There is SUNSHINE in my soul today

Oh what a beautiful week we have had with plenty of sunshine and very little rain.  It feels wonderful!









  Jairon "22" Today the 9th - his first birthday as a married man.

  Lauren "9" Tuesday the 11th
  Madi "18" Wednesday the 12th-
 Lauren and Madi are celebrating their birthday's on a family vacation.
Wishing each of you a wonderful day


ARRIVALS - April 4th, 2017
On Tuesday we received our new missionaries from both the England and Provo MTC.  They arrived in the morning and left early afternoon.  Another group of missionaries have come and gone - how time flies.




                               

SENIOR COUPLES ACTIVITY
This Wednesday, April 5th, we had a Senior Couple Activity and went to the Berkeley Castle and also to Tyndale Monument.  Berkeley Castle was beautiful, especially outside in the gardens

Berkeley Castle with our Senior Couples of the England Birmingham Mission
and the Mission Presidency

Berkeley Castle

Tyndale Monument

Tyndale Monument was built to honor  William Tyndale (1494-1536) who was the man who translated the Bible into English.  It was illegal to do this and he could not get permission.  He had a burning desire to do so, he did what he was inspired to do and was burned at the stake for it.  He told a priest, "If God spare my life, ere many years pass, I will cause a boy that driveth the plough shall know more of the Scriptures than thou dost."
Tyndale's knowledge of Hebrew, if he had any, was of the most rudimentary nature; and yet he mastered that difficult tongue most so as to produce from the original an admirable translation of the entire Pentateuch, the Books of Joshua, Judges, Ruth, First and Second Kings, First Chronicles, contained in Matthew's Bible of 1537, and of the Book of John, so excellent that those portions of the Authorized King James Version of 1611 constitutes nine-tenths of that translation and very largely that of the English Revised Version of 1885.


Any doubt??? - He was inspired to prepare the way for the Restoration of the Gospel.

At the top of the Tyndale Monument

View from on top of the hill

Sister Blumell, Sister Willmore, Sister Veater

Beautiful English Countryside

Main Room

DOWNTOWN BIRMINGHAM
Back-to-Back Houses

Bedroom - each bed would hold 3-5 people

Back to Back Houses

The Courtyard shared by around 70 people

Saturday, our adventure was to go to downtown Birmingham where we visited the Back to Back Houses.  This is the only one left in Birmingham.  Houses like this are where Elder Willmore's Great Grandfather lived as a young boy - he came to America when he twelve years  old.
When we went on our tour, we found out a man by the name of John Willmore and his two sons, John and Joseph were the first to build the back to back houses.  They were a cheap way to build housing for all the people moving into Birmingham with the industrial revolution.  The courtyard was shared by around 70 people, with two outhouses and one laundry room.  The houses had a small room with a table, a closet to store food, steep stairs that went up to stories with one bedroom on each floor.  Each house usually had about 10 people in them.  Elder Willmore's family had 12 people in their tiny little home.  Sanitation was terrible and living conditions had a lot be desired.  They would bath in the River Rae nearby.

What a great experience to see where our ancestors lived.