Christmas Eve in England

Hello Dear Reader,

The proselyting missionaries came to our house a lot while we lived in Epsom. Grandpa (Wes) Carter said, "We always had someone there . . . probably because of our daughters. When we invite[d] them for dinner [the missionaries] would stay as long as possible because they weren't very anxious to get back to their 'digs'." It wasn't long until we learned the latest missionary slang. They used the words "flip" and "garbage" a lot and thought it was funny that Grandpa used the expression, "cotton-picken."

Christmas Eve fell on Sunday in 1961 and when we awoke it had snowed a lot. Since that part of England was not used to snow there were no snow plows. Our neighbors, the Birds, called a cab to take them to church but the cab couldn't get up the hill to get out of the close. We tried piling in one car with our LDS neighbors on top of each other to weigh down the car for traction but that didn't work either. In the end, we walked to church which was about a mile away. When we arrived at the co-op building there sat Elder and Sister Tanner with the sister missionaries; the meeting had already begun.

On the way home, the missionaries ran ahead of us and lambusted us with snowballs, but then they came home with us to have hot chocolate and refreshments. They wanted to see our Christmas tree which we had decorated with homemade decorations (giant pompoms made from dry-cleaning bags and artificial snow made from Ivory Snow whipped with a little water) and they were quite impressed. We were pleased because one of the missionaries' family owned a florist shop. Then they presented us with a hand-made Christmas Card. We weren't expecting a lot for Christmas but we felt very joyful anyway.

Love,

Aunt Genni