Helps Celtic Mission

The weather was looking mighty promising Saturday before last - promising rain, that is - so we cancelled our tentative plan to go for a cruise on Loch Lomond, and decided to visit Stirling Castle instead. The castle only opens at 9:30 am, but we decided to travel up early, as we had some mail to deliver to the local missionaries. So off we set on our peregrinations. Last time we went to Stirling, in 2012, we took the long route, so we could drive over the Forth Road Bridge, and admire the iconic red Forth (rail) Bridge off to the east of us. This time we decided to drive the more direct route. It was still quite early as we approached Stirling - not quite 8:30, so we put off phoning the missionaries as long as we could. They are supposed to be all showered and fed and exercised and ready for the day by 8:30 am, so after that time we feel we can call with impunity. (We still sometimes phone before that time, but our earlier calls are decidedly lacking in said impunity.)  Finally we...

Firstly the devils, kitchen devils to be precise--those super sharp small knives that never seem to get dull and are the first ones you reach for in the kitchen drawer. We acquired our first ones as wedding gifts. One was straight-edged and one serrated. They were little knives, and amazingly sharp, and we loved them. They were the knives that come to hand for almost every task that involved vegetables, and quite a few other cutting/chopping jobs as well. They came with us when we moved to America in 1986, and by about  ten years after that momentous occasion, the straight-edged one had somehow managed to get lost, but the serrated one was still as sharp as ever. Or so we thought, until Brian and Joyce Spear visited us, and then sent us a couple more as a gift from England, where they were living at the time. The old kitchen devil had been the sharpest knife we owned, but the new ones were sharper still.  One of them got stuck at the bottom of the dishwasher one day, on the on...

Today (Saturday June 2nd) we went to the Royal Botanical Gardens in Edinburgh. We chose to have a low-key weekend, as we are both pretty tired, so the plan was to clean our flat, do a bit of laundry, plan some activities for future weekends, prepare a Primary lesson, and visit the Botanical Gardens. We had a lazy morning and then set off for the Botanical Gardens to be there shortly after they opened at 10 a.m. There was no entrance charge (though "in-app purchases" may be in our future) You can even borrow a motorized chair if you need one, and there would be no charge for that either, though they do suggest that a donation to help pay for chair maintenance would be appreciated. In short, the Royal Botanical Gardens are a gift to the people of Edinburgh, including visitors. The gift was made 351 years ago, and continues giving and being appreciated today. There was a constant stream of people entering through the gates, many with children in strollers, but once you got...

The young missionaries regularly attend zone conferences to train and inspire them. Sister Donaldson organised a "Senior Couples Conference" for all the senior missionary couples in the mission. They all came in to the mission home from the far reaches of southern Ireland and western Scotland. I would also say from the isles of the sea, of which Scotland and Ireland have plenty, but we don't have any senior missionaries on them. The roles that senior missionaries take on are interesting. From our very limited exposure it seems that we are the people who fill in the gaps. The young missionaries' lives are very carefully (and appropriately) controlled. Their schedules have very little flexibility. In an ideal world the mission would run like a well oiled machine and everything would work. But this is not an ideal world, so the senior missionaries have more flexible rules and can pick up the slack. Does a missionary need to be taken to the station and no one else is av...