Today we went on a YSA church history tour to Preston and some other places that are significant to the church. It was so cool! We took this awesome coach and traveled almost all day. I will do my best to recount stuff, but I obviously don't have a perfect memory and probably wasn't listening as good as I should have sometimes. With that disclaimer, there may be some slight errors so don't quote me or anything.
Our first stop was the Preston, England temple. We were only there for a few minutes but it was still awesome. Today was such a gorgeous day which made our whole trip ten times better!
This is the house where Gordon B. Hinckley was staying on his mission and wanted to go home. His dad wrote him the letter that said something like "forget yourself, and get to work". Then he went upstairs and decided to dedicate himself to the Lord. Everything good he did in his life he can trace back to that day.
This is the oldest building (and business) in Preston.
Preston stands for "priest town" and this is their city symbol. The lamb represents The Lamb of God and the sword is the Sword of Truth. This was a perfect place for the missionaries to first come to because it was already so religious. The people living there were also going through/coming out of some really tough times so they were humble and more receptive to the gospel message.
See how to the right of those pipes there is a door that's been filled in? This is where the first missionaries lived for a little while. We were told two stories here. One was about a preacher who came and knocked on the door and told John Taylor (I think?) that they couldn't baptize the members of his congregation. John Taylor told them "they are of age. Let them choose for themselves." Also, on the middle floor there was an instance where a huge host of demons appeared and the missionaries had to tell them to leave.
This garden was so pretty! There are a couple of trees in there that have plaques and were planted by the church...one was in memory of the missionaries and I forget the other one. On the sign for the whole garden though, the city put a paragraph at the bottom that talked about how Preston is a very significant place for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day saints and how thousands of people migrated to the west to join them.
This is the River Ribble. The first baptisms in Britain were performed here. The most likely spot was right below that bridge back to the left of us.
This is Stoneyhurst Catholic College. J.R. Tolkien wrote some of the Lord of the Rings here. Cool huh? The guy that wrote Sherlock Homes went here too and his first book involved the Mormons and made them seem really scary. Later he and his daughter came to Utah to visit and realized the Mormons were really nice people. He gave a personal apology to the Church but never gave a public one.
Lastly we went to Downham. It was the most adorable little town in the countryside! This tree is where Elder Holland went to get inspiration about the location of the Preston temple. It's surrounded by gorgeous sheep fields, trees, and a little bubbling stream.
This bathroom won the award for "best loo of the year". We had to have a guy go in and make sure there was no one in there first (it's the men's bathroom, obviously, cuz there are urinals), but it was so cool! It's a refurbished barn and they just left the sheep stalls and stuff how they were.
We all went to a little restaurant before heading home. The institute payed for all of us. It was really nice. Funny story...almost everyone ordered a dessert and we girls decided to order the gigantic ice cream sundae. However, for some reason they didn't bring ours out until at least 15 minutes after everyone else's. We were pretty much the only ones left in the restaurant, and of course we couldn't just leave because we'd already paid for it. I felt so bad! When it finally came we all just dug in and downed it in an instant. Everyone (who was still there) was seriously shocked at how fast we ate it. They probably think we are the biggest pigs, but we really were just trying to be fast so they wouldn't have to wait longer. It was so funny to see their reactions though! Maybe we should be embarrassed...?
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