The Truth Will Prevail

We started off our week in Northern England in Preston.  We pulled up with a bus full of American girls at the England MTC… hahahahaha.  The missionaries at the windows started going CRAZY when they saw us.  They all started cheering, running to the window, waving, and writing us messages.  What made it even better was that our bus full of girls has been deprived of boys for the past 3 months… so the bus started going a little crazy as well.  Everyone was waving, blowing kisses, and writing notes back. Hahahaha Those poor missionaries…

See picture below:

But the super cute MTC President and his wife lead us through a tour of Preston and it was so cool.  This is the city where the early missionaries came and had enormous success.  This is the market square they first preached and adopted the slogan “The Truth will Prevail.”  Imagining them there, standing on boxes, trying to get people to listen to their message really hit me.  They must have had so much faith to leave their homes and families and come all the way across the ocean to the British Isles.  I had a really hard time coming on this study abroad and I knew I would only be here for 3 ½ months, I could still talk to my family, and I wouldn’t have to live in fear of persecution.  Thinking about it with this perspective shed a whole new light on what they had to go through- the culture shock they must have experienced.  I gained a whole new appreciation for these early missionaries and have come to recognize, in part, how much faith in the gospel and the Lord they must have had. 

We also got to see the garden that was dedicated to the Mormon Missionaries:

This is the river Ribble where the first British converts were baptized.  They were so excited that they raced across the bridge to see who could get to the waters first. 

And the most amazing part of this tour was seeing President Hinckley’s apartment when he was a missionary in Great Britain.  Sister Walker, who is President Hinckley’s daughter told us the famous story of how Elder Hinckley was really down and discouraged during his mission and he wrote to his dad asking to come home.  The answer he received from his father said “Forget yourself and go to work.”  I love this story; it was amazing to see the apartment where he lived where it took place.  What was even more amazing was that his daughter was the one who was telling us the story- she was getting emotional and it made the experience that much more special and powerful.  It really is a powerful statement: “forget yourself and go to work.”  The Walkers gave us bookmarks with this on it so that we can be reminded of it and learn to apply it into our lives.

And of course, we finished the tour with a stop by the temple grounds :)