Second Star to the Right: Sundays in the Park with Jace

In a week that has been incredibly busy, it's nice to have a day like Sunday to rest for a little while. This morning I was able to sleep in just a little bit before waking up and getting ready to go to church! I was actually quite nervous about church, and had a number of dreams about going and not being able to understand anyone. I can't remember most of the dreams, but they probably followed the same formula of not being able to find classrooms and the usual nonsense! Ben, Dallin, and I made our way over to Islington where we were told our ward attended at the Islington Academy. We walked around for a while trying to find our way. It turns out that we actually passed the building where meetings were taking place! We found it on our way back but then had to try and find the way to get through the gate that surrounded the whole thing.
Our ward, the South Kensington Ward, actually recently went through a big change. Up until very recently it was a branch for Spanish and Portuguese speaking members. It has now been broken into two different wards, one Spanish and one Portuguese. We stumbled into sacrament meeting late and saw that the Stake President (the same who gave us our assignments the other day) was speaking about the split and then the Bishopric members and other leaders of the ward shared their testimonies. It was so interesting because it was a mix of so many different languages as some spoke in Portuguese, others in Spanish, and a few English. I later found out that there are peoples from over eight different countries in this ward! Another cool factoid: the newly called Bishop of this ward is Alvaro, the man who is in charge of and runs the London Center! I love that guy! I didn't get a chance to talk with him today, but I hope to visit with him in Sundays to come!
The ward was great and very friendly. Dallin had to do a lot of the talking, as he is the only one who speaks Portuguese, but many of the members are also familiar with English. We even spoke with a few members that are from the states but have since moved to London. I was able to communicate more than I anticipated, which was a relief. The lessons were still in Portuguese, but I can handle that.
Travel to our ward takes about an hour, so by the time we got back it was already practically evening. I took a nap and then spent some time wandering through Hyde Park. I was a little sad that it has taken me this long to go back! It's so gorgeous and I love walking through it and seeing how beautiful it is this time of year. I saw some dogs with their pets and I really wanted to walk over and pet them! I still haven't decided if that sort of thing would be ok here. I love dogs!
I stopped by the girls' flat to plan a trip with a group of us that want to go to Cardiff to see The Doctor Who Experience that they have there! The Experience itself is pretty inexpensive, but it's the travel that's looking like it will cost money. I'm excited to go back to Wales since the last time I was there we were only on the outskirts very briefly! There's a train that will take us right there! It will be great! After talking about Doctor Who for a little bit, a group of us decided we had to watch an episode, so we did!
Today was quite restful and it was just perfect to get us prepared for another week of adventures!

Walking to church