Lyons service

Here are some shots from our service yesterday.  We spent the morning cleaning up a person's house in Lyons, which took a hard hit from the flooding.  The town was cut off  by the flooding and many residents were air lifted out.  Six weeks later, they were just starting to open the town back up and let most people back into their homes.  The gentleman we helped never left.  He had been living off a generator.  He just had the natural gas service restored several days ago and was enjoying heat and hot water. Imagine cleaning for six weeks, with still more to go.  He still had a great attitude! 

Ty in one of his out buildings.

You can see how it filled his shed.

 Making progress... through the door was another attached shed that had still 2 feet of mud in it.  We got most of that cleaned out as well.

The river back in its normal channel.  You can see how far it spread.

 I think this house is a goner.

 With our last service, we piled trash from the basements in the streets.  Here everyone piles dirt from their homes in the streets.

-Brant

 

Preston, England

 Since moving to London, we have been attending the Portuguese speaking branch. The people are nice, I wanted to brush up on my Portuguese, and to get to the building we get to take a nice walk through Hyde Park every Sunday. This week, the branch put together a bus trip to the Preston, England temple because the London temple is currently closed for renovations. We did the old overnight special and left our church at midnight, hit the 7:15 am session, and then saw some church history sites before coming home. All we were missing were mom's donuts and someone sleeping in the luggage rack with the backpacks. The trip must have been a success because the branch president asked us to introduce ourselves today in sacrament meeting. That means Kelly gets to give her first ever talk in Portuguese. You wouldn't believe how excited she is!

The temple and Fall colors

Us

 Sorry I cut off the steeple. The flower beds were too close to get a good pic.

The house in Preston where the first missionaries lived (Heber C. Kimball, Orson Hyde, Willard Richards and others) when they arrived in 1837.

 The Ribble River where the first baptisms in Preston, as well as England, were done. A crowd of 8000 watched as 9 people were baptized on the far bank.

The Gadfield Elm Chapel. Not in Preston, but interesting nonetheless. Built in 1836 by the United Brethren, it was deeded to the church in 1840 after Wilford Woodruff and his buddies baptized almost everyone in the 600 member congregation. It became the first chapel that the Church owned in the world (I think?). It was eventually sold to finance the emigration of British saints to the US. Over the years it fell into disrepair and in 1994 some local ward members bought it. They started fixing it up and then the Church joined in and it was eventually deeded to the Church in 2004. Now a local senior missionary couple that lives nearby gives tours and greets all of the tour groups stopping by.

If the missionaries aren't there, you can let yourself in the church. Can you figure out the code to the door?

Not at all related to church history, but I saw this in a shop window around the corner from our house. Still not sure what the rabbit is hunting...