Helps Celtic Mission

Today is Sunday and we went for an early morning walk in the park. Holyrood Park is attractive at any time, but when Arthur's seat and the Salisbury crags are bathed in early morning light, and the park is more or less uninhabited, its wild beauty is difficult to describe. We did meet a dog with a bright pink ball in its mouth, along with its owner. The dog laid the ball hopefully at Richard's feet and was not disappointed in the result. I think Richard threw the ball a little further than the owner usually does, so the dog was confused for a moment, but then caught on. While we were standing chatting (with the owner) for a minute or two, a bunch of swans flew overhead. At first I thought they must be large geese, but then they turned and we could see their looong necks stretched out. Obviously swans can fly; but we had never before seen them aloft. They seemed to be doing pretty much what we were doing, a little early morning exercise just for the joy of it, and after some swo...

We went to see the three bridges on the Maid of the Forth. It was a lovely day out on the water. We cruised around the firth with a guide's commentary on all the towns, bridges and landmarks we were passing. They mentioned specific islands and towns and described how many of the islands had been fortified during WWII to either look out for or repulse incoming bombers from the sea. We sailed to the island of Inchcolm and admired the seals lazing on the rocks. There's a lovely abbey there built by a grateful monarch, King Alexander I, when he was rescued from shipwreck by a hermit monk who lived on the island at the time.You can see us looking handsome and beautiful respectively, with the abbey on the island in the background. Charmingly a tiny island just off Inchcolm harbour is populated by seagulls, sea-lions and ... garden gnomes. We never did discover the story behind the gnomes but someone with a boat clearly decided it would be a good idea. Perhaps they are int...

We saw a couple of roses in bloom yesterday, so we could have called this post "Days of whine and roses," but it would not yet be strictly accurate. The daffodils on the other hand are everywhere! My mother loved Wordsworth's poem on daffodils, and here it is, in case you haven't read it lately. I wandered lonely as a cloud That floats on high o'er vales and hills, When all at once I saw a crowd, A host, of golden daffodils; Beside the lake, beneath the trees, Fluttering and dancing in the breeze. Continuous as the stars that shine And twinkle on the milky way, They stretched in never-ending line Along the margin of a bay: Ten thousand saw I at a glance, Tossing their heads in sprightly dance. The waves beside them danced; but they Out-did the sparkling waves in glee: A poet could not but be gay, In such a jocund company: I gazed—and gazed—but little thought What wealth the show to me had brought: For oft, when on m...

Have you ever watched a campfire burning down to embers at night? The coals glow hot and an occasional spark rises up and floats away, bright and glowing against the immense blackness of a cold sky. Sometimes missionary work is like that. There is the soft, gentle glow of the embers in the midst of darkness and then there are a few very bright sparks. The sparks stand out and are memorable. Some of you may be wondering why we don't write more about our mission work. There are several reasons for that. One is there are a few bright shining sparks of missionary success against a background of lots of work, much of it routine and rather humdrum. Those of you who have served missions will remember how many miles you walked or how many people you approached before you established one new contact, and how many contacts you worked with until one seemed really interested in the church. Why, the sons of Mosiah were on full-time missions for fourteen years and the account of their ex...

Yesterday we went to the beach. Not the nice, convenient North Atlantic beach less than two miles from our flat. No, no! We drove all the way across Scotland to the West coast and the Irish sea, and walked along the beach there. Cedar Avenue is just a few thousand miles that-a-way! It was SO worth it.  Firstly, the beach smelled right. You know that wonderful sea-weedy aroma that tells you this is the ocean, not a pond? We were immersed in it. Note: we were immersed in the aromatic air, not the ocean. We did not actually touch the ocean - we already knew it was ice cold, so why check again?- but we did enjoy walking along the beach near the water's edge. We also threw a small ball into the sea several times, to the delight of a small white West Highland terrier. Jumping into the ice-cold (and amazingly clear) water, and swimming through the approximately two inch high wavelets to retrieve a ball and drop it hopefully at Richard's feet seemed to be the focus of that l...

We had an unexpected day off on Friday, so we did some things we haven't been able to do for a while. A little laundry, a little exercise in the park and a wee day-time nap, With some time to spare, pouring rain and no pre-planning we decided to drift up to Stirling Castle. It's an indoor destination and we haven't been there since coming back to the UK. As we were approaching Stirling we noticed the tourist (brown) signs on the motorway mentioning the Battle of Bannockburn. We are brushing up on our Scottish history as fast as we can but the details of this one slipped our minds. "Who won that battle? I asked Louise, "Must be the Scottish" She commented lightly, "Else they wouldn't be putting up signs on the motorway". With that as a motivation we flipped off the next off-ramp to go and explore the truth of this exchange, ignoring our sat-nav, which was bravely calling out advice to steer us back to Stirling Castle. It turns out that it...

So, due to popular demand, (two requests), here is an account of a typical not P-day in our missionary lives. If it seems a little pedestrian, that is because it is. The alarm goes off at 6 a.m. If we wake up on our own before six, as happened quite frequently before the time change, we go out for a walk/trot. By "we" I mean if it is not raining particularly hard, Richard and I will go out together, and I will walk all the time, and he will alternate walking with me and running on his own; If it is raining hard I will chicken out and he will either exercise on his own or skip it for the day.  As it gets lighter in the mornings and we adjust to the time change, we are considering setting the alarm for 15 minutes earlier so we can get back from our peregrination by 6:20 and get ready for work.  When we get back to the flat we change into nice respectable clothes and somewhat less comfortable shoes for work, and then prepare breakfast and lunch. Scripture reading is interspers...

On Saturday we receive Conference live. The first Saturday Morning session arrives in our time zone at five in the afternoon. We had a sort-of lazy Saturday. We both seemed to be recovering from something; a bug, exhaustion, lack of sleep, or simply laziness. Whatever it was or wasn't we spent a chunk of our P-day napping--not typical for us. In the afternoon we remembered responsibilities. We wanted to deliver scripture-marking crayons to a sister in our ward. Clarissa had brought them all the way from the USA, but we had missed the opportunity of having her pass them on, now it needed to happen. We dashed down there, spent a few happy minutes with her--she was delighted by the crayons, since she had recently switched back to using paper scriptures. Then we discovered she had no effective way to enjoy conference live. Ten minutes later we had her set up to watch on either her smartphone or tablet. This brought to mind one of the other sisters in the ward that we visit, so we d...