We have extended our mission in order to “mind the gap”
between our original completion date and the arrival of our replacement couple.
We now will arrive home on Sep 19. As anxious as we are to see everyone, we
felt that extending was the right thing to do in order to keep the Employment
Centre open for that time.
We have heard some exciting news from Levente Medveczky, the
BYU student from Hungary we are sponsoring. He is playing the organ for the BYU
Devotional this Tuesday, August 5. He is playing the special number as well as
the prelude and postlude. We invite any who can to tune in to byutv (live or online)
at 11:00 a.m. on Tuesday. We don’t know if the musical number appears in
rebroadcasts.
There have been a series of protests in London by people
supporting Palestine in its present conflict with Israel. Some of the protests
have been on Kensington High Street, near our flat. We are including a
picture of protesters as they leave the area, walking down our street.
We set a record this month with the most people coming into
the Employment Resource Centre that we have experienced so far. Last Saturday we taught a Career Workshop in a nearby stake with six people attending from six different countries. People from 42
countries have been served by the Centre since we started keeping track. Here are the countries we have listed so far at the Centre:
Angola, Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil,
Bulgaria, Cameroon, China, Columbia, Cyprus, Eritrea, England, Ethiopia, France,
Gambia, Germany, Guinea, Hungary, India, Iran, Italy, Jamaica, Lebanon, Lithuania,
Malaysia, Moldova, Nigeria, Pakistan, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal,
Romania, Senegal, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Uganda, Viet Nam, Zaire, Zambia,
Zimbabwe
There is a change coming to the welfare program in the
Church, including employment resources. It is called the Self-Reliance
Initiative. It’s being introduced around the world, area by area, with emphasis
on direction by local Priesthood leaders. Stakes and wards will be organizing
self-reliance committees in an effort to more fully help the members meet their
needs. The U.S. will be the last country to receive it. The Initiative also
involves brilliant changes to the Perpetual Education Fund in countries where
that is active. (PEF is not active in the US or most of Europe.) The changes
will largely take effect after we leave but we are excited about the
implications.
Yesterday we took one of the “London Walks through History”
that the BYU Centre students take and, as we came through Grosvenor Square to
see the US Embassy, we first saw the American flag waving high above the trees.
We felt quite emotional about seeing it. We share these pictures with you; the second one shows the eagle at the top of the building.
We are so grateful to be serving a mission here. We serve
because of our testimonies of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ and our love
for our Savior and Heavenly Father. This morning as we rode the bus on the way
to church, we passed a church of another denomination and saw a sign on the
side of the building that said, “Jesus is your friend. He will always be there
for you. He will never fail you.” Beneath it was a gold cross with the
crucified Savior on it. As Kaye looked at that figure, the image of the
Christus statue at the Hyde Park Visitors’ Centre entered her mind. The
contrast between the dead Jesus and the living Savior is so striking! Jesus is
not dead—He lives and He certainly is our friend—daily, moment by moment. With
our emphasis on the living Christ, we can much more easily imagine Him to be
with us! And, because He lives, we will live also. How glorious is the prospect for us and our families to live with Him and His Father.
