Sunday, October 24, 2010

A test of faith

Every week getting to our ward seems to find us some kind of adventure.  Today was probably the biggest adventure yet.  First of all, our normal route is as follows:
District line from Notting Hill Gate to Wimbledon.
Tram from Wimbledon to Mitcham Junction.
Walk "up scale" to church.
Well... about 3 of the weeks we've been here the District line has actually been up and working.  So we find other routes.  Take the Central line to Tottenham Court and transfer to the Northern Line and then take a train to Wimbledon and a tram to Mitcham.  Or, take the Central line to Victoria line and the Victoria line to Victoria station and then a train to the bus stop.
You get it.  There are about 5 more routes I could give you... but I think you get the idea.
Today we took the Central line, transferred at Victoria line, took Victoria line to Vauxhall, and took Vauxhall tram to the Wimbledon tram.  You keeping up?
Well, we got to Wimbledon and unbeknownst to us our tram was "out of service."
Great.
So we got on the first available bus to Mitcham.  Next problem: bus stops randomly somewhere in Mitcham because of road closures.  So we did what any good BYU students would do... I cursed and Anne told Satan to "suck it" and we were going to get there anyway.
We eventually got to church.  It was the primary program today (Anne and I are both in primary so it was stressful to be a half hour late and have to walk in in front of everyone).  But it ended up being worth it to see all those crazy little kids sing and run around on the stage.

Yesterday we actually got to participate in the baptismal service of a 9 year old girl who started coming to primary a couple weeks ago.  She loves the BYU sisters.  She wrote me a cute card for my journal asking me to stay in England and not go home.  She participated in the primary program today and even brought her older siblings with her to church.  It's experiences like this that remind me why it is worth the trouble and time to make it out to the Mitcham ward each week.

OFF TOPIC but AWESOME news:
Some of you know we are doing family history stuff from the British Isles.  As far as I can tell I only have one line that goes back to England and that is James Kenyon in 1669.  I was a little put off about only having one line because some students here had their maps filled with ancestors that came from the UK.
Well... of all the people I could sit by in class the day they were due, I sat by Jenna who found out she is related distantly to the Queen and other fun stuff.  I showed her that I only had one name on my paper from Lancashire and she says "Oh my! I bet we're related.  I have a John Kenyon from the same place in Lancashire who was born some 20 years after your James Kenyon."  So we did our homework and John is James' son!
I am cousins with Jenna!
Of all the people that could be related here I thought I'd be the last to be related to anyone.  It is distant but was still relevant to me.  It made me realize that we are all closer to each other in this small world than we may think.

I have much more to say and pictures to post about our 2 day trips last week.  Let's hope I can keep up!

1 comment:

  1. loved this post! i have lotttts of family from England so i bet we're cousins too. lets just say so:):) miss you nightmare

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