Elder Blain Passed With Flying Colors!

"I speak by way of command unto you that belong to the church; and unto those who do not belong to the church I speak by way of invitation, saying:  Come and be baptized unto repentance, that ye also may be partakers of the fruit of the tree of life."  Alma 5:62

Hi, all y'all!  Happy days are here!

Sunshine this morning in England!  It has been pouring rain for so long I forgot there was a sun.  Actually, the sun does pop in and out throughout the day often.  The wind blows clouds through quickly here, which means there are gaps where the sun can peek through between downpours.

We taught our English family last night and had a lovely time.  S. baked us a special cake to enjoy and L. filled us in on the history of England.  She majored in history and is writing a book at present.  This faithful family is an example to us and we feel blessed to know them and have the opportunity to study the gospel with them.  Their family reminds me of one of our groups at home, so we feel very comfortable there.  Always lots of energy and interesting things going on.

These are the only flowers I had time to capture when answering an emergency call the other day.  The small container is for food waste that gets recycled.  England has an extensive recycling program with pink bags for plastic, blue bags for cardboard, blue bins for bottles, and other containers for metal and paper waste.  It looks like a rainbow of litter on the sidewalks when all of it is waiting to be picked up.  There has been many complaints about the different colored collection containers and problems of storing it all before collection!

My birthday gift investigator (angel), Gabriel, called to let us know he is moving where his job is and will continue the missionary lessons at his new home!  We are excited about that and know he will have many blessings in his life when he follows through and is baptized.  We plan to stay in touch with him.

Boume is home from Portugal with his two boys.  We missed them!  He called us yesterday and asked us to visit.  He now has 15 family members here in England trying to better their lives.  There is no work or promising future in Portugal.  His family members do not speak English, so we could just smile and shake hands.  The children are very cute.  We don't know how they are fitting into the small home, but that is the way of the African culture--share and share alike.  They help one another in all things even when they have nothing of material wealth to give.

Elder Blain got 100% on the theory section of the horrendous driver's test here.  He got a high score on the hazard part as well.  He is ready to move on to the actual road driving test, which is scheduled for mid-November.  He hopes to be able to take this test in a familiar place to give himself the best chance of passing.  They love to flunk you so they can collect approximately $90.00 every time you retake the test.  One more hurdle and he will have a permanent license to drive.

Today, Elder Blain is working on his talk for Sunday and I'll check out some lost members.  He certainly has a calm, collected manner of dealing with talk assignments.  I wish some of that would rub off on me!