Sunday

May 2, 2010

We slept in. We slept in really late. We didn’t wake up until 11:40! I guess all the go, go, go finally caught up to us. I think Janice was the one who woke up Michelle for breakfast and she woke me up. By the way, it’s really nice to wake up to Michelle. We came down for breakfast that was already on the table. It was so delicious. We had tomato, mushrooms, hash browns and sausage in addition to cereal, juice and tea. Unfortunately, we had to make it a quick breakfast because we had to get to church by 1:00 in Hyde Park, a fair distance away. We rushed through the shower and realized we were still going to be late. Alfred, gentleman that he is, gave us a ride from the house to the tube station. We still ended up being about 20 minutes late despite all our efforts to compensate for our slumber-filled morning. As a side note, ironing dress with an iron that takes 240 volts is pretty fast, so I recommend it when you’re in a rush as I was this morning. At this point, I must pause from the normal flow of the day to tell a funny story. We got on the tube, but because it was rather full, the only available seats near each other were directly across from one another, so Michelle and I sat across from each other, and we quickly noticed that the 2 twenty-something guys sitting next to both of us were also together, apparently on their way to a pub. It was a bit chilly and I noticed that the train had turned on the heaters that were directly below the seats. Michelle also discovered this….. sort of. Michelle, noticing the heat, turned to the guy sitting next to her and said something like, “I felt all of this heat, and I thought, ‘Boy, this guy is really hot.’ You know, like you have a lot of body hear or something, but then I realized it was just coming from under the seat.” The guy starts to blush and laugh, as do I because Michelle was completely unaware that she was totally hitting on this guy! It was so funny! Apparently she finally figured it out because she started being a little cutesier with me to make up for it. The chapel was really full when we arrived. I was quite surprised that a singles ward in London would be so full, but later learned that a large portion of the congregation was composed of people from the States, mostly BYU groups. The service was nice as was Sunday School and Priesthood meeting. It’s a very international place though. London is full of people from all nationalities and Church was no different. The funny thing about the Church though is that no matter where you go, people find out if you’re musical at all. Within an hour of arriving, we’d been recruited to sing in the choir for the evening’s fireside. So, instead of enjoying a nice Sunday stroll in the park, we went to choir practice after the block of meetings. The fireside was nice. Elder Snow of the seventy spoke along with his wife and two local leaders. During the fireside, Brother Donaldson began talking about choices. He asked many people to speak up and discuss the choices they were making in their life. One of the girls he questioned was actually one of the study abroad girls. It was brought up that one of the consequences of her decision to study abroad was to not date, since it's against BYU policy to date while studying abroad. Brother Donaldson gave her a hard time for choosing something that would prevent her from dating. At that point, Michelle piped right up and said that the choice she had made was to disregard that rule and date anyway. Brother Donaldson laughed and said, "A real rebel." At that point, I put my arm around Michelle and said, "Yep!" It was pretty funny. We met some nice people, both Londoners and other BYU students studying there with different programs. Now we’re back at Janice and Albert’s, enjoying another cup of tea with biscuits, which is quickly becoming one of our favorite parts about London. In less than a week I’ve become quite certain that I’ll ever be able to live without tea and biscuits.