Busy August in England

This is a sweet little flower that greets us on our front porch each day and gladdens our heart!

We began the month by traveling up to Preston area to attend the British Pageant, which is only put on over here every four years.  They installed a pre-fab building that holds 2,000 people, and the lighting, sound and scenery effects were wonderful.  It was an amazing and touching presentation which made us more fully realize how much the British people sacrificed in giving up their homes and their beloved homeland, which held centuries of tradition and history for their families.

We HAD to visit Peterborough because this is the first area where our daughter, Stephanie, served as a missionary.  She reported that she has pictures of herself in these exact spots.  Besides, Peterborough is fairly close to us.

Peterborough Cathedral

Town square clock tower

We also made a trip to Windsor Castle and to another small "cottage" named Boughton House near Kettering.

Can you imagine mopping all the floors in this house? And this is only one wing!(We were with the Mannings, and Ann was taking the picture.)

This was an interesting flower located at Boughton House.  It looked fake, but it was real! 

One of the highlights of the month for Sister Fillmore was receiving a calling as the 1st Counselor in Young Womens.  Because of the size of our ward, no organization is fully staffed and the presidents get one counselor...if they are available.  We have three Young Women at present and they are sweet, smart, and adorable.  (Side note....Sister Fillmore had the entire YW Theme memorized in British Sign Language in one week.  That is proof that you CAN teach an old dog new tricks!) 

 Elder Fillmore has been called as an instructor in the High Priest Group.  At the same time we taught a Primary class for the month of August.  The first week we had this assignment all of the other teachers (including the  Primary president) were off on holiday (vacation), so we taught the whole Primary in one class.  Not to worry, only 6 kids were there that week!  The normal Primary attendance is around 18 kids total.  So during the second hour of church we taught Primary, then Sister Fillmore went off to teach YW, and Elder Fillmore was in Priesthood.  It's good to feel needed!

Sister Manning (the other missionary who lives downstairs) and Sister Fillmore are trying to reinstitute a monthly Family Home Evening for some of the older sisters in the ward, and it has been a lot of fun.  This month we picked up the sisters (they don't live close or even near each other), brought them to our home, played a delightful game, then drove them home.  All in a days work.

Other things we have been doing is changing a LOT of flat tires on the mowers and trailers, mowing a lot of grass, and trimming.  We did some service for a school by hauling a trailer full of old rubbish to the local recycling center.  The men also installed closet rods and mailboxes in three new houses, and made shelves to put in the houses as well.  Sister Fillmore got to paint them, and has been doing some random acts of kindness at some of our mowing sites.

 Painting the shelves as fast as Bruce could cut them out.

 Our farm Manager does a lot of re-purposing of old barns on the various farms we own, and it has been amazing to see the transformations that occur.  Every new home that he rebuilds

to use as a rental also creates more mowing for us to do each week, so we kind of have mixed feelings about that because we are already stretched as it is....but it is all good, and we have fun interacting with the tenants as well as the farm workers.

This shows a property that is getting ready for renovation into a house. Elders Fillmore and Manning were taking out some shelves in another old barn, but they didn't think the wood was worth saving....can you imagine that!

Before construction begins

Down the path from us is an old barn that is in the reconstruction phase right now.  They build a completely new structure inside the old walls that might still be standing.

        

This re-build will actually be 3 homes when completed. They seem small by U.S. standards, but they have 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms, and the British think they are great.

This house actually had full grown trees growing out of it when it was an old barn. It also didn't have any sign of a front wall or roof. 

These are actually 3 separate houses.The one on the left is two story (but not when it was a barn).  All of them are very modern inside, and they rent for a pretty penny!

We have been harvesting apples, plums, pears, blackberries and rhubarb that is free for the picking on some of the farms, and in our own yard.  

It seems we always have more fruit than we can eat before it gets too ripe, and we don't have our dehydrator or canning supplies here.  So we have been cooking the fruits down in the slow-cooker during the day, and making apple sauce, or pear/blackberry sauce, or rhubarb sauce, which we freeze for use in cookies or cakes or a topping for yogurt.  We don't have a blender to make smoothies, so we have to get a little creative with the juices.  

Bruce cooked down some rhubarb for a sauce, but he put salt in it instead of sugar by mistake, and ended up throwing out the batch.  The next batch turned out better, and it looks lovely on top of yogurt.

In honor of our son Mark, who served his mission in Iceland, we bought some Icelandic style yogurt called Skyr (pronounced "skee-er")  The flavor is apple, carrot & ginger, but we read the label carefully to make sure it had no sheep face in it.  Fortunately it didn't, but it still tasted a little "interesting".  The rhubarb sauce added some flavor to it.  

Speaking of food, we were invited to the farm managers home to be judges as his four daughters were having a bake-off, which included cakes and cookies.  It was a tough job sampling all those sweets...but someone had to do it!  We gave each of the girls, and their mother, handmade awards for their efforts.

Cecily made fancy cookies with lots of sprinkles on them

Eliza made Whoopie Pies

Alice with a carrot cake

Esther with a fancy strawberry cake

As we travel around the countryside we are always amazed at the beautiful landscapes, the quaint villages and the variety of pheasants, peacocks, swans and ducks that we see.  Speaking of wildlife, we won't even mention (or show the pictures) of the ant bites that left Sister Fillmore with a swollen and itchy wrist for a few days.

We'll end with the Preston Temple, which we attended while we were in the area for the British Pageant.  We had been in the Preston Temple 18 years ago when we came to England to pick up Marcie from her mission, so it was nostalgic for us to return.  Marcie was here when the temple was being dedicated so she was able to participate in the openhouse events by greeting people inside the front door, serving in booths at the nearby Stake Center, or bidding farewell to guests as they left.  In England where large, cavernous cathedrals and churches are numerous, some people commented that they were expecting a large open sanctuary inside, and wondered if they had missed it!  Marcie would reply that they didn't miss anything except the boiler rooms.  It is somewhat of a long trek to get to either temple in England, (2 hours to London Temple, depending on traffic, and 3 hours to Preston), but it is so worth the time and effort.

Until next month....Cheerio!

O're Fen and Moor - One Month on the Job

Question:  Raise your hand if you know what a fen or moor is?  Remember the hymn Lead Kindly Light, verse 3 it says "So long thy pow'r hath blest me, sure it still will lead me on.  O'er moor and fen,  o'er crag and torrent till, the night is gone"    Well, a fen is a wetland, like a marsh, swamp or bog.  In this part of England we are surrounded by places called fens...like Woodwalton Fen, Pidley Fen, Fodder Fen, Burnt Fen, Mare Fen....the list goes on and on.  It seems that long ago hundreds of miles of land in central England was once under water as marshlands.  In the 17th century the Dutch were brought in to build canals and drain the swamps to make the land suitable for growing crops, but the fen names have stuck, and there are a lot of canals around here.  This area is now the bread basket of England, and so we have a lot of fields that used to be fens.  This has been your history lesson for the month.

It is wonderful being in the countryside because the fields are vast and the towns and villages are quaint, and we see a lot of thatched roofs.

The main problem with the picturesque towns is the narrow roads.  I get off easy because I only have to drive a small Ford Focus that has an automatic transmission.  But Bruce gets the challenge of driving a stick shift pick-up pulling a trailer, on roads that are only built for one car at a time, but are full of on-coming traffic....which is sometimes large farm equipment...driving on the wrong side of the road.  So far, so good.

This month has been busy with mowing, weed whacking (they call it stremming here), pruning bushes, working on three newly built houses that needed some finishing touches, planting grass at the new houses, working on repairing lawn mowers and weed whackers, and painting on the outside of a large storage barn.

We have also fed the missionaries, supplied a meal for a family with a new baby, given talks in church, and made several trips to London.  Speaking of church, Bruce and I are teaching a Primary class for three weeks while the teacher is on holiday in France.  At the same time, I received a calling to be the 1st Counselor in Young Womens!  Hooray!  So I will teach Primary the second hour then go to YW the third hour.  Our ward is so small that no organization is fully staffed.  Every president only gets one counselor....if they are lucky.

Jill and her kids are with us for church!

While on the topic of feeding missionaries and families with new babies, my oven is very small and on the bottom of the appliance (called a hob), making it a little awkward to put pans in and out.  The cookie sheet that came with the house doesn't fit in the oven at all, so I made cookies on pizza pans that happen to have holes in them.  Some dough fell down through the holes and I ended up with mini-sized cookies just the right size for a Barbie doll.

I love my freezer because it has handy drawers which pull out.  The food is separated and easily accessible.

At the produce section of the grocery store I found this lovely bin with fruit in it with a sign.  What a brilliant idea!  They even provide little bags to put the peels, pits or cores in.  

Some of you will be familiar with Weetabix (which we really like), and they also have Oatibix, (which we also like).  For those who haven't had the opportunity to taste this wholesome cereal, it's a bit like shredded wheat except it immediately goes soggy in the bowl when the milk is added, and is suitable for people who may not have functioning teeth.  In the bowl it looks like you are about to have a heaping spoonful of pencil shavings!

One last note about food, we have an established tradition with the senior missionaries downstairs that Thursday is fish and chips night, so we always know what we're eating that day!

Some earlier senior couples created a "Mother Goose Garden" that graces our yard, but when we discovered it there were so many overgrown weeds and vines covering it that we couldn't see what was going on.  Four wheelbarrows full of weeds later, we were delighted to see what was there.  Sister Manning (lives downstairs) and I have been working to restore it to it's delightful origins.  Besides major cleaning, we added some colorful flowers, a few more figures, signs and a pinwheel.  The creators of the garden put a lot of work and love into this project, and we have enjoyed it.

Three Little Pigs

The Queen of Hearts

I'm not sure this is a Nursery Rhyme, but I didn't know what else to attribute the teapot to.

Our daughter Jill and her family have been living in Jerusalem for the past year and will be returning to the states in a couple of weeks.  So she and three of her daughters made a trip over to England to visit us for five days.  We had a great time showing them the sights, roads, and foods in this beautiful country. How fun is that!

This was a fun sign near the Globe Theater in London

This is the Tower Bridge in London

We went Punting on the Cam River in Cambridge

This is the Burghley House which we toured, then we played in their Surprise Gardens

Jill cut this picture for us to hang on our wall.  She wanted to do a watercolor background, but we didn't have any watercolors, and we live out a ways from a store, so she used food coloring!

Our first trip to London was to attend the temple.  What a thrill it was to be in this historic temple as we contemplated the many apostles and prophets and family members who have been here before us.  This week we are going to the Preston Temple to do a session and enjoy the British Pageant, which is only presented every four years.

The British people are very friendly and enjoyable to talk to.  Some are harder to understand than others...like our farm manager, our bishop and some of the tenants we serve and the farmers we chat with.  We are grateful for this opportunity to serve the Lord in this part of His vineyard and are looking forward to meeting and serving the people here.