Gravesend and the White Cliffs of Dover

I found a cousin here in England.  Actually he is another senior missionary.  He is Elder Lovell and he and his wife are in Gravesend as MLS missionaries. (Member Leadership Support) They also work in the family history center and asked us to come and share some ideas.  So we spent most of a Saturday with them.  Elder Lovell is from the same John Lovell as my family, except he comes from the first wife and we are from the third wife.  (Just so you know, John Lovell's daughter was Castina Lovell who married Anthony Christensen and they are the parents of Christian Christensen who is the father of Mom.)  They are fun and we had a great time.  Went to lunch at Toby Carvery that is a little like Chuck-a-Rama, except you only go through the meat line once and dessert is extra. 

Gravesend is a nice town.  It looks a lot like just about every other town we have been to.  You don't come to England for variety.

Gravesend is right on the Thames River near enough to the east coast that large ships come in there.

 It was a bit chilly and breezy.

We had been asked to speak in sacrament meeting in Deal the next day and Gravesend was about half way there.  So it worked out great.  Gravesend is about an hour from home and Dover is an hour from there. Deal is 7 miles north of Dover, so we arranged to spend the night in Dover.

Coming into Dover with the English Channel in view. 

 This is the Archcliffe Fort that dates back to 1320. Most of it has been torn down over the years, lately for the A1 highway. So it isn't a fort any more.  It is workshop for the homeless where they refurbish and recycle furniture.

This the hotel we stayed in.  It used to be the Churchill Hotel.  Now it's a Best Western.  The main door in about where the nearest car is.  

King size beds over here don't exist.  The beds they call king size are really more like queen.  When we booked our room, had the choice between twin and full.  

 The lobby 

I love the lobby.  The evening we were there they had a food and wine event that was formal.

We walked past all the beautiful gowns and tuxedos, through the doors to our car and went to Tesco.

This is a view from our room.

Wonder if anyone famous hangs out at the yacht club.

The White Cliffs of Dover.  If you look on google maps you can see that the shoreline just around Dover have these white cliffs but no where else.

 Elder Syme gets a little Atlantic sea water.

 Dover Castle

 Dover Castle at night.

 Maybe we should have stayed at my place. :)

 I fell in love with Deal.

 This is the Deal Chapel with some missionaries.

We had fun meeting the people here.  Sacrament meeting was last, so we had a chance to visit with some members and the missionaries before we spoke. It helps to kind of know people before you speak to them.  I am so impressed with the members here.  The Spirit is so strong here.  After the meeting, several people came up to me and told me they felt inspired to work on their family history.  One sister gave me her card and told me to call her to help her.  I don't think phone calls would be very productive.  Thank goodness the next sister Vanessa, was a family history "fanatic" (her words) and she knew her and said she would help her.  We ended up talking for about 20 minutes as she told me her stories.  When we were in the parking lot, she came up to me and told me more.  I loved it!  Her stories were inspiring.

My favorite stories of Vanessa's: They joined the church when she was 8 1/2 month pregnant with one of their children, and she joked that her daughter was baptized twice.  When they were expecting their 5th child, and it was early on and she didn't know yet, her 6 year old daughter came up to her and said, "There is a baby in your tummy, she is a girl, and she wants to be called 'Rosy.'" She found out she was indeed pregnant and she was a girl.  She didn't like the name Rosy at all, but Rose was one of their grandmother's name.  So Rose would be okay.  They named her 3 names after her grandmothers, the name Rose was the 3rd.  They never called her Rose.  When she started school, she came home and told her mom that she told everyone to call her Rosy!  No one had ever talked to her about what her sister had said!  Vanessa said, "I've got lots of stories!"  I told her as we left, "We'll be back!"

On the way home we saw this along the freeway.  When you come to England, we will have to take the kids.

 We stopped at Tesco to buy gas. 

Next to Tesco was this church that was playing beautiful bells the whole time we were there.

And now we close with one more view of the country on our way back to the city.