Random Pictures on Our Mission (Turton Tower)

And visit the house of each member, exhorting them to pray vocally and in secret and attend to all family duties.  Doctrine and Covenants 20:51

Tiny little purple flowers growing in the lawn at the Blackburn Ward meeting house.

I was going through material to discard and ran across the quote above from one of our missionary correlation meetings.  It reminded me of the importance of home teachers and visiting teacher in the wards and branches of the Church.  Individuals are the subject in our meetings.  How can we support them, strengthen them, bring that back to church, help them with their trials, etc.?  Missionaries can only do so much.  We cannot allow members to become dependent on the Spirit only coming to their homes with the missionaries.  They need to recapture it for themselves.  They also need it brought in with members being in their homes.

The three-fold mission of the Church is to: 1.  Proclaim the gospel  2.  Perfect the saints
3.  Redeem the dead

Run and not be weary:  Our zone leaders heading for an appointment on the stake sports day.

It is good to remember these three simple things when setting goals for service to others.  There is much that can be done in these areas by anyone in the Church.  So, I think this transition out of the mission field and back to home can be smooth if I remember to stay focused on all the missionary work always there for anyone desiring to help further the work of God to bring his children home to him.

Below are pictures that haven't been posted that might be of interest.

We are all going home soon.  Last zone conference for these three.

The missionary here is a darling lad from Wales.  He is in our district.  He is fairly new, so he has lots of time left.

Here's a new missionary (left)  and the one leaving ahead of us (our district)

A two-way street we traveled while looking for a less-active member in Blackburn

A cool bench overlook the moors above our home in Darwen

Looking kinda smug there in the sunshine

This is Turton Tower.  It is an historic Lancashire country house from medieval times near where we live.  It is built in local stone and half-timbering was added later.  It's history dates back to 1200\, but additions and renovations were made throughout the following centuries.  Country manors were often built in castle style, but weren't true castles.  They are called "follies," meaning they are fake castles.

This part was a fortress originally.  The half-timber part was added later.

This is a pretty little add on.

I don't see orange flowers very often

The Begonias are out again!

Pretty in pink

The white roses on the archway on the temple grounds have almost ended their season of blooming.

Now the red roses are in full bloom near the front of the temple

We took Elder Z. and his fine companion from England out to lunch as a farewell (Elder Z. is the missionary from Armenia we've become attached to because we worked with him a lot and everyone gets attached to him anyway.

The restaurant was a old manor house in the 1800s--It's huge and beautiful inside.

Beautiful stained glass ceilings in several areas of this building

Carvery, as usual--Elder Blain does love these carveries,but he doesn't get fat from them like I do!