2 Months down! ahhhh !

It's going so fast- the weeks go by so fast and then the missionary 6 week transfer goes by so fast! That's really how we measure time now, in 1week and 6 week increments! 

If  someone were to ask us about our first impressions of England so far, for this Southwest part of England I should say, our answer would be dogs, dogs and more dogs. It seems like EVERYONE here has a dog. When you make restaurant 'booking' or a reservation, many restaurants are so pet friendly, you can choose the option of a "dog friendly" area as part of your reservation! 

Observation #2 is smoking, vaping and tatoos are pretty prevelant. 

#3 would be little to no perservatives in their foods, certainly not as many as in the US, as the food experation dates are frequently just 3-5 days out, so we are having to grocery shop more, and then eat or throw things out much, much sooner than what we are used to !

#4 LOTS of recycling! We get to recycle everything, all the way down to left over food and food waste that we put in composting bags that the recycling truck picks up!

#5 - you cannot get lids off of water bottles & drinking items for the life of you! Politicians over here say they are a chocking hazard for kids, so they are EXTRA hard to get the lids off, which makes drinking your water not very enjoyable when the lid is poking you in the eye because its still attached!  

And lastly, everything here concerning addresses is done by post codes. Want to find someones home or a business, stick in their postal code and that will get you there! 

Callings....

Many of the Sr. couples in our mission receive ward callings, and as we have talked to a couple of them, often the Sr. Elders get called as the ward clerks. They, jokingly, are known for actually shrinking the wards, not gorowing the wards! When we arrived there were about 275 members on our rolls, but many of them have moved, some as long as 10 years ago, and because no one knows where they went, they just get left on the ward list. So Tony has spent hours and hours researching people on our ward list. The church has a check list of all the ways to try to contact them before the bishop can give approval to move their names off. It's been a daunting administrative task! 

I was just put into the Relief Society Presidency as 1st Counselor so this will be an interesting journey in this diverse, small in numbers, but geographicaly large ward! 

Missionary work: 

Tony has bought a suit from a local clothing store and we have started to become friends with one of the sales people there. She has been very friendly and helpful from our first visit into the store. She is from Taunton and has told us to come to her if we ever needed any information about things locally... haha, well. little did she know we would take her up on that!  We have been in several times now asking for random "helps": where to find a clothing tailor, where to buy this or that, asking about the local parade... So each and every time we have been able to "talk a little missionary shop" with her. We have been able to give her a Book of Mormon with our testimony in it, we have been able to share about our belief in eternal marriage and she invited us out to get coffee - AND GET THIS - she says 'oh I forgot you don't drink coffee"  and I asked how she knew that. 

She said after giving her the Book of Mormon - she looked our church up & that is what she found ! So she is now trying to stop drinking her coffee !  All on her own - we could not believe it !! 

We have also been meeing with a friend who is not in a great relationship right now. She is from a very christian background and we have been surprised by our last 2 lessons with her. She on her own has brought up the desire to pay tithing!  She has always believed in tithing and wants to pay it, but unfortunately, she needs to be baptized first before she can donate tithing to the church. So fingers crossed that happens here in the next couple of weeks !  She also let us know that she believes in and is already practicing fasting, so we just taught her about fast offerings and how they are used. 

At our lesson this past week, she brought up how hard the relationship is with her partner right now, so the Elders brought out the Family Proclaimation to read as part of the 'chastity' lesson. It was so powerful as we each took turns reading paragraphs from this inspired document! Tony & I could not make it through our paragraphs as the spirit was so strong. It was such a touching way to teach our friend about chastity and the roles of  husbands and wives.  Tony asked at the end of the lesson if she would like a priesthood blessing, and before he could finish the question, she said yes! 

Our latest outing: Bath

We were lucky enough to spend the day with our friends the Hoosans, whom Hunter met when he served his mission in Leeds, and we have all just become great friends from that! They acutally live in our stake and so traveling up to Bath, (an hour & 1/2 away) is still in our stake boundries! We did not do the Roman Baths this day, as the Hoosans have seen it many, many times, so we weren't going to put them thru that, we will return another day when we are doing flat inspections for a Roman Bath tour! 

This is called the Circus. This is one of 3 sections of circular townhomes that form a ring around a midcenter lawn area. They were built between 1754 and 1768. Small flats sell for about 500,000pounds up to 1.5M for a multi level, terrace house.

This structure is called the Royal Crescent. It is a row of 30 terraced houses built between 1767 and 1774. It now houses a hotel/spa, a museum and any remaining flats or terrace homes for sale, sell between 350,000 to 1.3M pounds. 

Bath Abbey 

This is Bath Abbey which began to be built in the early 12th century (1137-1161). After fires and falling into disrepair, in 1500 the then King took action to repair the Abbey. It was completed in 1539. Notice the Jacobs Ladder on the sides of the window, representing "spiritual ascent thru humility and spiritual descent thru pride".

                                                                                         Gardens & river view 

This is called the "weir" and was originally built in 1603 to prevent the river from flooding, this horse shoe shape was rebuilt in the 1970's.  The bridge on the left was built in 1770 to replace the need of a ferry. It is one of only 4 bridges in the WORLD that houses shops across the full span, on both sides. 

Thanks for reading such a long catch up !