I can’t believe it is already Saturday again. What a fast week this was. Monday after the office Sister Gifford and I took a bus up to High Street (the Royal Mile) to pick up our tickets for The Fringe. The Fringe is an artists festival that takes over Edinburgh for the month of August – along with the Tatoo and other types of festivals. The streets are wall-to-wall people. It’s a wee bit crazy. But our good friends David and Brittni Smith are in town with a group of their talented friends doing two shows each day for the next couple of weeks and I couldn’t pass up that opportunity. Here is a picture of a street near the castle. This is a typical street. I love how they bend.
Anyway, my usual talent of getting lost didn’t fail me on Monday as we took a wrong bus. I thought this bus would take us to High Street but it went on the other side of the castle so we started walking. As we were walking this guy came up to us and asked us if we liked Levis. OK, my mind went to Levi the son of Jacob, ha, ha. I guess I’m on a mission so that’s what I was thinking. I’m sure I just looked really confused, but then he pulled this shirt out of his bag (security tag still attached) and said if you like Levis the stores alarms aren’t working. You can just go in and get what you want, they won’t ever know. Well, luckily he didn’t want to hang around any longer so he started off down the street. A lady standing by us overheard him and knew some cops were just a door down from us so she went and told them but they weren’t fast enough. No one could see where he went.
Tuesday was zone conference and then that night after work we took dinner to a lady in our ward who has been going through some tough things. She is from Ghana and is a beautiful lady who wears the most colorful neat outfits to church. I always feel like I am staring at her at church because she is so striking. Anyway, her husband died about a month ago and then she just had a major surgery so we thought we would take her some dinner and go and visit her. I’m glad we did. It feels good to serve someone. Here is a picture from zone conference. Seated at this table are five different missionaries, each from a different country. Elder Firstbrook is from the UK. Elder Cosmos who always has a big smile on his face is from Uganda and was in an accident as a teenager and lost both his hands. He also lost both his parents when he was very young. We don’t have a happier missionary than him. Elder Sazaki next to him is from Japan. Elder Rodriguez Arciniegas is from Columbia and Elder Kapolnasi is from Hungary.
The rest of the week came and went without anything out of the ordinary. I’ve been busy working on a few projects at the office but it’s been a good week.
Today was the day of the show – American Broadway Hits and The Best of the West End. What a great entertaining time we had. We took the bus to the city – we got on the wrong bus again. Different bus stops and different numbers. I knew we needed Ocean Terminal but I didn’t know bus 33 and 34 are both named Ocean Terminal. How stupid is that. We got on 33 and should have been on 34 but we figured it out before it became a problem and an extra 1 pound 60 pence later we were on the right bus. We sat right on the front row and enjoyed every second of both shows.
After the show we walked down the street and around the corner and picked a place to get some lunch. We got to the counter and not expecting to see anyone we knew were startled when the cashier said “Sister Call – hi!!” It was Toni who was baptized the same week as her friend Amy. You remember the story of the crazy baptism with the “HOT” water? It was so good to see her. She has been working on Sunday during festival so we haven’t seen her at church but she proudly smiled at us and even told my new singing friends that she was a member of the church. (David and Co had walked into the same place to eat right behind us.)
Before heading home we decided to walk over to the Elephant House where JK Rowling wrote a lot of Harry Potter. I took a picture of Spoon which is also another place where she wrote since I already have Elephant House in an earlier blog.
But the thing I was really excited to do was walk through the cemetery behind Greyfriar’s Bobby. At the opening of the cemetery is the dog’s grave.
But if you wander through this cemetery you will find names that mean something to Harry Potter fans. It was fun walking through this cemetery. It’s old and a wee bit frightening. I will include a few more pictures. I love the one with the crumbling wall and the city showing through behind it.
I have to add a fun picture. When I called to talk to my grandkids – this is what I saw as soon as they answered.
Well, since this is a short post this week I am going to end with something I did for my devotional this week. I’m sure you all know The Piano Guys. Well, they did a video here in Scotland a few years ago. Here is their experience.
This story is packed with miracles about the filming of their music video, “Fight Song/Amazing Grace. When they start a project they start a prayer list. As they prepare and put together their music they pray using their prayer list.
Before coming to Scotland they secured a day of filming at the Eilean Donan Castle on the Isle of Skye. But they needed more. Their prayer list for filming this music video included three things they had no idea how to find in almost no time on a tight schedule in Scotland:
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- A forest with the trees just the right distance apart to let the sun shine through just right
- A cool Scottish pipe band
- A location with spectacular scenery (besides the one castle scene they already had)
They had two days to film: Monday and Tuesday. They arrived in Scotland with only the weekend to accomplish their three items on their prayer list. By Saturday night, after searching all day, they hadn’t found any of their three prayer list items, so they were tempted to only attend sacrament meeting the next day, and skip the rest of church, so they could keep looking for locations. It felt like an emergency. Yet the Spirit told them to attend all three church meetings and God would take care of their prayer list.
In Alma 37:37 we read, “Counsel with the Lord in all thy doings, and he will direct thee for good; yea, when thou liest down at night lie down unto the Lord, that he may watch over you in your sleep; and when thou risest in the morning let thy heart be full of thanks unto God; and if ye do these things, ye shall be lifted up at the last day.