Hyde Park Chapel and Visitors Center

Saturday, May 16th - It was a 2 hour train ride from Solihull, England (the location of our first mission call) to London.  Our hotel, Holiday Inn near the South Kensington area, a very busy area. The hotel has 600 beds with 1200 people coming and going daily, including quite a number of airline crews. One of these crews was a huge group of employees from an Asian airline (I loved their uniforms). 

Ken had a desire to attend Church in the Hyde Park Chapel because of its long Church history. 

On Sunday, May 17th we walked just a few blocks from our hotel in order to attend the 11:00 Sacrament Meeting. We were greeted by Elder Duane Cardall whom we immediately recognized from his appearances on KSL TV. He and his wife are the directors of the newest Visitors Center in England, the Hyde Park Visitors Center (as well as a Family History Center) right there with the Chapel. The Cardalls told us they'd served at the Washington DC Visitors Center but have found this assignment much busier and more exciting.

Because of the long history of the Church and missionary work in England, in 1954 President David O McKay asked the president of the British Mission to locate property in the center of London on which to build a chapel. When this property was bought there were no members within a seven mile radius. Now the building serves as the Hyde Park Stake Center to 7 wards and 2,000 members who come from over 110 different countries. 

Since  1837 thousands of missionaries have served in the British Isles, with more than 1000 serving today. 

 The building was alive with enthusiastic members that day. We met E/S Jennings (from Provo) who are the YSA (Young Single Adult) missionaries who told us how great the Singles Ward is with its 170 members.

  A couple of years ago we were in Washington DC for a convention and went to dinner with one of Ken's colleagues from BYU, Shirley Cox. She had a friend there with her who had been the organist in the Hyde Park Chapel for many years.

In this picture I'm writing in my little notebook about all of the things we saw and heard today. One of the interesting things we learned was that this is where our new Area President (as of August 1st), Patrick Kearon (of the First Quorum of Seventy) joined the Church. Evidently he had passed a couple of missionary sisters on the street, noticed that they looked different and stopped them to find out why. Then a few years later he and his wife met in this same building.