It has been a while since we posted anything on our blog. We don’t have any good excuses for being delinquent but life has been busy the past couple of months. Those months were highlighted by a visit to London by Rod’s mom, the departure of three of our VC sisters and the arrival of three new VC sisters, and the arrival of the Christmas Season.

Rod’s mom arrived on Wednesday, November 9^th and stayed with us until Tuesday, November 22^nd. During her stay we enjoyed seeing many of the sites of London while also fulfilling our responsibilities at the VC. We started her visit with a nighttime walk along the Thames River (nighttime is very long here in London this time of the year as the sun rises after 8:00 a.m. and sets before 4:00 p.m.) where we saw the Tower of London, St. Paul’s Cathedral, Shakespeare’s Globe, the London Eye, Big Ben, Parliament, and Westminster Abbey. On other days we walked through Hyde Park, Green Park, St. James’s Park, and Holland Park. We were fortunate to have rented a wheelchair for Mom and so she didn’t have to walk all that way but was able to enjoy the sites and the scenery as we walked. One evening we took in a Broadway show (Wicked) and another night we attend the Classical Spectacular at Royal Albert Hall. We spent a day touring the Tower of London and another day touring Windsor Castle. We squeezed in a few other things like visiting Buckingham Palace and Kensington Palace and, of course, the Hyde Park Chapel Visitors’ Centre. We had a great couple of weeks with Mom but wore her out and us too.

Big Ben

Outside Royal Albert Hall

Inside Royal Albert Hall

Changing of the Guard at Windsor Castle

Buckingham Palace

At the end of November two of our outstanding young sisters returned home, followed by the arrival of three new sisters. Our new sisters are Sister Gregson from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada; Sister Wallace from Maui, Hawaii; and Sister Koiv from Estonia. We then said goodbye to another great VC sister whose parents came to pick her up on Friday, December 9^th. It is difficult to see these sisters leave us and return home but it is exciting to welcome these new sisters and see their great talents. This transition puts a bit of a strain on our work as we have to help our staff with the learning curve that exists for all of us as we take on new things. But the work has still been going forward and great things are happening at the Hyde Park Chapel Visitors’ Centre.

Church Visitors’ Centres throughout the world have been at the forefront of the release of the Christmas Initiative “#Light the World.” Preparation began early in November with banners and training and anticipation for this great resource in sharing the gospel with others. If you haven’t seen the video or learned about “Lighting the World” we invite you to check it out at www.Mormon.org.  We have shown the video in our cinema many times and many guests have come into the VC to watch the short video. We also have had a live nativity in front of the Hyde Park Chapel. This is the 2^nd year for this resource and it too has brought in many people. A stable was built over a raised planter box in front and we have bales of straw and a manger. We have missionaries or local members dress up as Mary and Joseph and pose for pictures in the stable. We started the live nativity on Sunday, November 27^th and have had it every evening since then. We will continue through December 21^st after which the stable will come down. In the meantime it takes a lot of time to schedule people to be Joseph and Mary and then to dress them and oversee the nativity. But it has been well worth it.

VC Decorated for Christmas

Live Nativity

Decorating the VC and preparing for the Christmas events has been time consuming. We are also planning a Christmas Eve VC family celebration and other Christmas events which have taken a lot of time.  We love Christmas though and are enjoying the season. We look forward to video chatting with many of our family members on Christmas. Our VC sisters are also looking forward to their family calls on Christmas Day. We have eight sisters and their homes are in time zones ranging from 8 hours ahead of us to 11 hours later than us. That makes scheduling those calls a real challenge.

The work at the VC continues to go forward. We have seen many more baptisms in the past month and we have welcomed many guests. The first 11 days of this month we had over 2,000 visitors to the VC. Our sisters continue to do work online while on shift and respond to requests from people who go onto Mormon.org to learn more about the gospel. They have sent over 600 referrals to local missionaries each of the past three months. In the first two weeks of this month they have sent almost 500 referrals. It is exciting to see the interest in the church and the work moving forward.

We hope all of you have a wonderful Christmas. We wished we could give you our greetings personally but time and distance won’t allow that. We recognize that our priority is here in London in the full-time service of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. He is the reason for the season and He is why we are here on a mission. God bless you all and Merry Christmas!

The past few weeks have continued the parade of amazing people coming to the Hyde Park Chapel. Last post we mentioned the visit of Alex Boye’s mom to the chapel. Alex then came in on the following Sunday, October 9^th. He baptized his mom that afternoon and then did a devotional in the chapel that evening. The house was packed. Nearly 500 people showed up for this event. Alex did not disappoint as he told of his gospel conversion, experiences in the church and sang a couple of songs. He involved the audience and kept them entertained for two hours. The next day he came to the chapel and spent time with our VC staff. He helped one of our companionships with a lesson and then he sang with some of our sisters and President Stevens (he knows Alex from their Tabernacle Choir days together). Then he came the next day and just hung out at the chapel for a while.

The following Sunday (October 16^th) Elder Quentin L. Cook of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles and his wife came to the Hyde Park Chapel. He was not on any specific assignment but came to visit a former missionary companion who is a senior missionary here (he did have an assignment elsewhere in England the next day). He spoke at the Britannia (YSA) Ward sacrament meeting. He then met with the senior missionary couples serving in the local area (about a dozen couples) for an hour of Q&A.

The next day Elder Bradley D. Foster, a General Authority Seventy and Executive Director of the Family History Department, came to the VC and spent some time with us. It was exciting to share with him and his companion, Stephen Rockwood, Managing Director of the Family History Department, things in the VC as well as show them our Teaching Center where our sisters our teaching people all over the world. They were in England to meet up with Elder Cook and attend a Family History event elsewhere in England.

Today we were visited by Matthew Holland, President of Utah Valley University. We had the privilege of showing him and his two companions around the VC and the chapel. They are here in England for a stained glass exhibition that was at Oxford University yesterday and will be here in London this next week. The exhibition will be permanently placed at UVU in Orem, Utah.

We also continue to have great experiences with other guests who come into the VC. We have had several more baptisms in the chapel (including another Chinese young man today) and around the world (in the Philippines and Wisconsin). We have many people who come into the VC not really knowing what it is or who we are. And before they leave they are intrigued and want to know more. We look forward to many more baptisms in the future.

We haven’t been able to do much sightseeing lately but we have made it on a few walks. Fall is definitely here as our high temperatures barely reach 60 degrees now. The leaves are turning colors and the daylight hours are diminishing (we now have less than 11 hours of daylight compared to 17 hours just a few weeks ago). The VC continues to be open 9 to 9 every day and the gospel light shines brightly there at all times. It is such an honor to serve here.

We have had a busy few weeks again and have failed to get another post done for our blog…until now. The past three weeks plus a couple of days have been “highlighted” (or “low-lighted” in some cases) with one of our senior couples completing their mission and going home, a new couple arriving to replace them, another VC sister spending time in the hospital, more convert baptisms, many more referrals being sent to local missionaries, more miracles with guests coming into the VC, and a great General Conference.

Elder and Sister Neeley from Idaho Falls, Idaho completed their mission at the Hyde Park Chapel VC on September 28^th. We were involved in several events honoring their service including a senior missionary Family Home Evening and dinner, a dinner with the three VC senior couples, a training meeting and breakfast where our sisters honored them, and a surprise picnic in Hyde Park for them with our sisters. All of these events required some of our time to make them happen but the Neeley’s were very deserving of the recognition. As they left the VC for the last time on Wednesday, September 28^th, all of our VC sisters were there and a lot of tears of gratitude were shed. We are missing the Neeley’s already and wish them well back home with their family.

On Thursday, September 29^th, we welcomed Elder and Sister Keller from Orem, Utah to the Hyde Park Chapel VC. We have spent the last few days training and orienting them which has also been time-consuming and rewarding. They are doing great and are great additions to our VC family.

On Tuesday, September 20^th we had another VC sister become ill and she was taken to a local hospital. Fortunately, she quickly recovered and was fine the next day. However, we were unable to get her released from the hospital as they wanted to run more tests to make sure she was ok. After another day in the hospital we finally were able to convince them that she didn’t want any more tests and wanted to be released. Reluctantly, they consented.

We enjoyed hearing about several more convert baptisms that our VC sisters played a part in. One was a lady who came into the VC last December when a live nativity was set up in front of the chapel. She took a tour and our missionaries stayed in touch with her. At first she wasn’t interested but after about six months she started meeting with missionaries in her local area. On September 17^th she was baptized. Another miracle baptism took place in Orem, Utah on September 24^th. A young man from Russia came to London last year on holiday (vacation) and stopped in to the Hyde Park Chapel VC. He had not heard of our church before but was introduced to it by our sisters and was given a copy of the Book of Mormon in Russian. He returned to Russia and our sisters stayed in touch with him via Facebook. Recently, he decided to travel to Utah and attend college there. Once in Utah he met with missionaries and was baptized. About two weeks before his baptism we had a guest from Utah come into the VC and said that she was asked by this Russian young man to thank us for introducing him to the gospel of Jesus Christ. These stories make our efforts totally worthwhile. We never know when a visit by one of our guests will change his or her life forever.

We haven’t been able to do much outside of the VC the past three weeks but we did enjoy watching all sessions of General Conference. We were inspired and uplifted by the messages we heard and the spirit we felt. It is a different experience to watch conference here as the Women’s Session and the Priesthood Session each started at 1:00 a.m. Thanks to technology we were able to watch each of those the next morning here. The Saturday and Sunday morning sessions are shown live at 5:00 p.m. our time and the afternoon sessions are from 9:00 p.m. until 11:00 p.m. We are grateful to be able to hear the words of our living prophet and apostles in such a timely way.

One other interesting event this past week was a visit to the VC by Alex Boye’s mother. She is a dear, little lady who lives here in London and Alex is coming this weekend to baptize her. Alex grew up in London and is going to be singing and speaking at a devotional at the Hyde Park Chapel this Sunday evening.

The past two weeks have been filled with a lot of great experiences and a lot of work. We enjoyed a visit from Rod’s brother and his wife (Carl & Shanna) from The Woodlands, Texas which gave us a good excuse to do some sightseeing. We sent our VC sister from Uganda home after fulfilling a great mission here in London and welcomed two new sisters—one from mainland China and one from South Korea. We’ve enjoyed several leadership meetings including a visit from Elder W. Craig Zwick and his wife Jan.

We were able to spend almost two full days with Rod’s brother and his wife. They arrived in London on Monday, August 29^th, but toured on their own until Friday when we were able to take a preparation day and do some sightseeing. We took the train out to Windsor Castle and enjoyed a great day out there. We experienced the ancient history that Windsor Castle has had and were told about the current history as the Castle still is home to the Queen and other royalty many times during the year. 

On Saturday, after our weekly training meeting and doing some work at the Visitors’ Centre we were able to join them again for a walking tour of London. We went to St. James’s Palace, St. James’s Park, Horse Guards Parade, the Banqueting House, Big Ben, Parliament Square, Westminster Abbey, the Sky Garden, Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese Pub, St. Paul’s Cathedral, and the London Wall. 

Flowers at St. James's Park

Big Ben at Night

On our walk we came across a large barge in the Thames River that had a newly made wooden replica of the London skyline of 1666.

 It turned out that the Great Fire of London that burned much of the city to the ground happened 350 years ago. To recognize that anniversary the city held many events including a domino event where thousands of concrete blocks about 3” X 6” X 20” were lined up throughout the area where the fire burned. At 6:30 Saturday night they started the dominoes falling. They covered 7 kilometres and were quite a sight (we only saw them set up waiting for the event but watched the event on the internet). On Sunday night they set the wooden skyline replica on fire and burned it to the ground in the middle of the Thames River. Again, it was quite a sight to see (we saw the wooden replica on Saturday night and watched it burn down on the internet on Sunday night).

On Wednesday, September 7^th, we welcomed Sister Zeng from Sichuan, China and Sister Jung from South Korea to our VC staff. They are great sisters and add to our international family at the VC. That same day we said goodbye to Sister Apiyo who returned home to Gulu, Uganda after serving a wonderful mission with us here in London at the Visitors’ Centre. She returned home to meet the ten recent converts in her home ward (see previous post) that she had a role with as she taught one of them online and was Facebook friends with several others. Our sister who has been in the hospital was also able to return home to Utah where she can be with her family and receive medical care there.

This past weekend we were honored to have Elder W. Craig Zwick and his wife Jan visit us. They spoke at a multi-zone conference for our missionaries held in the Hyde Park Chapel. Sister Zwick told us about their experiences as mission president in South America years ago. Elder Zwick told us about meeting with the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve on the fourth floor of the Salt Lake Temple just ten days earlier. He said the Brethren pray for the missionaries every week in their meeting in the temple. Sunday morning we were able to greet Elder & Sister Zwick as they arrived for church at the Hyde Park Chapel. Elder Zwick spoke at the Hyde Park 1^st Ward sacrament meeting today. Elder Zwick’s twin sister is our mission secretary and she and her husband complete their missions next week.

We had four convert baptisms at the Hyde Park Chapel last weekend. Our sisters continue to teach a lot of people and we still have many people come into the VC who want to know more about the Church. Our sisters also continue to do a great work online as they respond to requests from Mormon.org and teach people all over the world. We had online baptisms in Ogden, Utah and in North Carolina last week. What a privilege it is to be involved in this great latter-day work!

Another month is almost completed and it seems like we just finished last month’s report. The last couple of weeks have been difficult but rewarding. We have spent a lot of time at the hospital with one of our sisters who has had some serious health problems. Our mission president and his wife have been incredible with their love and time devoted to this sister. We have shared the responsibility with them in visiting the hospital every day. The good news is that she is improving and we are optimistic that she will be released from the hospital soon. In the meantime, our visits to the hospital will continue to take up most of the time that we are not serving at the visitors’ centre.

The past couple of weeks have been rewarding as we have seen several more people enter the waters of baptism. Our sisters have had online baptisms in Washington, D.C. and Uganda. Another was scheduled to happen in Holland today (we hope it happened). The baptism in Uganda is an amazing story. One of our VC sisters is from Uganda (Sister Apiyo) and she chatted with a man online some time ago who lives in Uganda. He was interested in the church and she requested that local missionaries go teach him in Uganda. It turned out that he lives in her hometown of Gulu and is in her ward there. She taught him online until local missionaries finally met with him. She stayed in touch and learned that he had scheduled to be baptized. She was excited but then the baptism didn’t happen. He set another baptism date but that one didn’t happen either. Last month he told her that he was going to get baptized along with nine other people in her ward. Once again she was excited only to be informed that those baptisms didn’t take place either. Sister Apiyo will be completing her mission in less than two weeks and will be going home. Last Friday night she learned that her online friend got baptized with three others and that the other six people were being baptized this weekend. What a way for her to end her mission! She will be returning home to these new converts that she has never met but has played a role in their conversion and baptism.

We have also had baptisms at the Hyde Park Chapel. Yesterday an 11-year-old girl was baptized by her father who had just been baptized two weeks earlier. We also had a man from Jordan baptized last month and this past month his older brother got baptized here. Now our sisters are teaching the older brother’s 14-year-old daughter and she is set for baptism next Saturday. It is such a thrill to see our sisters having success as they welcome guests and teach the gospel.

Our sisters are also doing incredible things with their online work. Since the church changed the process this past February for handling Mormon.org requests for missionaries or for receiving copies of the Bible or the Book of Mormon, our sisters have continued to increase the number of referrals that they are sending to local missionaries. The first full month after this change they sent over 100 referrals to local missionaries (before they can send local missionaries to someone our sisters have to make contact with the requesting individual and make sure that they are willing to meet with missionaries). In June they sent over 200 referrals to local missionaries and last month they sent 298. This month they have already sent over 400 referrals. That’s 400 teaching opportunities that are just given to local missionaries somewhere in the world without them having to do any finding at all. What a great work this is and what an honor it is to be a participant in it.

We have continued to welcome many guests to the Hyde Park Chapel VC. Last week Sister Julie Beck, former Relief Society General President, and her daughter stopped by. We had some great friends stop and visit us here as well. Dianne (Munson) Knight and her husband Lyle stopped by. Dianne lived in our neighborhood in Upland before she got married and was our ward and stake Young Women’s President. Then Miles and Jann Peterson from the Upland Stake came by for a visit. And today Carole Olson who used to live in Upland many years ago came by with some friends. Carole’s husband, John, was our first bishop when we moved to Upland. What a treat to have all of these great people come visit us here in London.

We can’t seem to keep up with reporting all of the great things that we are involved in and are seeing here in London. Hopefully, these occasional updates will at least give you a flavor for what we are experiencing here.

Since our last entry we have had another round of transfers in our mission. Until now, we have been blessed to have had relatively little change with our VC sisters from these past changes. In six months we have only had two sisters go home and two new sisters come out. However, this past transfer we had two more sisters complete their missions and two new sisters come out. So on Tuesday, July 26^th, we had to say good-bye to Sister Lung and Sister Wai. Sister Lung returned home to Hong Kong and Sister Wai returned home to Irvine, California. Both sisters were our Chinese (Mandarin) speakers and both served great missions. On Wednesday, July 27^th, we welcomed Sister Yau from Hong Kong and Sister Teng from Malaysia. Both speak Mandarin and Cantonese as well as English. Sister Teng also speaks Malay and Taiwanese. On their first day here they gave tours of our VC to Chinese guests and did it by themselves. Their American trainers could only watch and smile as they had no idea what their companions were saying. But they apparently did a great job as our guests took copies of the Book of Mormon in Chinese and gave us contact information so that we can help them learn more.

Some more changes for our mission were announced last week as we are one of fifteen missions in the Church to pilot “Online Proselyting.” Online proselyting involves finding, teaching, and following up with investigators using technology. Our missionaries have had ipads for about a year now. They are now authorized to use Facebook to find new investigators and teach them and follow up with them. They also can use Skype and Oovoo too for online video teaching. This change will not affect our VC sisters much as they have already been using the internet to contact and teach people all over the world. But it will be interesting to watch how the work goes forward here in the England London Mission with this change. The potential for reaching many more interested people is huge.

We continue to witness many great experiences as we serve in the VC. People come into the VC for all kinds of reasons. We had two baptisms last Sunday. One was a lady named Raquel who came into the VC on May 30^th with another lady who was befriended by one of the mission office couples. The friend who brought her has since moved and isn’t really interested in the gospel. But Raquel has embraced the gospel and acknowledges the Lord’s hand in how she found the church. The other baptism was of a Chinese young lady named Nicole. She came into the VC on June 23^rd after going to Mormon.org and requesting missionaries to teach her more. These two ladies took very different paths to find the church but both paths included our VC.

We have managed to take a few more walks and have seen some more sights of London. We walked through Battersea Park that is along the Thames River. It has lakes and ponds and more beautiful greenery. Another day we again visited the V&A Museum which is next door to the chapel. We went to the “Castings” exhibit which displays many casts of famous sculptures like Michelangelo’s David and Moses. We have walked through St. James’s Park, Green Park, and Hyde Park again and enjoyed the scenic views in all of those parks. 

We can’t believe how the time is flying by. July is almost over. What a month July has been for us at the Hyde Park Chapel Visitors’ Centre. We have welcomed many guests to the centre, have had a good number of people interested in learning more about our church, had some incredible visitors to the Hyde Park Chapel, and we’ve had a small hand in a record number of baptisms. What a blessing it is to serve here in London at this particular time.

We are on pace to have over 4,000 visitors to the VC for the month. This is by far the most visitors we have had in a month since we have been here. And based on reports of months prior to our arrival it is probably the most that have ever visited in a single month. I’m not sure that this is anything that we are doing as it is summer vacation time and the Lord is just prompting many people to come into the VC. Getting people in the door is one thing but helping them to come closer to Christ is what our work is all about. That’s why when we have guests who are interested in learning more and we can send a referral for missionaries to teach them then we have a great feeling of success. In the month of July our sisters have sent over 250 referrals to local missionaries. That means that there are likely over 250 sets of missionaries who are going to have someone to teach without knocking on a door or talking to them on the street. They have requested missionaries to come and teach them.

We have seen the fruits of having many visitors come into the VC and sending many referrals all over the world. We have already learned of 12 baptisms in July where our sisters have had some role in the convert’s progression. We have had baptisms in Canada, Florida, Virginia, Wisconsin, Utah, Madagascar, Australia, Malawi, Taiwan, and London. There are even some more scheduled for this week.

We’ve had a number of prominent visitors to the Hyde Park Chapel recently. Yesterday President Clark Gilbert of BYU-Idaho came to church at the Hyde Park Chapel with his family. The previous Sunday Neill F. Marriott, 2^nd Counselor in the Young Women’s General Presidency of the Church, came to the Hyde Park Chapel with her husband (you will know Sister Marriott when you hear her strong Southern accent). She and her husband spoke at a fireside here in the chapel that evening. We also have had numerous visits from Brother Marvin Gardner, a former member of the Church Music Committee responsible for our current hymnbook, and his wife. Brother Gardner is teaching a BYU Study Abroad class here at the chapel so he comes in several times a week. It has been a great blessing to be able to visit privately and casually with these great church leaders.

Although we have been busy, we haven’t just worked the past few weeks. We went to the musical entitled “Beautiful” which is a Broadway show about the life and music of Carole King. The show was great and the music even better. We visited the Tower of London for a third time and continue to find very interesting and historical things to see there (like the Bloody Tower where two child princes are alleged to have been killed and the White Tower where the history goes back over 1,000 years). We also continue to enjoy walks in the parks. On one of our recent walks we stopped to look at the wild parakeets that live in Hyde Park. Rod held out his hand and you can see the result in the pictures below.