Change of Plans but Going to London Temple

It is saturday. We are in England - on our way to the temple.

We have decided to go home early. The people I work for refused my 3 week vacation request. This was after I had purchased the tickets and verbally agreed to "as many days off unpaid as I wanted". I was planning to simply stay the 3 weeks and lose the job.

But as I see how worn down we are getting and Mom's infection has returned, we will miss many of the things we wanted to do, anyway. So we might as well go home so I can keep this job. (obviously I will be looking for another job asap - anyone have any leads?)

So we will leave Monday am. Mom will be home around 8 Monday night.

It has been wonderful.

.... later that night

The drive to the temple was great. With our "navigation system" and a few days experience under my belt, we got there in no time and without getting lost. It is a fun temple to find. I expected it to be high on a hill. It is not. In fact it would be easy to miss. But there is the church logo on a brick wall on the corner of a residential street. And just a few yards down the street you see it. Much like the photos, but smaller and private feeling.

There are beautiful flowers. Mom of course loves that.

We arrived just in time to squeeze in 2 sessions. We completed the names that Aunt Beth provided for us. Mom had a very special experience with one of her people, she knows this woman was there and had been waiting for her work to be done.

I had come to the conclusion that I would do ANYTHING to be able to go to Winchester before leaving. The issue was how to navigate our way around a very busy city in the small amount of time we had without scaring mom right to death with the appearance of cars coming right at us. So, planned to ask one of the workers if they knew someone we could hire to drive us around for the afternoon on sunday.

There was a very very kind and beautiful sister behind the counter. I decided to start with her. She looked at me rather deeply and said, "Let me check with my husband." Within 10 minutes they had offered to take us themselves! These are wonderful people on their second mission at the London Temple, Marcus and Tuire Manuel. They are from England so they know their way around. We finished up our arrangements and left!

Now, for those of you who know Mom well, she usually wants to save money. But as we drove she suggested we find a nice resturant and have a nice meal. Granted, we had "lifted" extra food from the Breakfast Buffet at the Holiday Inn over the past 3 days and stretched it to cover all of our meals!

As we drove along, we found a darling Old Home type resturaunt.

The service was great, the food was even better and the cottage was charming.

We had a great time. We even ordered dessert.

Our hotel was not too far away and everything went smoothly. Except for the valet guy parking the car. Mom was still in the car. He was parking for us - the parking was so tight, I could not get into the spot they wanted us to take. So, just picture this. The guy was from Egypt, spoke no english and had never driven an automatic car. Each time he would start forward, his left foot would cram on the brakes and mom would jerk forward. Then she would shake it off, he would gather his thoughts and then do the whole thing over again, and again, and again! Finally he parked the car. As he got out, he shook his head muttering, "My foot hit the brake every time --- every time". I about died laughing.