I Have Finally Been to London!

"To London to London to buy a fat pig, home again, home again, jiggity jig!"


My Older sister and brother were taken to England by my grandparents and father  when they were each sixteen years old. Sue went in 1973 and Carl, in 1975. It was becoming a great family tradition and I looked excitedly toward the year  that I would go. Unfortunately, my grandmother died the year before I turned 16 and my trip to England was postponed indefinitely.

Ten years ago for my 40th birthday, my husband handed me a styrofoam cup filled with birdseed. On the cup he wrote "feed the birds". It took me a minute, but then I realized that he was making a reference to one of my favorite movies (Mary Poppins)  and telling me that he would take me to England!

Fastforward ten years, and we finally made it! Why did it take us so long, you ask? Well, one month after my birthday, 9/11 happened. And then other things cropped up... four missions trips to Siberia and two to South Africa. A move from NC to GA and going from two salaries to one,  relegated the trip to the "Someday" file.

But "Someday" finally came! Whooee!

My husband, who is a missionary for Global Teen Challenge (more on that later)  and I were training some Teen challenge staff in Portugal (also a beautiful place, but not part of this story...) and because we were already on that side of the pond, decided to visit London at last.

I can't tell you how fabulous this trip was for me. I'll go into more specifics in my next blog, but suffice to say that we saw more in three days then most people would see in three weeks!
Big Ben
Parliment building
Westminster abby
Peter Pan statue
Kensington Gardens
Hyde Park
Speaker's Corner (I'll tlak more about that later too!)
The Underground!
Double decker buses
Madam Tussauds (sp?)
Harrod's
Beatles store
St. Paul's Cathedral
Tower bridge
The London Eye
The Millenium bridge
The London Bridge
The Globe Theatre

That's all I can remember without looking at my journal.... and you would have to add the fact that we got lost three or four times too! :)


A special thanks to my sweetie for making it happen!



L