The Ottley Flat: July 2012

Sorry for any spelling errors etc. I am in a terrible hurry.

Picture 1: July 11, 2012 Dave & I with President & Sister Millar our Mission President

2: July 20, 2012 Dave pulling my desk home from the 2^nd hand store that is about ¼ mile from our house. With no car this is how we get things home!

3: We have to use my desk as our table to eat on. We have been in our flat for 3 days and this is the first time we have been able to sit down and eat. We bought two folding chairs at a dollar type store for 12.5 pounds each. This sure beats sitting on the floor our standing at the window seal.

4 & 5: is the primary room in our ward. We meet in an old warehouse type building. We have just been given permission to build a building. Our Ward has over 500 members with about 150-200 coming each week.

6: Dave is standing outside a mall. There are a lot of people and a few vendor fruit stands. The mall inside is a lot like ours but the only store I noticed that was the same was Claires ?sp the teenage jewelry store.

7: This is a table Dave found at Costco for 10 pounds now we eat on it.

8: This is the bed we have been sleeping on for 10 days. Not to bad for an air bed! The duvet is a hand me down from the mission home.

9& 10: This is the way we dry most of our clothes. The Washer is a Washer/Dryer and it takes about 5 hours for a load and it still will probably be damp. Dave is getting ready to hang up the shears in our office (they call them nets in England). The windows do not have screens on them so we hope this will help keep any flies etc. out. (They really don’t have many bugs where we are). We went to a park with the Single Adults last Monday and I got several bites that they said were nats but they looked just like mosquitos to me but they swelled up more than mosquitos back home.

10 & 11: Here is my hauler once again. This is his first of two trips. We caught the bus and went to the mall looking for a bookcase. We went to Argos, which is a catalog type store where you look in a catalog or on line, find what you want, write down the number and see if it is available then go up and pay for it then they give you a number and when they bring your item from the warehouse they call your number and you carry it out and home. We found a bookcase, desk and small cupboard set for 49 pounds so we ordered it. It came in two boxes and weighed about 60 pounds. Luckily the bus stop was out front of this store. We caught the bus and rode it to within 3 blocks of our flat, which it took about 20 minutes. We took it in, turned around and went back to the bus stop for another 20 minute ride and picked up the second box and returned home again. I thought I was so smart and threw the leftovers from Sunday dinner into the crockpot, turned it on and thought it would be just right when we got home. Well that would have been great thinking if I had just remembered to turn the switch on, on the wall plug-in. Every plug in the wall has its own switch.

12 - 17: Dave took the oven apart today so that we could clean it. It was so filthy that I refused to use it and told the leting agency (rental agency) that I wanted it cleaned. I cleaned the rest of the house the night we moved in but I had only seen one other oven that dirty and that was the one they replaced this one for (picture #17 ) When we looked at the apartment they told me they would replace the stove and they did but it was with a used one. We have contacted the agency every other day for the past 10 days and we finally just did it. It was about 3 hours later when the person called that was going to clean it and wanted to come tomorrow (on Sunday) and clean it. I was so excited to have it clean that I made cookies for the first time. Yes, it is really that small. Only a very small cookie sheet will fit in it.

18: This is the IKEA bed that Dave spent most of the day yesterday putting together. It only had 48 pages of instructions.

19: This is a picture of the IKEA table and chair set that Dave spent last night and this morning putting together. It was a breeze compared to the bed. Only twenty something pages.

That about sums up our past two weeks. I have really missed not having the internet or any other form of contact. I have a very cheap phone that is suppose to have internet but most of the time it says I don’t have enough memory. I have been able to read the email that Nancy has sent each day with her status but that is all. I did manage to get one off to her to let her know I was getting them but she didn’t get the entire message at that.

We had an awesome District meeting on Wed. morning and finally met with the Stake President Wed. night so we now know what he wants us to do. We will be working with the Young Single Adults on Sunday and Monday nights for FHE, working on re-activation and anything the Bishop wants us to do. So I feel like things are starting to come together. We only have our couch and two chairs left to come then I will need to get a table and lamp and then I think we will pretty much have our flat set up.

What a Life!

David, Sister & President Millar & Charlene Our new mission president

Dave pulling my desk home from the 2nd hand store

Dave eating at my desk he pulled home from the 2nd hand store

Dave in our Ward Primary room

a table Dave bought at Costco for 10 pounds

Dave standing outside the mall in Bexlyheath England

The bed we have been sleeping on for 10 days

The way we dry our clothes and Dave hanging our shears in our office

This is our Washer-dryer combo, yes that small

Dave carrying box 1 of 2 home from bus of his desk,

bookcase & cupboard 2 trips

Left over dinner I put in crockpot before we went shopping for desk
I turned on but forgot to flip the switch on the outlet

Dave took oven apart for us to clean after waiting 10 days
for the leting agent to get someone here to do it

Our appliances are on a truck on their way and the carpet is laid so we can move in any day. We will probably wait until Saturday unless they need our room Friday night and they kick us out. We are going to another zone conference tomorrow to help with the food and our zone conference is Friday but it is closer to where we are now than it is our flat so we want to stay here so we can go to our zone conf. and meet the missionaries from our area. If we are in our flat it would cost to much to make the connections back.

We have had a very full week of going and seeing things it seems. I really have had a hard time knowing what day, month or time it is. I have become very close to Sister Kearl and I am going to miss her. We have worked hard together and she reminds me of my dear friend Lynne. I am afraid I might really get homesick when we leave. Tonight I fixed potato soup and salad for dinner and had the Kearls join us then Sister Kearl and I did our biweekly chore of pealing and making carrot sticks for the zone conference. We are having pizza so at least we don't have to cook this week.

Following you will see the pictures from this week. I am sure the pictures will slow down once we get into our flat and get to real missionary work.

July 3rd - July 9th 2012

This is a building I liked in Stains England. We where here to stay
two days and a night with our trainers the Wood's.

The Woods took us to see Windsor Castle from the "Long Walk"

Sister Wood, Elder Ottley and Elder Wood
Rexburg ID Elk ranchers.

These two pictures are of a statue that is at the other end of the "Longest Walk"

Windsor Castle from the horse statue
Sorry not my camera, it was raining

Windsor Castle up closer

This is a grocery store like WalMart, food downstairs household
upstairs. This is the escalator that you take your carts on.
The carts wheels have like a magnet on them so they don't move while on it.

Elder Ottley, Elder Wood, Sister Wood & Sister Ottley

The Tower Bridge from London Bridge
The following pictures are all from London. We stopped here on our
way back to the temple housing from visiting our flat in Sidcup. We
traveled around the city by taking different buses and taking pictures
from the front seat on a double decker. We don't know what they are of
and they are taken through glass so they aren't the best

walking over London Bridge

Liverpool Station

This picture and the following are taken down in a coastal town called
Brighton. We drove down with the Kearls to pick up Elder & Sister Parrett
who were being transferred to Guernsey which, is an island