55 Weeks and Busier Than Ever

Lots of things have happened since last week.  We're busier than ever, doing more traveling, and spending more time doing the work.

Arranging Visits

We were going to spend most of the day, last Monday, getting ready for some of the coming weeks presentations.  We ended up doing that, but we also needed some of the time for cleaning and home teaching.  Yes, one of our home teaching families, asked us to come by and have home evening with them.  Their names are Rob and Amanda Carter.  They have 3 children - Grace (5), Ruby (3), and Benjamin (1).  Did we mention that they are Americans and are over here until this fall.  Rob works for HP.  We tried for almost an hour to find where they lived.  When we finally found them, it was getting late so our visit was short.  We had also made cookies for them and we used the cookies as part of our home teaching lesson.  The kids loved it.

Tuesday was spent at The National Archives doing the usual.  Wednesday was also spent at TNA as was Thursday.

Valentine's Day Flowers

 Friday was Valentines Day and Annie received her Valentines Day flowers.  We also spent the day with several of the other senior missionaries from our mission in the "museums" area of London.  We visited the Victoria and Albert Museum and some went on to the natural history museum and science museum.  One of the highlights of our visit to the Victoria and Albert Museum was to find the portrait of the rescue that President Monson mentioned in his October Conference talk.  It was painted by Joseph Mallord William Turner and called "Lifeboat and Manby Apparatus going off to a stranded vessel making signal blue lights of distress".  It felt really special to think that we had more fully experienced the talk given by Pres. Monson.  We got home fairly early that evening and went to work on preparing for our Saturday seminar.

Rescue Painting

Tourist Views Rescue Painting

When Saturday came we were ready and headed off early for Romford Stake in northeast London.  It took about an hour and a half to get there.  We have learned to really appreciate GPS devices.  We helped with patrons coming in one by one in the morning hours.  Then in the afternoon we gave three presentations on how to get started, doing European research, and a plain old question and answer session.  There were about 30 people at the conference and we were one of 5 concurrent sessions.  By the way, we were also the only live session.  The other four sessions, each hour, were rebroadcasts from the RootsTech conference held a little over a week ago in Salt Lake City.  We got home about 7:30, just in time to get ready for our two classes on Sunday -- Temple Preparation class and a Teacher Development class (Annie did the Temple Prep class by herself and Paul assisted in giving the Teacher Development class)

Romford Chapel

Romford Family History Centre

Romford Bishop's Daughter (on left)

Romford Lunch

The sabbath is always a wonderful day.  Meeting with the Saints has become very special to us.  We enjoy the members so much.  Our dear friend Helen Baden was there and she is really excited about finding a new home.  She says that her husband is also praying about this home.  We have so many other friends and acquaintances in the ward -- Sister Dee G, Sister Jane, Brother L Evans, Frost family (US), Combrinks (So. Africans), Tangdans (Phillipines), Maythems (So Africans), Russells, Prices, Goughrans, Herrity, Goodlets, Fishers, Petchys, Smiths,Spicers, Wilkinsons (US), Carters (US) and a whole host of others that we need to remember.

When we got home from Church and had our lunch/dinner.  Annie decided to check out the river.  We're only about 1/4 mile from the River Thames.  With all the flooding in England we thought we'd check it out.

Looking across Thames from Our Trail

Walking the Trail next to River

Just want to say that no matter how many wonderful people there are here, there are still a lot of wonderful people we have left back home.  So to you back home, we express our love and fondest desires that life will be good for you.  We still have strong testimonies of the truthfulness of the gospel.  It is true beyond any doubt.  May your testimonies grow and develop to be even stronger than our's.

Love to you all,

Grandma and grandpa, Mom and dad, Elder and Sister Smart, Annie and Paul

ps  Have you all heard about our floods?  Thought we'd share.

Flooding in England - 2014 (Not in Our Area)

Flooding - Our Area