A New Year

Only 1/12 of the year is gone, so I feel I can still write about the New Year--2009. You do realize that next year the decade will be over, don't you? What do you call this first decade, or even the next for that matter? The pre-teens and the teens?

So first the past, my favorite parts of 2008. I think top of the list is the trip to London, which I never blogged about, so here are the highlights. I liked seeing the Thames. Even though we were in this modern city, which really seemed a lot like the US sometimes, I could look at the Thames and imagine the city during Victorian times, or Shakespeare's day or whenever. The river has always been there.

Of course we saw a lot of places: The Tower of London, Windsor Castle, Hampton Court Palace and Leeds Castle, among others. The British Library with, among others, Galileo's notebook, Shakespeare's plays, Jane Austen's manuscripts, Beowulf, and texts from Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity and Islam. Westminster Abbey and Cathedral, Canterbury Cathedral, St. Paul's Cathedral and the British Museum with all the mummies--all places that will be very busy during the resurrection. We walked Hyde Park and St. James's and saw speakers corner. They have daffodils that just grow in the middle of the grass, which was cool. We ate at a couple of pubs and had a Cornish Pasty. I love the yogurt there.

Perhaps the best part of the trip was going to church at the Hyde Park chapel. We arrived to find that it was Stake Conference, which was a little disappointing at first because I really wanted to experience regular church. However, it was a good meeting. The talks were great. The best moment, though, was when we sang the Spirit of God. It's one of my favorites anyway, but as we were singing I remembered my pioneer ancestors from England. They were there in Nauvoo and made there way across the plains to the Salt Lake Valley and they sang that song. And there was I, their descendant, singing that song in their homeland where the Church was strong, even after so many of the early converts left for America. It felt like we had come full circle.

So there's London very briefly. London is definitely different from Paris, and it was cold and windy (remember that unusual weather), but it was a great trip.

Well that's all I've got time for now. To Be Continued . . .