The Village of Kew, Opening at The National Archives and Visitors from Home

 

 

Dear Family and Friends,

We have an interesting journey from home to The National Archives (TNA), the new location of the London Family History Centre. We take the bus to Earl’s Court Tube Station and then take the tube to the village of Kew, Surrey, England. Kew is in Richmond upon Thames, a borough of Greater London south of the River Thames. It is also home to Kew Gardens, the largest collection of plants in the world. Leaving the station we walk several blocks through Kew until we reach the TNA. I love this town. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

It makes me feel like I’m in a story book.

Since we’re leaving earlier in the day and because school has now started in England, we see school children in their school uniforms walking down the streets and on the buses and tubes. The uniforms are very nice. The secondary school boys wear dress pants, ties and blazers in various colors and patterns. The girls wears skirts, tights and blazers or sweater's. I saw several elementary aged children in Kew with red jackets and red hats. One little girl had on grey knee socks. a grey pleated skirt, a red blazer and a grey felt hat with a red ribbon tied around it.

The London Family History Centre at Kew

On 13 September 2011, The London Family History Centre opened at The National Archives (TNA). The facilities are beautiful. There are 4 staff desks with computers on the floor and 2 desks with computers in the staff room. The patron computers and microfilm readers are on the first floor overlooking the pond. There are a 23 patron computers and 27 microfilm readers.

The attendance on the opening day was 46 including many of the patrons that came to the Hyde Park building. Wednesday there were 32 patrons, 72 on Thursday, 62 on Friday and 38 on Saturday. When our regulars show up they always have big smiles and say, “I’ve found you!”  And they bring treats.

We will be working at TNA with Elder and Sister Robertson. Elder and Sister Sprouse, the mission employment couple have volunteered to help a couple times per week. Our look is a bit different from the Hyde Park Facility. TNA has ask that we wear blue FamilySearch shirts so the patrons can tell the difference between their employees and our Family History Centre staff. At first I was not at all excited about wearing the blue shirt every day for 7 months but we have so many employees of TNA come up and talk with us “Mormons” that I can see the value in doing so.

Visitors From Home

Last Wednesday morning we went out to Heathrow to collect Andrew and Amy.They were a long time coming through customs so by the time they walked through the gate we were extremely excited to see them. Andrew and Amy lived in Glasgow, Scotland with their 2 sons before their twins were born so they were excited to get back to visit the UK and see all the sights that were difficult to see with 2 small boys in tow. We were able to spend a couple of evenings and all day Sunday and Monday with them.

 

  

 

 

 

 

It was hard on to say goodbye on Wednesday. We walked to the bus stop with them and they went on to South Kensington Station to take the Piccadilly line to Heathrow and we went on to Earl’s Court Station to catch the District line to Kew.

 

 

This week we not only saw family from home but were also able to meet up with our next door neighbors, Joel and Annette Nielsen who are vacationing in London. We had dinner with them and the friends they are traveling with. We always seem to be meeting up with the Nielsen's in London!

 

This morning as we opened our messages from home, we had a good laugh when we read one from Megan about a conversation she had with Nick, age 12. Here’s what it said:

Megan, “Nick, London is capitalized because it is the name of a city.”                                                                                         Nick: “I know, I only do that at school though.”

These messages from home make us smile.

 

Our best to all of you!

Love, Elder and Sister Fugal (aka Cheryl and Ken, Mom  and Dad, Grandma and Grandpa)

PS  Andrew and Amy, thank you for coming to see us!

Opening at The National Archives, Other Responsibilities and Saying Goodbye

Dear Family and Friends,
Last Friday, The Robertson and Ken and I went out to The National Archives at Kew to get our pictures taken for our identity passes. Sharon Hintze, our director, told us that all of the employees are aware of our coming to work there. I was standing at the reception desk waiting for Ken and the security guard sitting at the table asked me if I was one of the “Mormons”. I wanted to say, “dyed in the wool; true blue, through and through ” but just said yes. The guard got a big smile on his face and asked where in America I was from. He said someday he would really like to see Salt Lake City. Hopefully everyone will be that friendly.

The National Archives is  the government department that houses most of the UK’s records. It contains 1000 years of history including records from parchment and paper scrolls through to digital files and archived websites. Its counterpart in the US is The National Archives and Records Administration in Washington D.C. The US National Archives holds the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights.The National Archives in the UK holds the Domesday Book. The  Domesday Book was a land survey commissioned by William the Conqueror in 1086 to assess the land and resources in England in order to estimate the taxes that William could raise.  The information was recorded  in two huge books. It was called the Domesday Book because the importance of the information collected led to a comparison of the 'Doomsday' described in the Bible where the deeds of Christians written in the Book of Life were to be placed before God to be judged.
The area they are giving us is an incredible space. These are all  our computers and the microfilm readers are in the distance.

The big screen TV has a power point with information about FamilySearch. We will also be getting a large sign that announces that we are the London Family History Centre.

We have a room in the basement where we will house our 60,000+ microfilms. Every 10 or so minutes one of us will go to the basement to retrieve films that have been ordered.

We are in the process of unpacking our films into the film cabinets and getting organized.

There are over 1900 of these boxes containing films to move and put away in the cabinets as Ken and the Robertson's are doing..

Sharon and Ken are organizing shelves.

Tomorrow we are getting our internet line and hopefully by next Tuesday, 13 September, we will be ready to open. This might very well be where we spend the rest of our mission.

Other Responsibilities
One of the things we are asked to do as senior missionaries is to inspect the flats of the Elders and Sister missionaries. Flats are inspected about 4 times a year to make sure they are in good order and fit the needs of the missionaries. We arranged to see the Hyde Park sisters’ flat on Wednesday and the Elders serving in Gravesend on Thursday of last week. Sisters Johnson (from Ohio) and Santos (from Portugal) serve in the Portuguese Branch. After visiting their flat we took them out to an Italian restaurant and had a nice visit over lunch.
The visit to Elders Lindahl (from Sweden) and Rogers (from Arizona) took a more time. We had to take the fast over ground train from St Pancreas Station out to Gravesend in Kent. The trip took about an hour from our flat. The Elders met us at the train station and took us through the charming little town, on the River Thames, to their flat. After the flat inspection we took the Elders to lunch at a Chinese Buffet. They are very good missionaries. Elder Lindahl is the district leader.

On the walk through the town the Elders took us by an old Anglican church. Gravesend is the burial place of Pocahontas and there is a statue of her in the church yard of St George’s Church.

Pocahontas (1595-1617) was the daughter of an American Indian chief. She married an Englishman, John Rolfe, and came with him and her baby to England. She was received at court by Queen Anne and became somewhat of a celebrity. She died seven months later as she was preparing to return to America and was buried in the churchyard. It is unknown exactly where in the churchyard she is buried.

 
We were so impressed by both the Elders and Sisters. These young missionaries make a real sacrifice to put their lives on hold and unselfishly serve others. In the process of serving they gain a maturity that enriches their own lives. How proud their parents must be!

The Elders told us that before we left Gravesend we should visit  the Sikh Gurdwara (Temple). It is the largest Sikh Temple outside of India and can hold 12,000 worshipers. The cost of the building was £13 million and it was opened a couple of years ago. We were allowed to go in but had to remove our shoes and cover our heads. A kind gentleman took us around and explains about the faith and how they worship. According to the 2001 census, 336,000 Sikhs were living in Britain. 
 
Saying Goodby to the Crandalls
Elder John and Sister Marilyn Crandall will be concluding their mission and leaving for home (Mesa, Arizona) next Tuesday. We will so miss working with them in our Family History Centre and having adventures with them on P-days. What good friends and examples they have been to us.


Happy Birthday to two of our precious granddaughters!
  
         Abby age 10                                   April age 8
Our love to all!
Love, Elder and Sister Fugal (aka Cheryl and Ken, Mom and Dad, Grandma and Grandpa)

The Mural in the Hyde Park Chapel and Packing Up

 

Dear Family and Friends.

There is a beautiful mural in the Hyde Park Chapel that we pass every day as we come to work at the London Family History Centre.  The mural was painted by Robert Oliver Skemps for display in the Mormon Pavilion at the 1964 World’s Fair in New York City.

 

In 1962, Elder Harold B. Lee of the Council of the Twelve was appointed Executive Director of the Mormon Pavilion and he gave the charge that a film depicting  “the three great questions of life: where we came from, our purpose and reason for being here upon the earth, and what happens to us after death” be produced. Many of us remember the film that was made for the fair, Man’s Search For Happiness. The mural depicts the phases of life illustrated in the film.

Visitors who came through the pavilion at the World’s Fair commented. One wrote, “For about a half hour after we left the theatre, we hardly spoke to each other. …“My wife broke the silence by asking: ‘Can you believe it?’ “I knew what she meant by ‘it.’ ‘It’ referred to your Gospel and the message we got from the movie. My response—‘Yes, I can believe it and it is a wonderful thing to believe …’

After the Fair, the mural was mounted on a wall in the Hyde Park Chapel. It has been there ever since.

According to art conservationist, Scott M. Haskins,  “The Hyde Park Chapel is now slated to undergo massive renovation in anticipation of the 2012 Olympics in London. This renovation will involve demolition as they install Visitor Center style displays and the mural was slated to be destroyed. One of the problems of reusing the mural is its size: approximately 10′ x 30′. For the last 6 months there has been a going back and forth of discussion about keeping the mural but in the end, the church headquarters decided to decline.”

“That’s when several well energized people in the LDS Historical Department jumped into gear with the suggestion of donating the removed mural to one of the church schools. This met with a cautious favorable nod if all the details like budgets can fall into place. But the mural, once it is be removed and conserved, will be slated for donation to Brigham Young University Idaho, if all is successful. It is not known yet what they will do with the mural.”

 

 

Scott Haskins has arrived in London to oversee the removal of the mural.

 

We are pleased that this work of art, so familiar to church members is being preserved.

 

Sisters Cheryl Fugal, Susan Empey and Joyce Sprouse

PS  Especially for our friends in Indiana- the art conservationist, Scott M. Haskins, is the brother of Lynn Krueger. Lynn and Larry have been called to serve in the Italy Rome Mission, working in the Center for Young Adults. They enter the MTC on 3 October 2011.

Packing Up

Saturday, 20 August 2011, was the final day for the London Family History Centre until the refurbishing of the Hyde Park building is completed. It is projected to take 6-7 months- or maybe even more. This past Monday we started to pack up the Centre and box our 60,000+ microfilms.

                                          

One of the missionary couples noticed an elderly man standing in front of our closed sign outside the building on Monday morning. He just stood staring at the sign in disbelief. We had sent emails about our closing and posted it on our website but he apparently didn’t check. He said, “I have come such a long way.” We felt so badly for him. Our patrons really appreciate what we have here at the London Family History Centre. Hopefully, many will be able to make the longer trip out to The National Archives where we will open 13 September 2011 during the refurbishment of the Hyde Park Chapel.

Packing the films and the Centre has been hard work. Many have been involved.

 

 

 

 

   

 

 

 

   

We ended up packing 1900 boxes of microfilms. I ended up taking home the geraniums that were in flower boxes outside the building. Our Scottish friend and Centre volunteer, Iona, helped us transport the geraniums to our flat in her van.

It has been a huge undertaking packing up the London Family History Centre but we feel so blessed to be able to reopen at The National Archives. Next week the move takes place and then we put all 60,000+ films back in the film cabinets.

This ends a wonderful phase of our mission. We are one month shy of being half done and have so enjoyed working in such a historic building as the Hyde Park Chapel. We will miss being near the mission office, which is relocating to a rented space, and associating on a daily basis with the Empeys, Sprouses and Wells/Edwards. Hopefully we will be back together next spring. We wonder what it will be like working at The National Archives.

 

 

Ken and I celebrate our 45th wedding anniversary 31 August. We decided our gift to each other would be our 18 month visit to London!  I’m so glad that we haven’t changed a bit.

Our love to all!
Love, Elder and Fugal (aka Cheryl and Ken, Mom and Dad, Grandma and Grandpa)