Coventry, Preston Temple & Church History

On July 1st, Elder and Sister Jolley went to Coventry Stake where they met with Mark Reynolds, the high councilor over employment; Sister Natalie Green, and Brother John Taroni who are the Coventry Stake Self-Reliance specialists. We had a nice visit with them in the computer room of the stake center. They are anxious for the arrival of the new SR materials.

Coventry Stake Centre...not one of the more beautiful shots of the building, but the name looks good!

Here we are in front of the Coventry Stake Centre with our cheesy "selfie" photo.

Coventry stake SR specialists are ready for the "new day"...they have been waiting for a long time to get their stake on board, but without much luck! We will be returning to Coventry on July 24th... happy Pioneer Day!...to talk to as many of their council as the specialists can gather up. :-) We'll report further after that visit.

On July 8th we headed up to Chorley/Preston - about a 2 hour drive from Sutton Coldfield. We arrived at the patron accommodations at 3:30 so we unloaded the car and took a short walk around before going to the temple for the 5 p.m. session. We were the only ones there. This was a Tuesday.

I added most of our family's names to the prayer roll since we had some time to kill. :-) We waited until almost 5 p.m. but didn't see anyone else come in so we decided to come back for the 7:30 p.m. session. Fortunately, there was a small wedding party there for that session. We were the witness couple since most of the family members were involved with the excitement of the bride to be. (In other words, most of them were late coming into the session.)

                                                          Preston Temple in Chorley

                                                     Elder Jolley next to the spooky tree

                                                  Lovely flowers on the temple grounds

                                           The temple spire can be seen through the archway.

                                                   The bed is more comfy than it looks!

                                                            Temple Accommodations

Preston and Chorley are within a few miles of one another. For Tuesday dinner we went to a restaurant in Chorley called the Cosmopolitan. We met a couple of young women who worked there who were also LDS. They noticed our badges, of course, and told us they were church members. They said they came from a family of 10 siblings...5 girls and 5 boys. These sisters looked nothing alike...one was skinny and blonde while the other was full-figured and dark-haired. Maybe a bit like Aunt Judy and Sister Jolley about 45 years ago. heehee  I tried the restaurant's soup of the day, broccoli and zucchini. (They call zucchini corguettes or something like that.) It was excellent. I will have to attempt to re-create it! In the tradition of cookbook research carried on in merry old England!

On Wednesday morning, July 9th, we went into Preston to see some of the church history sites. There's an obelisk in the market square that was supposed to be near where the first LDS missionaries would stand to preach. They stood on a small platform called a Bull Pit. (sounds a lot like Pulpit! :-)) Elder Jolley photographed the obelisk and some of the buildings in the square.

                                                         Talk about a fork in the road!

                                    Monument to the Preston heroes who died in WWI & WWII

  In Avenham Park there are 3 plaques honoring those who joined the church in the U.K. and Ireland.

                                             The plaques are located in the Japanese Garden.

                                   Beautiful view of the Japanese Garden & bridge over the pond.



                                    Ribble River where many of the new converts were baptized.

 Lovely Swans on the Ribble River. "As I went down to the Ribble to pray, studying about that good old way and who shall wear the robe and crown... Good Lord, show me the way!"

          Elder and Sister Jolley wearing their shades. Elder Jolley did not bring his sunglasses to England since he was sure he would never see the sun here. Luckily, he had to buy a new pair. :-)

                                                Elder and Sister Jolley IN the shade.

That chocolate thingee that I had forgotten the name for when we had hot chocolate at the castle, is called a "flake".  It's a long piece of chocolate that is kind of flaky. Hummmm...Hard to describe! But they like to stick one in ice cream cones or in hot chocolate, etc. It kind of looks like a single kitkat stick with holes in it. We'll have to do a closeup on some of the foods here so you can see some authentic fish and chips, Roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, flakes, etc.

Wednesday evening, we met with a great group of SR specialists from Chorley. The stake centre is conveniently located right on the temple grounds. We were planning a half hour to an hour meeting but we were there from 6:30 until 9:30. They really enjoyed learning more about the SR initiative! After the meeting we grabbed a burger and then drove back to B'ham, which put us home about midnight. We're called brummies since we're from Birmingham. :-) Well it's late so gotta go catch 40 winks. So bye-bye until next time...

Thank you to ALL those who contributed jokes to the blog. (That would be Emma and Brock. haha)

Next Blog...Gadfield Elm Chapel and Benbow Farm Pond.

AND we head to Wales on Wednesday the 16th to meet with Cardiff Stake. Pretty excitinin' folks! :-)