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,