The Blains' England Manchester Mission: Miracles by Ordinary Means

"And it shall be given thee from the time thou shalt go, until the time thou shalt return, what thou shalt do." D&C 28:15

We were driving from one address to another the other day and Elder Blain took a left turn that put us into the ASDA supermarket drive instead of the road he meant to take. He said, "Oh no, I need to turn around!" He had no choice but to drive in and find the way out. We both said at the same time, "We may as well go to this ASDA and get some eggs." This store is in a different town from where we usually do our grocery shopping, and we had accidentally forgotten the eggs the day before when we shopped.

We were cruising the isles, checking out their prices and seeing if there were any new items that weren't at the other store, when this man stopped by our cart and said, "R-YALRITE?" Elder Blain said, "Yes, I am, how about you?" The man said, "You don't remember me, dya?" He looked at him and the man said, "I met you over at B__"s house." We both then remembered him. He and a friend were standing outside our less-active friend's home, leaning on a car and visiting when we stopped to teach the member. They are both from Angola. I specifically remembered he wore a beautiful gold cross around his neck.

The young man introduced us to his wife and we chit chatted a bit and he asked us to teach him at his home! Wow! The reason we were so surprised is, when we'd asked our member friend about him, he said that his friend was a staunch member of The Church of England, who is a very spiritual and religious man, but he wasn't interested in learning more about the LDS religion. Our less-active member friend has been a great member missionary because he has brought one golden investigator we are now teaching and he has two more interested in being taught. He has also helped interpret for us with the one lady we are teaching who speaks Portuguese. We may end up with an Angolan branch if all these people join the Church!

Here are some pictures to catch everyone up on the goings on:

All creatures great and small . . . and bouquets for you!

This would have been the last we saw of Polly if she had not conveniently gone back into her box when we

tried to set her free (more like we were setting her up to be killed in this wilderness--bad people). She wandered for about 15 minutes, never going too far from us (including climbing over my shoes). She is now safely back home and the neighbors tell us she is gaining her weight back after losing about half her size. All she does is drink, eat, and sleep. We're glad she survived it all.

Pretty blue eyes. We stopped to check out the little Gypsy filly. We don't know her name yet. She is very friendly and came right over to us. She is growing quite the lovely mane and leg feathers. Right proper Gypsy horse she is.

Getting nosey.

Pretty is as pretty does pose.

Evil in the city. This picture can give you nightmares with those spooky glowing eyes. This urban fox was limping around in the church parking lot. It didn't seem to be very afraid of us. Foxes like this are a nuisance, and the Church members tell us there is a den down in the gully next to the church building. There were reports of two separate attacks on babies near the London area in the last couple weeks. They also spread rabies to domestic pets.

Long and lean without much of a fluff to the tail.

This is our Newcastle Ward mission correlation meeting. From left to right, Elder and Sister Blain, Ward Mission Leader, Our Zone Leaders (one of whom is finished with his mission this week), Relief Society Counselor, Elder's Quorum President, and the Ward Missionary (Superman).

These are good friends of ours. The one on the right is the really good cricket player I've talked about. This couple fixed the dinner that we called "posh" because of the all the candles, elegant table setting, and presentation of food. The food tasted fantastic as well. We wanted to celebrate the cricket player getting help for a serious illness he had for two years from which he is now recovering, so we took them out to dinner.