Per Perkins Perhe

We arrived. Elder and Sister Pace, who serve a the Area Executive Secretaries, pick us up at the airport in the area van. We'd slept some on the flight, and it was 12:00 when we got to the office. Here is Scott in the front of the Europe North Area Office.

We started in the Canteen, with sandwiches, fruits and chips and cupcakes for lunch, as we got to know our Church History cohorts. Of course the Humphreys were there, they are training us as we are replacing them, and the Goughs, James Perry the Area Church History Director, a couple who are service missionaries, an English Sister who has been working at the Church History Library, in SLC and of course, us. It was fun to meet them all.

Next they showed us the cubical area where our desks will be.

Then it was off on a field trip to a nearby former church meeting place in Wooburn Green. (Woe-burn) This directional sign is actually place into the grass of the Wooburn green, which was the center of the town. A double bouse across the street had a very old house as part of it, 1700's, with a low door that was the home of an early member and a meeting place for Saints in the 1860's.

Here we see James and Sister Humphreys, as he talks about the area and what happened here.

He told us about a minister of the period who was very against the Saints, and regularly preached scathing sermons on the evils of the group.

This is his church. He once was peaching a sermon as the 'street ministers' where preaching theirs', one at a level that caused the man's parishioners to look out the window to see what was going on, and some actually left the meeting to go see.

Here's a detail from the building, these faces were around the doorway. I think this one is Mary, the face of Jesus on the other side was missing the nose, so not as attractive.

Here's the door. There are so many, many churches, some are small and very plain, others are magestic but I think there are more churches in the High Wycombe (pronounced Wickham, just to the north west of London, outside the beltway) than their are in Orem, Utah.

A couple of home interest pictures of sites we found. Randy, this one is for you. Its a favorite restaurant for us in Provo, called La Dolce Vita.

and this is a 'Little Free Library'. How fun is that?

We were taken to our apartment after our tour, and these two couples brought us dinner. I wrangled them into a little visiting, because, well, that's what Elder Perkins and I love to do. They are the Flanigans and the Eddys.

At the office on Thursday we met Pedro, who is from Brazil and has 5 beautiful children. He and this sister are working on some kind of interesting project together.

Here I am with Sister Humpherys, both of us in black and white polka dots.

I saw the full version of this picture as a screen saver at Sister H's desk. If your connected to Finland you may notice that the couple on the left is Elder and Sister Watson, our First Mission Leaders in Finland, then the Humphreys when they were work in the Africa South Area with the Watsons, such a small world. I added the couple on the left because their name is Perkins.

On Friday we got a chance to be involved with the making of an oral history on line. We met with a gal in Norway who is Church History Service Missionary. Of course its tricky to share pictures of folks from Europe, because of privacy laws, so I have replaced her with a gal from AI. It was a lovely experience, so fun to here someone's incredible conversion story and to see the sacrifices individuals make for their church membership.

After the editing and submission process we were taken on a tour of the building. This grouping of temples in the Europe North Area has Helsinki front and center. In face I thought it was kind of funny that the picture of the Helsinki picture here is the same one I chose from the Internet to have my friend Rebecca paint for me for my temple painting collection.

That night Elder Humphrey took us over to the mall across the street to show us around. Here I am in my newly thrifted coat at one of the two thrift stores we found there.

Dad found something that was more fun to wear for his picture.

Saturday dawned brightly and hilariously. I wanted to go to a thrift store that was 'further away'. We'd found the map for the Salvation Army Store, we thought it was unusual that it was a 10 minute walk and a 5 minute. After driving to the store and driving around the block twice trying to find the store we went back toward home, when Dad decided to see if we could make the 25 minute drive to the office, since we'd be doing it along on Monday. Elder Humphery said it would be easier to practice on a less traffic busy Saturday. We'll he tried and he did, after just riding twice along a fairly complicated route, he did it on his own.

We stopped at Lidl on the way home ... where you can buy pancakes. And other amazing things. Which we did. Then we took the car back to parking lot at the apartment house. Put the groceries away, and headed out of foot. Because the problem with driving to the Salvation army was that the straight route took you right through the mall (The one we had been in with Elder Humphery the night before) as the Charity Shoppe was on the opposite side from us.