The Hanks have landed !

 Aug 27th - Aug 31 

We have been baptized by a fire hose, 2 fires hoses called Elder & Sis Luke, for the last 6 days in Bristol England ! 

We landed & took a 2.5 hour taxi ride over to our mission office in Bristol. We landed at the mission office just after they had finished Zone Conference training and were having lunch !  How in the world am I going to memorize all these missionaries names??!! We met the office couples & Pres. & Sis Mayall, hung out for a couple of hours and then they were kind enough to let us go check into our hotel (since the couple we are replacing are still in the flat, which we later learned is really a terraced house) to get ahead or really behind in our jet lag. 

We woke up several times thinking it was morning, so at 1:30 am Tony was showered & getting ready for the day, when I looked out the window & it was completely- like so completely dark that we realized it was 1:30am and forced ourselves back to sleep. How do you do that when you feel like you have had an entire night of sleeep already?! 

Wednesday we headed back to the mission office where we were now having District conference with the district we will be in. We have been assigned the town of Taunton where we will be in the Taunton ward & be helping out there with maybe some ward assignments, and helping the ward and the missionaries any way we can. We met the couple we are replacing (the Lukes, who are full of so much energy! ) and WE DROVE OURSELVES down to Taunton and to our new abode! Who drives their second day in England, on the wrong side of the road, on the wrong side of the car and through about 20 round abouts ?!  Luckily we were following the Lukes. 

We threw our suitcases into the flat and off we went to teach our first lesson ! So this was a first lesson in this area, as this friend had been found in another area but now lives in our district, so this was the first time the Lukes and the 2 elders in this area had personally met this friend. OK- so talk about intimidating with 6 missionaries knocking on your door- holy smokes, but she had been warned so many of us were coming. Bless her!  It was a great lesson about prayer, as she is navigating her way through job interviews & deciding which job to take. 

                            our english flat with a car driving under our bedroom - haha ! 

We then had dinner at the EQ and RS presidents 180 yr old country farm house ! 

Every Thurs we get to clean the ward building and we are blessed to have one of the bishopric members come help us every week. And he even brought lunch for us! Glad we had years of practicing how to clean a church because that is the ONE thing we truly know how to do here in the mission so far - haha!

Friday we drove to St George practically- really, we were truly blessed to go to the London Temple ! It was a miracle to go there on day #3 of our mission! We were able to go with the RS Pres. to support a ward member going to the temple for the first time.

We attended church Sunday for the first time and it was so great! It is a very diverse ward. The last 2 bishops have been from Nigeria. There's about 50 people who come and the departing Elder Luke played the organ- so we are now without an organist - wish someone would have taken piano lessons more seriously ! haha ! 

Ok, signing off from week 2 report !