Cheddar Gorge & 2 miracles

 First off the 2 mission miracles ! 

Tony recently purchased a suit here in Taunton and we have befriended a sales lady there. I told a little about her in the last post about her trying to give up drinking coffee from what she read about our church on line.  

Her name is Sian (its Welsh, so we would pronouce it in the US like Sean, Shon, Shaun....) We pop into the store once or sometimes twice a week just to say hi to her. She has several tatoos, a nose ring and currently her short hair is half pink and half purple. We wrote her a thank you card for being so nice to us and always helping us and the next time we saw her, she was just glowing and was so thankful to us for writing her such a nice card that made her feel so good and so happy. We are now meeting up with her next week for our first "lemonade" or "frosty beverage" as Tony likes to call it, to try get a measure of her interest in church. Tony was also able to give her co-worker a Book of Mormon as well! 

Our second miracle just happened today! We were out for our morning walk along the canal into downtown Taunton. We had turned around to head back home and Tony was lamenting how he hasn't been able to teach a proper and full lesson on the restoration since being here. We are approaching a bridge that has a guy standing on it just gazing down the canal, and he says "hey, are you guys latter day saints? I was thinking about getting into religion again?"   Haha, WHAT??!! So we ask how he has heard about our church and knows the name and even knows about the Book of Mormon. He served in the Military, so he had been around "mates" from Salt Lake City, as they were serving together in different military roles in Iraq, so these mates had been able to tell him about the church. He told us how different his growing up life was, compared to ours. He is from the Manchester area, and grew up with a drug dealing, drug addict dad so that created a really rough and tough childhood, into young adult life for him. 

He talked about how "old" english churches are & how "young" our church is comparatively. But we replied that with how "old " many churches are, it leads to them to having a lot of time to lose alot of correct principles & authority. He wondered what our religion thought about having to serve in the military, which often requires taking a life, so Tony helped him download the Book of Mormon app on his phone & we invited him to read the "war chapters" in Alma, that it would be relateable to him & help him find answers to his military service. 

And finally, the conversation led itself for Tony to share the Restoration story to our new friend! He wants to come to chruch this sunday, so we HAD to get his phone number to send him the address of the church so he and his girlfriend can come!  We departed with this guy telling us some jokes, some british jokes, which we didn't get the humor, but he then asked Tony to share one back, which had our new friend busting a gut as we left! 

This is truly a miracle to have someone approach US and want to hear about the chruch AND want to come to church already! 

We have done another park finding activity with our Elders. This time we asked "what brings you peace"?  We had a lady stop and give us an answer before we even had the question completely written out! It was a good day as the kids are out of school this week for semester break, so the park was busy! We had a family from Ukraine, a mom & 2 boys, stop & talk about peace - it was truly heartfelt and we were able to share with them the Book of Mormon app so they can read it in Ukrainian. 

Other adventures

We have introduced our little district of 6 missionaries to the US game of kickball! So to add to our outdoor game options, we recently introduced Bocce! Word may be spreading as we got an extra set of missionaries this past week from another district riding the bus for 40 min to come join us. 

A couple of weeks ago we went on a Pday to a National Heritage Site called Cheddar Gorge. The gorge has come caves where Englands oldest complete skeleton was found, called Cheddar Man. We didn't do the cave part, but read that is has been suggested that the caves were used for maturing cheese in prehisotric times. The current Cheddar Gorge Cheese Company still matures their cheese within the caves today. We bought a couple of variety of cheeses' and they were really good ! 

just about to head up the 274 stairs of Jacobs Ladder to the top of the Gorge! I thought I was in shape but trying to keep up with two 19 yr olds, they were like mountain goats! 

 

there really were wild goats ! 

The views from the roadway that drives through the bottom of the Gorge

ROAD SIGNS ! 

Guess the speed limit of this sign, entering a typical "country road"? 

Yes, those white signs are the speed limit signs... 

This road is 60MPH  !! with cars coming at you from the other direction !! 

The 20 on the ground is 20 MPH in the zone we are just leaving.
Nothing like 20 to 60MPH in a matter of inches! 
Even the Brits think that their 60mph on these type of country roads is insane.

And I will leave you with one hydrangea plant- its not the most impressive one I've seen, but still, for October, they are beautiful !

Till, next time, Cheers!