Week Number 71 - Writing from Northern England

Yesterday (Saturday) and today, we are in the beautiful north of England.  We've been teaching and enjoying the company of the Bart and Val Johnson family in Billingham.  Bro Johnson is an American from Monticello, Utah and Sister Johnson is a native born English woman. When we say we've been teaching, we mean "us".  Sister Smart taught a class dealing with Family Tree and then spent the day helping individuals with their family history.  Elder Smart taught six classes rotating back and forth between Scottish Research and Irish Research and in a spare moment, helping in the family history centre.  Needless to say, we were very tired at the end of the day.

Johnson's Billingham

Sunday we spent the day at Billingham Ward.  We enjoyed meeting with the members in this area.  Seems like there are always few Americans around.  At least one member of the stake presidency was from Provo and had been here for about 15 years.  His name is Gill and his son reported on his mission to the London South Mission.  We had actually met his son at our mission home in London.

Tonight we speak at a fireside and then we'll spend our last night here in Billingham before heading off to Scotland, Chorley and back to London.

Guess we got a little ahead of ourselves.  We should have started with Monday and Tuesday.  Basically we simply spent the days getting ready for our trip.  It actually started about early on Wednesday.  We started out about 10 in the morning and made it to Northallerton, Yorkshire by about 3 in the afternoon.  We found out that the record office in Northallerton was open until 8:45 so we stayed until we were too tired to stay any longer.  We spend time getting acquainted with how they did things in the office and we began trying to verify information on the Ward family.

Northallerton Record Office

Thursday came and we were still hard at it.  We were at the record office by 9 and spent the day there until they closed at 4:45.  It was a really nice evening so we decided to visit the actual village of where the Wards had come from, Ravensworth.  The drive was about a half hour, but the countryside was "brilliant".  It was so picturesque and so green and so rural.  We drove to the little parish church (which was locked) and again admired an old church.  We almost decided to eat there, but went back to the village of Ravensworth and had another pub dinner. Then we headed back to our base at Northallerton.

Countryside Kirby Hill 

Countryside nr Ravensworth

 

Kirby Hill/Ravensworth Parish Church

Parishioner @ Kirby Hill

Dinner @ Ravensworth

We were going to head out Friday morning to Billingham, but thought that since it was only a half hour away that we would spend some more time at the archive in Northallerton.  We ended up spending nearly the whole day at the archive and still got to Billingham in time to have dinner with the Johnsons and to get over to the ward building and set up things for our presentations on Saturday.

Tonight ends another section of a great trip.  We can only hope that things continue to be as good as this.  The Johnson's are great hosts.  They have a very nice house.  The meals they served were absolutely wonderful.  The whole experience has been great.

Tomorrow (actually today, since it is so early in the morning) were off to Edinburgh.

Just want to bear witness that this is a great mission.  This is the work of the Lord and we love it.  We miss our families and friends more than anyone will ever know, but our mission is "brilliant"!

Love to you all,

Grandma and Grandpa, Mom and Dad, Sister and Elder Smart, Annie and Paul

Missionaries with former supervisor, Chris Norton