Although we’ve been in Scotland for over a month now, we’re just now getting to putting up some of the pictures we have taken along the way.  In this post, we wanted to put up some (not all, as we took loads of pictures) of the photos we took in Utah in our last days with our family in the U.S.  At the end there are some shots of our (long) airplane trip to the UK.

In the last few days in Utah, we celebrated Mishelly’s eighth birthday on Friday, although her actual birthday was the Sunday.  On Saturday, Grandma and Grandpa threw us a surprise going-away party, at which many family members and old friends we haven’t seen in a while were present.  It was great to see everybody!! On Sunday, we had the wonderful opportunity to both bless our baby, Christine, and also baptize Mishelly.  Both were beautiful events and we were so happy we could share these precious moments with family.  Although we don’t have any photos of it, on Monday we went to the State Fair to see brother-in-law Larry play with his “pirate” band there.  They were awesome! On Tuesday morning, we got on the plane to go to Scotland (via Arizona, New York, and London!!)

We’re so happy that we were able to spend this time with family before we had to leave for our extended stay here in Scotland.  We love you all and miss you so much!!!

Below are photos from:

• Mishelly’s 8th birthday party
• Mishelly’s baptism and Christine’s baby blessing
• Family group pictures taken by Heidi’s sister-in-law, Lonnie (you can pick them out by their excellent quality)
• Photos of family members from surprise get-together on Saturday (unfortunately, we didn’t think to take pictures until many had already left!)
• Pictures taken on the plane flight en-route to the UK
• A shot of the inside of the van as we were being driven by friend Kevin to Blackpool then to Scotland

To enlarge any of the photos below, just click on it.

I just wanted to post a quick note to let everyone know that we have arrived safely and well in St Andrews, Scotland. We’ve been here for over a week now, but I have had very limited access to the internet (no home access yet), so I haven’t been able to post much. Hopefully that problem will be remedied soon, so I can post more and put up pictures as well (we’ve taken tons).
But in summary, we are all well here and loving the area. St Andrews is truly beautiful and very interesting. We are all adjusting well and feel that we’ll really enjoy the next few years here. The kids are in school and have already made many new friends and are fitting in just fine.
Thanks to all of you who have helped us get here!!

I apologize for the dearth of posts lately. We have recently moved from Wisconsin and are now staying in Utah for the next couple of weeks until we fly out to Scotland.

We have greatly enjoyed spending some quality time with family here in Utah. Driving from Wisconsin through the great plains and up into the heights of the Rocky Mountains, it has been great to once again “ascend” to this land of Zion, where the “mountain of the Lord’s house” has been established on the top of the mountains (Isaiah 2). In the short amount of time that we’ve been here, we’ve seen five LDS temples, all within less than an hour’s drive from where we are staying. I am posting a few pictures that we have taken so far (these are all around Temple Square in Salt Lake City — I will post more later).

We caught a glimpse of Young Women’s President Elaine Dalton making a Church video

I don’t mean to invade anyone’s privacy, but I was excited to find today a blog authored by a Theology PhD student at St Andrews. He and his family are American and moved to St Andrews a year ago. I was excited to see that he and his family (wife and three kids) have actually been living in the house that we are going to be living in there in St Andrews. Obviously, they have moved on to another place as these houses are rented by the university for the school year only.

The blog is called www.sextonsinstandrews.blogspot.com. The wife of the family has her own blog at http://hesexton.wordpress.com/. Again, I don’t want to draw any undue attention to their personal blogs, but for any of my family members reading this, they have some great pictures of the house that we will be at.  For my family, who haven’t been to visit St Andrews as I have, this is a nice chance to see where we will be living for the next three years.

We will be living on one side of this lovely stone house.

I have been bad at posting on this blog so far, largely because we have been so busy preparing for our move.  We have most things lined up already, but there is still a lot to be done in terms of organizing our stuff and getting all the little things taken care of. Also, we will have our fingerprinting and visa interviews in the next couple of weeks, so we’re praying that all goes well with that! We are so grateful for everyone who has helped us so much to prepare for this move!

If you’d like to read more about my PhD program in St Andrews, please see my post at my religious studies blog (www.heavenlyascents.com).

In memory of the recently departed Michael Jackson, of whom our family are all big fans, I wanted to post a good video I found paying tribute to his life.

Also, a video that is particularly special to our family: “They Don’t Really Care about Us”, filmed in Rio de Janeiro and Salvador, BRAZIL.

Photos from my visit to St Andrews. St Andrews is where I ultimately chose to do my PhD studies. More on St Andrews soon…

 

One side of Durham Cathedral

After arriving at the Manchester Airport on May 25, 2009, I immediately caught a train to Durham, England. Durham is a beautiful city in the north-east of England, close to Newcastle. You can’t get much further north than this before getting into Scotland.

I quickly became enchanted by Durham. It is an amazingly beautiful, medieval-looking city. Rising up in the middle of town, the grand spires and tower of Durham Cathedral dominate the skyline. This magnificent site has been a place of worship for a thousand years. Across a grassy quad known as Palace Green, there lies the great fortress-like Durham Castle.  The cathedral and castle have been designated as a World Heritage site. The other buildings surrounding Palace Green mostly belong to Durham University.

The University, of course, was the main reason for my visit to Durham.  Founded in the 1800s, it took over many of the old buildings in the downtown area. The Department of Theology and Religion, to which I was accepted for PhD studies, is housed in a building called Abbey House, which is right next to the Cathedral.  It is in an absolutely superb location!

When I visited the theology department, I was able to meet with with Dr Robert (C.T.R.) Hayward, who was assigned as the supervisor over my PhD studies.  When I arrived in his office, I saw that he had a copy of Margaret Barker’s “Temple Themes in Christian Worship” book on his desk, and a number of others on the shelves behind him. We had a great talk and he took me to the café next door for coffee (I had some peppermint tea). He was very welcoming and I found him to be extremely knowledgeable on the topic of temples and ancient Jewish literature.  I would have liked to have met some other professors, but I greatly enjoyed my talk with Dr Hayward.

Although I didn’t ultimately choose to go to Durham University, I greatly enjoyed visiting the town and university and would recommend it to anyone who wants to visit or to study there. The people are friendly and the town is vibrant and beautiful. History and religion buffs would feel like they were in heaven spending time in Durham.  Below I have included a number of photos of the cathedral, castle, and downtown area (click on photos to enlarge).

Maqom means “the place” (among other meanings) in Hebrew. That was want I initially wanted this blog to be entitled — however, out of fairness to all parties (not mentioning names), we did not name the blog Maqom. 

However, this is “the place” for news on our family’s adventures, principally our upcoming move to the UK. Since this is the first post, I had better explain what I mean by that.  I recently returned from an “exploratory” trip to the UK (some details/photos of which I will share here soon), where I visited two universities that I have been accepted to in order to pursue PhD studies.  The two schools are: Durham University (in England) and the University of St Andrews (in Scotland). 

After a wonderful visit to both schools and after much thought, discussion, and prayer, we have decided to go to St Andrews, Scotland. The whole family, of course, will be going with me.

So, the purpose of this blog is to make a record of our adventures in this great opportunity, including our preparations for moving, details we discover about the location, and of course how things are going during our (projected) three year stay in the UK.  We hope to include info on immigration procedures, tips for US students studying abroad, living conditions in Scotland/UK, etc. Of course, whether we’ll actually write all this or not, I don’t know.  But the purpose of the blog is for us to record what we are doing and have done, and to share our experiences with our family and friends. We’ll post pictures of where we have been, what the kids look like, and more.  

For those following us on our quest by way of this blog, please feel free to leave any comments or ask any questions. A blog can be a great way to communicate, and that is one of the reasons we’re doing this.  For anyone interested in what I’m studying in school and what my research interests are, please have a look at my other blog, which I’ve been doing for about a year now — www.heavenlyascents.com. 

Ruins of the old cathedral in St Andrews, Scotland