Back in the swing of things

These past couple months have brought changes in our YSA program. Our two reps left and went to jobs after getting their masters, as did many other students who finished either their schooling or their internships.  So we have been limping along waiting for the new students to show up so that the Bishopric could reorganize our committee and we could get on with things again.  We continued having Home Evening on Monday nights and an activity now and again as the YSA planned and wanted to, but it was hit and miss at best.  Since the program is not ours then all we could do is suggest and encourage.  As we were still busy helping in the office we were not without plenty to keep us busy. We are glad that things are now getting reorganized and up and running again.
We now have two new reps who are Heather Evans from Texas and Craig Irving from here.  They are both on top of things and are excited to get the program up and going full steam.  Our committee is back on track and its looking up for a new school year.
The couple who taught Institute was released so Marshall has been teaching while we are waiting for the stake to call new teachers. We assume they will call another couple but we may be wrong.
We have Institute every Wednesday night.  To complete the courses, two lessons have  to be taught for each class. It takes a lot of study for the teachers. 
One of the Senior couples Elder and Sister Boden, that we really enjoyed and became good friends with went home just over a week ago. We miss them. They were called as Self Reliance missionaries.  The good thing is they live in the Phoenix valley so we will be able to visit each other when we are all back in the states.They were replaced by Elder and Sister Leavitt, from out past Apache Junction in Az    Now another couple Elder and Sister Hansen from South Jordan Ut,are leaving next week. We have become very close to the Hansens also.  It is hard to say good-bye to these good people that we have come to care so much for. They are the office couple and are being replaced by Elder and Sister Broughton, who are also from Mesa Az area.  That's one thing about serving a mission, there is constant change. We senior missionaries pretty much stay our full mission in one place but the junior missionaries come and go. Every transfer the whole mission gets a shake up. Working in the office these past several months we have seen first hand what a big job it is to run a mission.  Sure makes us appreciate the huge responsibility President and Sister Brown have and all the hard work of the office staff.
Winter is here now and I for one am not looking forward to the cold weather and the long dark hours.  It doesn't get light now until between 7am and 8 am and it's dark by 5pm. Pretty soon it will will dark even longer.  All part of the mission experiences that we get to have.
A couple weekends ago Henny, our exchange student from Norway, came and stayed the weekend with us. She lives in London with her husband. She has been in London for the past 15 or more years I am guessing.  We were really excited to get to see her again.  She visited us a couple times in the states after she went home but it has been about 15 years since we have seen her. She is just as beautiful as ever and we had a great time with her. 

We took this picture at an place called Anstruthers.  It is suppose to be the best fish and chip's in Scotland.  If not the best, then it is sure at the top of the list. It was delicious. On this trip we also drove by St. Andrews golf course.  They were filming a tournament and it was really crowded so we were not able to stop and walk around the course.  We also stopped and had ice cream at the "best ice cream" in Scotland.  Again if not the best it was the best we have had since we have been here.


Just a couple words to remember:
garden = yard ( took me forever to figure out they were talking about their yard and not a plot of veggies or flowers)
lounge = living room
foot path = sidewalk
corridor = hallway


until next time

mission sweat shop

july 2014
Our mission president's wife Sister Brown makes tartan pillow cases and gives them with a new pillow to each incoming young missionary.  I personally do not know how she has kept up with it for the past two years, as we often get 10 - 25 in every 6 ish weeks. I was talking about it with a couple of the Sister's in the office staff and I told them  I would be glad to help sew. As it turned out the office sisters decided to all gather and have a sewing circle.  Six of us gathered in the dinning room of the mission home and sewed 33 pillow cases in 3 1/2 hours

The rest of this post is now several weeks later and we have had another sewing session and made another batch of pillowcases. Here are pictures of our mission sweat shop. Some were taken the first time and some the second time.

Sister Brown spreading tartan. Sister Hansen on left

Sister Wagar in orange ironing Sister Lowrey in black ironing, Sister Hansen in beige with back to camera and Sister Boden in white shirt sewing

From left: Sister Wagar, Sister Brown, Sister Ferguson, Sister Jones, Sister Boden

Me

From left: Sister Brown in front, me in Back, Sister Boden in Back, Sister Wagar, Sister Ferguson

Sister Boden and I do all the sewing and the other sisters fold and iron. We usually do all the cutting on a night previous to our sewing night. We have a system and it goes fast.  Sister Brown appreciates that we can sew so many in just a couple hours when it took her weeks by herself.  (What was she thinking??)

  Until next time

The Jacobite Train Ride

We went on a train ride last weekend up in the highlands. It was a 84 mile round trip ride. The trip started in Fort William to Mallaig and back again.  It was a little disappointing in that there was so many trees and rocky hills along the track that we didn't get to see much country.  We were able to take a few pictures when there was a break in the foliage and or rocks. Because we took pictures from the train window there is a lot of window glare in the pictures.  The Jacobite train is the train that was used for the Hogwarts Express in the Harry Potter movies.  Except the engine that pulled us was black instead of the red one in the movies.

The purple flowers is heather, it is just blooming now and is beautiful

just a beautiful view

Cool old church that is just sitting out in the middle of nowhere

 

Jacobite train

Jacobite train engine

Mallaig

Mallaig the small sea port village at end of train ride. There was about a two hour layover there until we got back on train to head back to Fort Williams.

The picture of the waterfall was taken on the drive as we were heading home.

That's all for this trip..

What a week!!!!

This was our last week in the office, and what a week it was. It was also transfer week and that is the busiest week and it happens every 6 weeks.
This week included along with everything we have to accomplish in the office a trip on Tue to the Glasgow airport, an hour away, to take an Elder to catch a plane home to Canada. Wednesday Marshall picked up a Senior Couple at Edinburgh Airport, and then spent several hours with them taking them shopping and teaching them how to use a sat nav ( GPS unit) also answering all of their many questions, showing them how to get to their area etc. then on Thursday both of us picked up a Sister at the Edinburgh airport and the only thing that arrived with her was her carry on bag. So Marshall helped her talk to the powers that Be and found out her luggage was still in London.  Luckily she has an extra outfit in her carry on. We took her to her area in Alloa which is about 45 minutes drive. One of her pieces showed up at the mission office yesterday and hopefully the other will come this morning by noon if not we will take the one piece to her this afternoon and then the other one whenever it arrives. That way she will have more than two things to wear.
Our YSA responsibilities are about to kick off again. We have many going home to the States, China or wherever they live and then many more arriving.  The next few weeks our YSA group will be much different than  the one we have had for the past 6 months, except for the young adults that are from here.  Institute will start up again the middle of September when University starts up again. We are looking forward to seeing what and who  this new school year brings.
The end of our office duty has worked well with the timing of our YSA duties getting ready to get back to full swing.
A week ago yesterday the young adults planned a multi stake dinner dance and it had a great turn out and all had a fun time. A young couple who were once YSA here before they married said it was the best YSA event that they had ever seen.(they were our DJ's for the dance)  One thing we struggle with here with these young people is sticking with a plan. They change their plans an hour or two before the event or don't get the word out until the last minute then wonder why they have terrible turn out. For this dinner dance we really pushed them to plan early, get the word out 6 weeks ahead of event etc.  Then 4 days before the event they wanted to push it back a night and Marshall wouldn't let them. After all, the word was out in several stakes and there was just no way, plus it was a dumb idea after all the planning and work they had done.
We are hoping that they learned a lesson from that experience.  That if you make a plan, advertise ahead of time and don't go switching dates etc. that your activities/events will be well attended. We shall see, these young people just think differently than us old folks.
We have had a beautiful summer and got to enjoy several nice warm, dry days.  Its starting to cool off now and feels like fall is in the air. Not looking forward to the long dark days of winter. As hard has it has been to sleep at night because it hasn't been dark for more than 4-5 hours at night, I prefer the long hours of light to the long hours of dark.
Last night all the senior missionaries were invited to a BBQ at a less active member's home.  Well the wife and kids are active but the husband is not. He is from New Zealand and was a pro Rugby player till he got hurt a couple years ago. He looks like a big husky Samoan, his wife is from here in Edinburgh. We met him through looking for flats for the missionaries. He is a letting agent about 30 miles from here, he helped us find a nice flat in the area he works. They are a  super nice family they have a girl about 5 and a boy about 3. He is a return missionary and is great friends with lots of members so don't know why he has quit going to church. We invited them to dinner a month or so ago so we will just keep trying to get him back into activity, without being pushy.  He definitely will not take kindly to pressure. It was a great evening and the food was excellent.  He did the meat and we all did the sides and desserts.
Until next time, cherrio   

Military Tattoo

I have not been keeping up with this blog as well as I had hoped too.  With working in the office all day and taking care of our YSA responsibilities,  just this week we didn't get to bed until 1am on Thursday, on Friday 12:30am, and last night 11:30,  My brain feels fried most nights and the last thing I want to do is spend more time on a computer. This will be our last week being in the office everyday.  Sister Ferguson has been here for three weeks now and has most of what she needs to do down.  This next week is transfers and there are a lot of things that you can only do during/after transfers and so I will help her through this week and show her what  she needs to do then we will be finished in the office.  If she gets stuck she can just call and I can either help her over the phone or run in and help for a bit.  We will be glad to be back to just one job especially as we are getting ready to go into winter and have the short daylight hours and long dark hours.

Friday night we had a Stake YSA dinner and dance.  We had a great turn out. Several kids from neighboring stakes came. The kids did a great job and even tho it took some pushing to get them to get their plans together I think it was a great learning experience for them.  The norm here is everything last minute, then most activities or poorly attended.  We think this was a good teaching tool.  They can see how well things work out when the proper planning, advertising and effort is made.

Military Tattoo:

if you look really close on the wall you can see the lone bagpiper.

Yesterday we went to the "Tattoo."  It is big doin's here in Scotland.   It lasts for two weeks and they have two showings every night. You can look it up on the internet if you really want to know about it.  Military bands from around the world come to perform. This year there is Singapore, India, New Zealand, Africa, Trinidad, and of course Scotland. It was a great show and the precision in their marching was incredible I'm glad that we were able to see it. I guess it is a world famous event from what we hear.

We had great seats to see the performance but not so great for picture taking as we were really high up.

It takes place in front of the Edinburgh Castle and they actually build the arena each year just for this event, then they take it down and rebuild it again the next year. It seats approximately 10,000   Here is a picture behind it from the street. It is enormous,

busy busy

These last few weeks have been busy busy. Sister Lowrey one of our office staff senior missionary sisters was reassigned to the Tulsa Oklahoma mission, so I was asked to fill in for her until President Brown can find a replacement. Because the office staff is not cross trained and I got little to no training I have had to figure out how to maneuver around in the programs I am responsible for without erasing something important or crashing some program.  AMAZING!!!!! I have.... and after 2.5 weeks of working in the office I am comfortable with all the things I am assigned to do. Goes to show that as missionaries we get extra blessings because computers are NOT my forte. To add to the confusion the keyboards here are different.Letters and number keys are in the right place but the other keys are all mixed up so I am constantly hitting the wrong key.  AND many words are spelled different and that throws me off. ie: tire= tyre, center= centre,  program= programme, to name just a few.  There are many many more.  Marshall also has been keeping busy helping out in the office.  He has been helping with the finance and straightening out utility and phone problems. As we all know he is a problem solver so he has made a huge improvement in their utility tracking systems for all the missionary flats and has saved the mission $$$$'s by tracking down all the meter readings on every flat in the mission. Plus the phone system has had several problems that no one has solved. He has that almost taken care of also. We don't know how long we will be working in office but we will do it as long as they need us.  We are also still taking care of our YSA responsibilities so some of our days are very long.  
The daylight hours are abundant this time of year.  It is light from about 3:30ish am till about 11:00 pm. Hard for me to sleep when it is still light outside.  Should not complain..... we are told that in the winter it will switch and it will be dark most the time with little daylight.  I definitely prefer the daylight to the dark.
We have been traveling a lot around the mission doing flat inspections and have enjoyed seeing all of the beautiful country. So so much green everywhere we drive. We love the miles and miles of green fields and all the rock walls. It must have taken years and years to build all the rock walls in this country. I can't imagine where they could have found so many rocks.
It takes sooooo much longer to travel here its shocking.  We had to go do a flat inspection in Galishields, we plugged it into our SAT NAV (GPS unit) and it said it was an hour and 35 min drive.  Then we looked at the milage, 32 miles. Alway so surprising. But these little country roads with all of their round abouts just make the trips so much longer to drive.  I have to say it  was the most beautiful drive that we have had since we have been here. It was breathtaking country.  As a side note, our SAT NAV is our most treasured companion. When ever we leave town we have it on. It is an amazing little unit that keeps us from being lost, even though at times it takes us on the scenic route and not the most efficient one. All the missionaries if they have cars have them. The UK has what is called post codes.  Every area has its own, like Edinburgh has many all by itself.  You can plug in the post code on your SAT NAV and it will bring up most of  the addresses in that post code and you can tap the correct address and then follow the instructions to get where you want to go. It is a great system.  Sometimes the SAT NAV is a bit off but at least we are close and can find where were are looking for on our own.Also another help is that every city is divided into several area's with names.  Like our first flat was in what is called the Carrick Knowe area. We lived on Carrick Knowe Avenue, but in that area there would be a Carrick Knowe Road, Close, Cressant, Lane, Loan, Mew,Burn, Grove, etc etc.  with a post code of EH12 7BX.  Now we live on Burnbrae Drive, so we live in the Burnbrae area, with a post code of EH12 8AS so all the streets are Burnbrae road, craig, etc etc.  This system also helps us foreigners to find our way around town.
I have been writing this post for several days.  Hummmm...  but in the meantime we received notice that we do have a new Senior sister assigned to our mission who will be my replacement. She is scheduled to arrive the end of aug.  That  is one of my responsibility's is to process the paperwork of our in coming missionaries.  At least now we have a date for how much longer we will be in the office.
 Will skip the vocabulary lesson for this post even tho I do love the words here.

castles and palaces

Here are a few of the castles and palaces' we have visited since we have been here. The difference between castles and palaces are castles on the whole were built for defense and palaces were for living and therefore had more luxury. Although we have seen some castle's that became luxurious in later years when defense was not longer needed.

 

This is the palace that Queen Mary of Scots was born in. It is a ruin now. It is called the Linlithgow Palace and is in the city of Linlithgow.

This cathedral that is next to the palace. It was built when the castle was and is still in use today although part of it was destroyed in the 1400's and rebuilt in late 1400's and into the 1500's. It is a Church of Scotland cathedral as is many cathedral's in Scotland.  Church of Scotland is a mix of Catholic and Presbyterian according to the pamphlets that we read in the cathedral. They do not have all the crosses and statues. There are beautiful stained glass windows tho. Don't know why we did not get any pictures of those.

This is taken looking out one of the windows of the castle.

This on our way to Culzean Castle. It was a beautiful drive.

 This is outside the castle. Culzean is one of the smaller castles. It has only about 64 rooms. It is still lived in by the family. The rooms that are open for visitors  are not part of the castle that is used by the family.

This is the kitchen. Can you imagine having this huge space to cook with all those pots and pans hung so nicely?  The middle picture is of their ovens of the day. There are like 6 ovens in that half circle.

This was the nursery, cute little boat crib is it not?

This is a typical bedroom in the castle.

These are pictures of the gardens.  The middle picture is of an azalea bush that grows as big as trees here and the bottom picture is of a magnolia tree.  There are many  trees of different types  plus a huge amount of other plants on the property and they are all beautiful.

The Culzean Castle sets on the edge of the ocean as you can see in the first pictures.  These pictures are taken from the castle wall overlooking the ocean.

On this same trip to see Culzean castle we also stopped to see the Robert Burns birth place and museum.

In this long white house one end had two tiny rooms that Robert Burn's family lived in.  A kitchen/bedroom where they cooked ate and sleep. It had one tiny bed in the room where Robert and his three siblings were born. The other room was also tiny but was used as a school type room. There are two additional rooms in the building that housed their milk cow, chickens and various other animals they had . That room was right through the door from the study room. YUCK.  Then in the opposite end from the living quarters was a small room where they stored their farm equipment and their animal feed ie hay, grains etc.  Robert Burns mother kept a milk cow and sold milk to help the family survive. This small Burns home is in Alloway.

This is the Brig O Doon as you can see from the sign. It is also in Alloway and dates back from the 1400's.  It is the bridge that Robert Burn's father walked over to and from work every day to a neighboring town.  I'm sure lots of other people used it in those days also.  It goes nowhere now, just to then other side of the river Doon.

 OK  on to a different castle.  These next few pictures are of Loch Leven, it is a ruin and is on an island about a 10 minute boat ride. 13 people rode over on that tiny blue boat to the castle.

in the second picture i was trying to take a picture of the island across the water but you can see all the bugs in the air.  There was thousands of them, was so gross.

In the orange coat is Sister Teresa Lowery and the other two are Elder Wayne and Sister Sylvia Hansen. They are are office staff.

Lock Leven castle was used as a prison and Queen Mary of Scots was kept as a prisoner here until a boy that was in charge of the boats helped her escape. There are lots of stories of Queen Mary of Scots, she was a very famous Queen and quite feisty it seems. 


A short drive away and we come to Glamis Castle.  It is a huge castle and has over 100 rooms like many of the castles. It is still used by the family. You can rent out certain rooms for weddings or other events at this castle.  In this castle the rooms that are for showing the public the family still uses at times.  We were not allowed to take pictures inside of this castle so the following pictures are of the outside.

This is our touring group for  as many saturday's as we can plan. Starting at the back on the left is Sister Browning, Elder Browning( who join us every now and again), Marshall, Front from left is Sister Alice Wagar, Sister Teresa Lowery, Thelma, Elder Wayne Hansen and Sister Sylvia Hanson.

some highland coo's by the castle
 

Enough for this post.  I will post the other few that we have seen later.

Our words for the post:  Mew = cul-de-sac,   newspaper stand/store = news agent,  bulletin board = notice board,  lines = queques,  passing lane = overtake lane

Starting this post I am also going to add names of cities that I think are fun :  Berwick Upon Tweed and Clackmannanshire

Cherio da noo