that she goes home.

Wehave seen some exciting results from our VC work the past couple of weeks. We had a baptism at the VC on April 16th. Yuxin Zhang, a college student from China, was baptized. The change in her in just the past six weeks since she came into the VC is amazing. She said that she had not experienced much happiness in her life prior to coming into the VC. Now she feels happy all of the time. She has been taught the missionary lessons at the Hyde Park Chapel so we have seen her often. When she first started coming in she would keep her head down and never make eye contact or smile. Now she greets everyone, looking into their eyes, and smiling brilliantly. While this great experience was taking place another Chinese girl who came into the VC more than a year ago also got baptized--in China. She came back to London in January just for a short visit and we met her then (just after we arrived here). She wanted to get baptized here but things did not work out for her to do that. But our sisters received an email from her this week announcing that she had gotten baptized last week in China. We also had a young man in Hawaii, who came to our VC sisters via Mormon.org (online), get baptized last week. He was taught initially by our VC sisters online and then was taught further by missionaries in Hawaii where he was baptized. What an incredible experience to be here and see peoples' lives changing all over the world.

We have had many guests come into the VC the past couple of weeks as well. We never know who might be impacted by a simple visit or a serious investigation. As indicated by the baptism stories above, great things can happen. We have a man being taught who is from Lybia, another man reading the Book of Mormon who is from Croatia, and several more students from China being taught. All are frequent visitors to the VC.

We enjoyed a visit from Richard and Linda Eyre, authors of many best-selling books and prominent motivational speakers, a week ago last Sunday. They spoke and taught for a couple of hours on Sunday afternoon at the Hyde Park Chapel. We look forward to our stake conference on May 7th & 8th. Elder Timothy J. Dyches, a General Authority Seventy and a member of the European Area Presidency, will be in attendance and a new stake presidency will be called.

We have continued to exercise a lot by going on walks. There is so much to see here that we find new and exciting things most every time we go out. We've been to "Little Venice" and Abbey Road Studios (of Beatles' fame). We were able to attend the "Key Ceremony" at the Tower of London. This is a nightly ritual that has been done for centuries where the British military lock up the keys to the castle for the night. It takes place at 10:00 every night and only around 25 tickets are available per night. We went to "The Monument" which is a tall tower with 311 steps where you can overlook all of London. We also visited the Shakespeare's Globe Theater and attended Evensong at St. Paul's Cathedral. We went to the National Archives where our Family History missionaries work and we have visited the London Eye (one of the world's largest Ferris wheels) and the Tate Britain Art Museum. Our love for this city and the people here continues to grow.

We continue to see miracles and have great experiences here at the visitors' centre in London. This past week we had two young adult girls come into the VC from Greece. They were on Spring Break and didn't speak much English. They had been to the museums next door to us and just decided to come in and see what exhibits we had. We struggled to share much with them because we didn't have anyone who could speak Greek this time. We showed them the chapel and they went in and sat down. They seemed to be praying so we left them alone. We looked in a few minutes later and they were gone. Next thing we knew they were at the "I'm a Mormon" exhibit watching a video. So we went over and asked if they'd like to watch the 2-minute Easter video and they said yes. They watched that and afterward said that this was the best place they had visited. We asked if they'd like copies of the Book of Mormon and to have missionaries teach them more when they get home to Greece. They gladly accepted both.

A couple of days later we had a lady come into the VC and asked to use the toilet (this is the term that is used here for rest room). She had just got off a plane from Romania and was to meet someone at the Science Museum but it was closed. On her way out our sisters talked to her a bit. That conversation resulted in her accepting a Romanian Book of Mormon and wanting missionaries to teach her in Romania.

A day later a man walked into the VC and asked if he could worship here. Of course we said yes and showed him the chapel. He sat down and Rod sat down beside him to explain a little about who we are. Rod learned that he is a university professor from Nigeria who was here for a week-long conference at Imperial College (across the street from the VC). As Rod explained about the restoration and living prophets he became very interested. Rod told him that we have missionaries in Nigeria who could teach him more about living prophets when he returns home. He was very desirous to learn more and left us with his home address and phone number so that missionaries can contact him there.

These types of experiences seem to be happening almost daily. We also have many members of the church from all over the world who are on vacation (or holiday as they call it here) come to visit. Missionaries here also bring in people they are teaching or just invite people from Exhibition Road to come in. Last month we had nearly 3,000 visitors to our VC.

We have managed to fit a few "touristy" things in our schedule the past couple of weeks. We visited the National Gallery where there are thousands of artworks. We found a couple of unique "unfinished" paintings by Michaelangelo. We were able to get tickets for front row seats for Lion King at a local theater. To see the costumes and the facial expressions up close was a great treat. We walked down Portabello Road of "Bedknobs and Broomsticks" fame. We have been on several walks through parks and continue to enjoy the spring flowers and greenery here. We found one park (Holland Park) not far from our flat with wild peacocks in it.

We greatly enjoyed General Conference although the experience here was different. Not having conference sessions start until 5:00 p.m. seemed very strange. But we managed to watch all sessions of conference (not all were live though). We particularly enjoyed hearing from Elder Mervyn Arnold who called us as Visitors' Centre Director, Elder Paul Johnson who called Rod to be stake president, and Elder Jeffery Holland who is just our favorite speaker.