It's Us Again, and We're Still in England

The weather has been very British this past month.  It has been cold, windy, and rainy. Right now we are experiencing a brutal storm from Siberia which includes snow drifts and icy roads. Great weather for thermals.

The work schedule for the men has included making minor repairs on houses and a major moving project.

These are the old shops that we moved out of

Our wood and tool shops (right behind our house) have been ear marked for a major renovation, turning them into two new homes, so we had to move everything of worth out to another place that isn't as handy...or big.  The newer place is 1/4 the size of what we had.  Bruce and Elder Foy made shelves, tool holders and work benches for the new facility.  Picture a workshop that has been accumulating "stuff" for over 25 years and now needs to be sorted, cleaned and moved.  It has been a big job, involving trips to the recycling drop, charity shops and rubbish bins.  It has been a cold job, but we are making progress.
Sister Foy and I have been helping with the move as well as painting two vacant houses.  One of the houses has water creeping up all the interior and exterior walls on the ground floor, which results in white salt crystals growing like soft fuzz on the interior walls, as well as big wet spots in random places and sizes on the walls.  So, we have been painting the upstairs rooms for now, while the men were removing carpets, baseboards, and doors downstairs in preparation for the professionals who will try to fix the water problem.  For those interested, the color choice for walls in England is magnolia.  It shows up in nearly every house.

While cleaning out the new shop we found this adorable doll house that the previous owner didn't want.  It has carpets on the floor, curtains at the windows, wallpaper, and even some real glass in some of the windows.  There were also a few dead bugs, spider webs and a lot of dust on it.  It came with 8 people and a lot of furniture, including a little piano, entertainment center,  bunkbeds and more.  We cleaned up the house and carpets, washed the curtains and furniture and gave it to our Farm Manager's kids on National Pancake Day.

The activities last month included a Youth Temple Trip to London.  It was wonderful seeing our two priests being able to baptize and act as witness' for their own siblings and their own family names. The youth had so many family names that we weren't able to complete all of them on this visit.
Following the temple experience the senior couples drove into London for a river cruise on the River Thames.  We won't mention that due to bad traffic it took us 3 hours to go 46 miles into London, or will we mention the parking fiasco or the fact that our GPS (called Sat Nav in Europe) died on the trip into town.  Fortunately the Foy's had their Sat Nav and saved the day....we made it home!

The "tender mercy" of the month revolved around the birth of our 44th grandchild, born to Mark and Cadence, in Bremerton, Washington.  Mark is in the navy and was out to sea on a submarine as the time grew close for the delivery, but the boat "happened" to come in on a Sunday evening and the baby "happened" to be born on Wednesday, which was 3 days before the scheduled due date.  The boat was scheduled to head out again on Wednesday evening, but Bremerton "happened" to have snow that night, so Mark had an extra day at home, shipping out on Thursday evening.  They had a healthy boy and are naming him York Fitzwilliam Fillmore. Another tender mercy was that our daughter, Katie, was able to leave her family in the hands of her capable husband, Ken, and spend two weeks up in Washington with Cadence to help her with the birth and the care of the other two children.  Aren't families wonderful!

Another highlight was the visit of our daughter Stephanie and her husband, True, who are currently living in Kentucky.  Stephanie was a missionary 15 years ago in the Birmingham England Mission, so we drove around and visited with people that still know and love her in Peterborough and Merthyr Tydvil, Wales.

This is the church in Wales where Stephanie served

This is the flat where Stephanie lived in Wales.  It's on a steep hill.  Merthyr Tydfil is full of steep hills.

These are the Malachowski's who hosted Stephanie at Christmastime when she was a missionary and who fed us Sunday dinner.
Stephanie spent a full day in Peterborough visiting members who were delighted to see her again.  Several old friends mentioned how they felt like Alma when he met up with the sons of Mosiah after 14 years, and they all rejoiced that they all still waxed strong in the knowledge of the truth. (Alma 17)

February was a very good month!