Our first Christmas across the pond!

 Missionary news first : DRUM ROLL PLEASE.... 

Our missionaries have put our friend Yuleima and her daughter on date for baptism for Jan 25th ! She is orignially from Venezuela and is a single mom. 

We are so excited that mom & daughter will be baptised together! The daughter is 8 years old, so we are rapidly giving her lessons to catch her up by the 25th ! We need your prayers that the adversary doesn't throw them any trials, concerns, problems or events to deter the date!

It has been 1.5 yrs since our ward has had a baptism.

On to the holidays: 

I am sure we have missed out on a lot of amazing Christmas events around England this year - I know for a fact we have!    But we will take the few things we did as a total win in our book and look for bigger and better things next year to add to our adventures over here! 

We were able to go to a little village called Catcott and support one of our ward members (who actually grew up in Bountiful, right across the street from Viewmont High School) who was playing in a brass band in the village square. The village square was just the intersection, with the littlest round about in the center of the village. It was so quaint and enjoyable as about 60 people gathered around the "roundabout" and sang christmas carols with this little brass band. It was a highlight to our season.                                                                                                                                   

Christmas eve we had the 2 elders that live the closest to us over for a christmas eve dinner and games. We opened a new game called Goat Lords, which we had previously played as a district and followed up with Take 5 and Monopoly Deal. 

Elders Bateman & Decker

Christmas morning we were up early with our traditional breakfast of Apple French toast. Our flat is so tiny, that at some point a 'conservatory' was added on for our dinning room. In the winter we have to turn on a space heater about 30 minutes before we go out, so we can enjoy the space! 

This was taken on another day, some time in Dec, when the "elders" were cooking our Sunday dinner of eggs, bacon & Mickey Mouse waffles (the waffle iron was white elephant Elder Bateman 'won' at Zone conference) 

Neither one of our Elders recieved their Christmas package from home in time, so thanks to Amazon, we were able to give Elder Bateman is own apron and Elder Decker a scarf, so they had something to open Christmas morning. 

 Also on Christmas day, a member (Laura, a convert of 1.5 yrs (which is the most recent baptism in our ward) in the red, and a single mom to Lucas)  had invited us over a meal of Duck and all the side trimmings.  We also had anther member from Ukraine who didn't have any where to go. We had a great time doing " christmas crackers" for the first time. You pull the crackers apart and inside is a dad joke that everyone takes a turn reading, a tiny toy of some sort like a key chain, and then a paper crown which everyone then wears throughout dinner. 

                                   

Our Christmas evening consisted of the magical phone call with all of our kids celebrating together ( A big shout out to all our kids for still pulling off an "on year" of being together for Christmas and all your work in putting it together on Chrsitmas eve & Christmas day!)  The BIGGEST HIGHLIGHT of our first Christmas season here in England! We are so grateful for technology ! 

Our recent outings: We headed out for repeat walk up in the Quantock Hills with the ponies. 

We also adventured out  on New Years Eve day to Tyntesfeld House. This one is not that old, just the 1830's I believe, but still cool to go see. We wanted to go because it was all decorated up for Christmas, but out of the 110 rooms, of course you only see about 10 of them.

                   This is the detailing on the wood paneling in one of the sitting rooms. 

the billiard room

                      

We couldn't figure out how you would know which room actually rang for you! They all looked the same to us, so no tone difference, so did you have to be standing there when it rang? 

When you are wealthy enough to build your own chapel attached to the house. It was attached so they could access the chapel from the bedroom level of the house. The chaplain also had his own really nice house on property.

And then one of the beautiful plants growing in their greenhouse.

New Years eve, we hosted our Elders over for dinner and games. Although they had to be home by 9pm, the mission let the missionaries stay up until midnight! 

On New Years Eve Day, we went up to Weston Super Mare with our Sister missionaries from Fiji & Kiribati, for more games & lunch ! 

Other Randomness from England :  Have you ever wondered how they trim all the hedges around this whole country?  Well, now you know ! 

And one more randomness: our clothes dryer over here is called a condenser dryer, where the water is extracted out of the clothes & collects in the door of the dryer. I then have to take the door "catcher" part off, and drain it after every use.

Cheers to all of you at this New Year ! 
Exciting things and changes are a foot and this coming year will definately be one for the books! 

We Love you all ! 

Thank you for all of your support through prayers, thoughts, messages, cards & video calls!