sunday squared

so i know this is a day late... but this is my little entry for yesterday! yesterday was sunday (i know, thanks captain obvious), so it was time to head out for church at mitcham! it was kind of a sad day because for most of the meetings we thought that this was gonna be our last day in mitcham! next week our train line is going to be closed for upgrades, and the week after we will be in scotland. but we found a new way to get there so next week will be our last week :). church was great! i love everything about it and will definitely miss my sweet little ghana ward.
so after church we decided to do something a little different.. we (and by we i mean me and like five other people, not the whole group) went to evensong at westminster abbey! this isn't eucharist where they take the sacrament and whatnot, but there is lots of singing and praying, two lessons from the bible and a sermon from a reverend. it was a very, very interesting experience. it was also nice because you have to pay to get into westminster abbey, but if you are participating in a worship service it's free. so we kind of cheated the system. so anyways! i kept trying to imagine that i was an investigator looking for a church so i could kind of maybe feel how investigators feel when they come to one of our wards. but their service is so different i couldn't even really imagine! there is one guy who kind of leads the service and also sings/chants back and forth with the choir. there was a lot of singing. it sounds like the stereotypical monk chants but they give you a program and they are actually singing in english. it's really beautiful because of the acoustics but i feel like it's all really repetitive.. nothing that really gets to your heart like so many hymns do for me. after that and some prayers you say with the lead chanter dude, another head dude goes up to one of the fancy poems and gave us 'the first lesson' which was found in Job. i had my scriptures with me, so i followed along. unlike us, when they give a 'lesson' they are actually just reading from the bible.  but it is definitely not the king james bible!! it was so weird! they have made it all modern! so they don't say thou or thy or anything like that. i feel like it lost so much meaning and sacredness. for instance instead of saying come unto me, they would say come to me. i don't know it's not a huge difference but it made a big difference to me! 
more prayers, singing, another lesson from the book of romans... then there was a sermon! this was also interesting to me. it was kind of similar to someone giving a talk in church.. except it was a reverend.. and the reverend was a girl! it's kind of like if a bishop was a girl! so that was odd. she said some good stuff though... they just don't have the big picture! it's really interesting to see how they interpret things. so i am really glad i went! but at the same time i wouldn't go back and do it. kind of a one time experience ya know? basically the church is true. amen.
so after that i went home and did dish crew.. yikes. i volunteered to do sink duty and it was nasty haha. yuck yuck yuck. after that i did two london walks! all of the stuff for that class is due friday so i need to get those done! so we did the kensington gardens and hyde park walk. we walked probably about 5 miles!! my feet are still killing me! but it was beautiful! and now i can say i have literally seen every corner of hyde park! peter pan statue, the serpentine, the flower walk, the rose walk, diana memorial stuff all over the place, all the victoria and albert memorials, the serpentine, everything! i love kensington gardens. mostly because of the association with peter pan... but also it's just beautiful. i think my favorite part is the italian gardens, the big fountains :) so pretty.
surprisingly we actually ran into members in the park! we were walking around with our text book that had a big BYU stamp on it and taylor was in a suit and tie so they recognized us and started talking to us. they are a young couple, the girl is going to graduate school here. how cool is that? so that was neat!   we walked through the park for almost 4 hours! hahaha. so we got out at like 10:30. oh! it was also cool to see all the final stages of the olympic stuff going up! there are some events in hyde park so there is a big tent and stuff! everything is getting so olympic-y! it's so fun. but then it was back to the centre and off to bed! it was a really great sunday and it was fun to get out of the house and do something different. i will hopefully be posting later today with todays activities! love to all! :)