Our full day in Preston was rather a good one. In the morning, we were finally able to get in touch with the MTC, and we scheduled a time to go check out the MTC.
In the meantime, we went out to downtown Chorley to have a proper English breakfast a small café called 2 Tastie. We got the medium breakfast, which consisted of sausage, bacon (ham), beans, tomatoes, regular toast, fried toast, and mushroom (I gave all of mine to Ang 🙂 ). It was pretty good to eat, and even Ang liked it, even though she commented that she had a bit too much mushrooms. Oh, and we smelt like fried food for the rest of the morning.
After that, we went back to our room at the accommodations center, took a nap and then headed to the MTC. It was pretty surreal going back to there after more than 8 years. The MTC president (President Preston, funnily enough) showed us around to the devotional area, the classrooms, the areas where they practiced their lessons, and the kitchen. Just thinking that I walked those halls and recalling the emotion that I had while there (the current missionaries in there were leaving the next day) was, as mentioned, rather surreal. I’m getting old… 😛
When finished there, we headed up to the Preston area to the Samlesbury Hall. This place was an old building built for some powerful and rich Catholic family in the 1500s. It was interesting that the family that built the house didn’t what to attend religious services with the commoners so they got permission to build their own chapel attached to the home.
The place was also used as a place of refuge for Catholic priests when the government was persecuting them (a bunch of priest holes). There was also a room that a Catholic priest was chased to and beheaded. Kind of weird to think we were in the same room as that. There was also some gardens outside and we saw the largest rabbit we had ever seen. It was like the size of a small dog. 🙂
We then headed to downtown Preston to see the sites there. Outside the parking garage was a Greggs, so we had to go there. We got three different pastries and a thing of jelly sugar donuts. Ang absolutely loved the donuts because of the jelly. Haha, I never cared much for them during my mission and would only have them when other Elders would offer them. We then went on to check out the church history sites in the area where I went when I was at the MTC.
The first place we went to was the Obelisk where the first set of missionaries to England would often preach. President Hinckley also taught here. Next up was the home where the Elder Heber C. Kimball and the other missionaries fought the hosts of Satan on the morning before they performed the first baptisms. We then looked the home where President Hinckley lived as a missionary when he discouraged and received the letter from his father telling him to “forget himself and go to work.” Our last stop was the River Ribble at Avenham park where the first members in England were baptized. The story is that two young boys wanted to be baptized first, so they raced across the Tramway bridge to see who was to be baptized first. The park also had two plaques commemorating the first missionaries and present ones as well.
To finish up the day, we went to a grocery store to grab some snacks for the ride to Bristol and headed to McDonalds for dinner after we couldn’t decide what to eat. It was kind of a funny story as we filled a bunch of American stereotypes while we were there (that is that Americans love McDonalds and only eat the largest meals we can have). So our original intent was for me to order a large combo with my cheapo double cheeseburger and share it, while Ang would just order a sandwich. The lady that was taking our order was talking very quietly and it was hard to hear what she was saying. While Ang, was ordering her food, the lady asked her a question that I couldn’t quite understand. Ang replied “Yes,” so I figured she understood what she asked. Turns out that Ang didn’t understand her and, in fact, ordered large combo for her own sandwich too. Haha, we both felt ridiculous having all that food on our table when we normally wouldn’t have.
We then headed home and caught some zzzzzzzz’s.
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