Events in London

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

 Here are the workshop participants. It was a fun workshop with lots of participation.

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.