6 months today !

It was the "fastest" of times and the "slowest" of times ! In reality, these first six months have just flown by way too fast We are now to the point where we will begin to say.. this is the last sping, the last summer, the last fall and the last christmas before we go home. 

So lets start off with our MOVE ! 

I think he is figuring out his tetris plan for our little Hyundai! 

We have offically been in Wales for 15 days now. We have settled in to our little seafront town of Aberystwyth (Aber- ist-with). We can pretty much walk to all the places we want to go. It's nice when I need something quick from the store, its a 7 min walk up the street, as well as the dr.'s office and the hardware store and a clothing/home store called Next! 

The seafront is a 15-20 minute walk from our house with cute shops, botuiques and cafe/restaurants to pick from. 

Here's our terraced house! 

 

We serve the young adults dinner before the Institute lesson, so we have the first 2 under our belts, with the 3rd one tonight. I have become the chef and Elder Hanks has become the dish washer!  We now greatly miss having a dishwasher!  

Because Aber is a university town, we do get a handful of chinese students coming for dinner, institute and FHE. We have 2 elders who are Chinese & english speaking so they are working hard to help grow the branch with college age kids as well as any one else they find! 

Elder Hanks teaching his first Institute lesson! 

We have also hosted our first YA fireside, where we were able to watch Elder & Sis Uchtdorfs devotional together!  I attempted to make English scones (raspberry & white chocolate chip) for the treat & everyone thought they were great for my first try! I made one batch of "american" style scones (triangle shapes) and one batch of English style scones (had to be circle shaped) served with clotted cream and jam! I'll get a picture next time! 

 

We hold FHE on Monday nights, we bring more treats and some games, and the young Elders share a short spiritual message. Then the YA get to pick which card game they want to play for the night. We were able to teach them how to play Skull King, which they seemed to enjoy! 

AND, we still get to clean the church every week, again... ! In Taunton we had a bishopric member there to help, but here it is just the 2 of us!  Happy to do it, we are just 7 minutes away from the building so it's just easy for us to get there and knock it out. 

Our Church building is on the "top floor", which is the second floor, of an office building. The first picture is the view out from our chapel windows. The second picture is out of a "lounge" area of the church where the elders can meet with people for lessons. 

We have gone on our first Pday outing, to a little seafront village called New Quay. You can tell that in the summer this place would be hopping and full of families and tourists. It was a bit cold and windy, so we came to see, had a little lunch, snapped a few pictures and got on our way back home! 

(on the drive down the coast)

(New Quay - love the colorful houses!)

On our drive back- these are sheep fields, none were out today, but these poor sheep have it hard with this view every day! 

Always amazed by these "hedge trimmers"

Our Aberystwyth adventures include enjoying the egg and milk vending machines in town! 

We get to cross this bridge into town often. The picture doesn't do the bridge justice, but it is so quaint, vintage old england, little village-ish. We love everytime we get to drive across it! 

We have tried a few little cafes & restaurants trying to explore our eating out options. This was a fancy "milkshake", which ended up really being jsut a smoothie with a couple of scoops of ice cream. 

As far as missionary work, we are still getting our feet wet as to what will be needed from us here in this branch. Right now, we feel like we may be speaking in church more, maybe teaching a few more Sunday school and EQ/RS lessons (the branch is small enough, we stay together for the second hour every single week)  and getting out to visit with the many less active ward members. The distances to get to church here is vast- some living as far away as 45 minutes. Again, we have transporation issues, with not alot of people having access to cars to get them here, and limited public transporation options on Sundays. 

Cheers til next time!