Mor Mor's Audience With HRH the Queen

Well, I waited over a week to actually write this story down, so I may have lost some of you. But the beauty of a blog is that I can do whatever the hails I want. And I want to tell you this story.
A few years back my grandparents were mission presidents in Leeds, England. (I should also tell you that I call my grandma and grandpa Mor-Mor and Pappy, respectively. And I will refer to them as that here. It makes me feel weird to use grandma and grandpa.) Anyway, they were in England in the early 90s on a mission.

One day a couple of elders approached Mor-Mor and Pappy and told them about a man they had been teaching. Apparently this guy used to have some important position and had all these connections with the Royal Family. He showed them pictures of him with different important peeps, including some of the Royals. He also told them that the Queen was going to be visiting their town, and he was going to set up a meeting with some ecclesiastical leaders, and asked the elders to invite their mission president and his wife. It was a garden party, and they were told it would be appropriate to give her a small gift, and that Mor-Mor would need to wear gloves (but that a hat would not be necessary), and not to wear their name tags. They thought it would be good for the Church to be invited to something like that, so they accepted the invitation.

On the day of the garden party, they found out that the party was not happening, so they would not be having the audience with the Queen that they had expected. But this man had told them they would meet out on the street, that she was going to pull over and get out and shake hands and such. So the elders and their mission presidents were waiting on the side of the road, just where this man had told them to, and a motorcade came down the street.

Mor-Mor told me it was pretty low security, just a couple of cars driving slowly along. And they were still under the impression this man had given them that she was going to stop at a certain spot and they would get to meet her. However, this was obviously getting fishier and fishier, and I think this may have been the moment they REALLY knew the jig was up and this guy had invented it all.

But Mor-Mor was standing there, holding a gift in her gloved hands, and said, “Well, what should I do with this?” The missionaries urged her to run up to the car and try and give the queen the gift. So there she was, running after the car, which was going slowly (but still a lot faster than you can run), trying to toss a little bomb-sized package into the Queen’s car. I don’t know which intrepid Elder had the presence of mind in that moment to snap this photo, but I am SO glad he did.

She tried to give the box to them, and Elizabeth had her hands out, trying to get it from her, and they almost touched fingers, but the driver was going JUST fast enough that it didn’t work out. The Queen and Prince Philip drove away empty handed. Luckily for Mor-Mor, there was a car behind them carrying a Duchess of some sort, who very graciously and politely chuckled and accepted the gift.

Later, she received a thank you note from a secretary saying that the Queen was very grateful indeed, and her gift would be added to her collection.

Mor-Mor doubts the Queen ever actually saw her gift or the note that accompanied it, but we do have this amazing picture to commemorate her audience with the Queen.

Oh, and the guy who set it all up? The elders never heard from him again. He just disappeared after that. Maybe he was one of the Three Nephites and knew how much our family would love this story.