Called To Serve the Lord - England London South Mission: Simon Joseph Tayler

I have a new hero! Dale and Ann Jenkins were here in September. Dale was a missionary here fifty years ago and one of the first two missionaries called to reopen the Island of Guernsey, after a fairly significant break in missionary work. He had also compiled some of his journal entries of his time on Guernsey into a booklet, that he would bring with him. We had communicated with them for a couple of months prior to their arrival and planned to have them speak in church. I had also felt that this would be a great missionary opportunity if we could have the local press cover his visit, so I proceeded, with some of Ashlyn's resources to contact all the local television and press outlets. I wrote a nice press release with a template Ashlyn had sent me and contacted only editors, as she had advised. No response, until a couple of days before their arrival and I got a phone call and an email from a woman at the Guernsey Press, the largest newspaper on the island and the one I wanted to cover the event. Yes, they would like to send a reporter out to interview the Jenkins. I must insert a little back story. Dale is from Ucon, Idaho, a small community near Rexburg and his companion at the time, Roger Sparks, was from Wyoming. Dale and Ann now live is Washington state. When he served here he, his companion and missionaries from Jersey formed a basketball team, in order to meet people. Their missionary efforts, the opposition they faced, as well as the basketball team were covered by the Guernsey Press, which is why a follow up with the Press seemed appropriate. Score one for the team, apparently they thought so also.

So my hero, is Simon Joseph Tayler. When Elder Dame Jenkins and Elder Roger Sparks were tracting in the Parish of Vale ...

This is Dale's story in his own words. I posted in in familysearch so that the Tayler family in America could know of Simon. I did contact one person who was researching the Tayler family and he had no further information, but thanked me for adding Simon's picture and the story on family search.

What a tremendous day! Today was truly one of the best daysof my mission because of the experiences that we had. It all started off by going out to Vale again to tract, which is the area we are working right now on the island. The first house we knocked on started it all off. They invited us in and then told us that they were related to a Tayler family in Salt Lake City. We had a wonderful visit with them and they asked us all sorts of questions about ourselves and our mission. Then they took us over to Ken Tayler's home and introduced us to him. We talked with him for about 2 hours. He had been working in his greenhouse and he was just as pleasant as he could be. He told us that he had attended one semester at BYU in 1958 and really enjoyed Provo and the school. He said he lived the standards of the church while he was a student and was very impressed with the church and all the LDS people that he had ever met. He said he even stopped drinking tea while he was at BYU, and he found it interesting as to how easy it was to give it up while he was there. He is very well to do, owning a lot of greenhouses, land and equipment. After we had visited with him for awhile he said that he had an uncle, Simon Tayler, who was thought to be the only Mormon on the island. We about dropped right there! He said he lives at 11 Bouet, and as soon as he gave us that address we knew exactly what development his uncle lived in because we had tracted that area a few weeks ago. We finished our conversation with Ken Taylor and then we road our bikes as fast as we could to get to his uncle's home. As God is my witness, the following is true. The area where Simon Tayler lived was the most run-down government housing on the entire island. As we rode our bikes to the address a feeling of dread came over me, as a few weeks before we had tracted this area and it was dead, in terms of finding any prospect or anything being productive. In fact, I distinctly remember coming to his gate, which was locked, and seeing the front yard filled with dead weeds as high as your waist Well, here we find ourselves back at that exact spot that I had said we should skip. This old house, where we had just been told that a member of the church lives. So, we walked around the back and knocked on the door. We could see an old man in the kitchen, but he didn't hear us, so we knocked even louder. This time he came to the door and he thought we were a couple of salesmen trying to sell insurance or something. We tried to introduce ourselves, but he was so hard of hearing that he wasn't paying attention to us as he pulled a pouch of tobacco from his coat pocket and began to pack his pipe. We still couldn't get him to understand who we were, so I bent over and yelling as loud as I could into his ear I said, "We're Mormon missionaries." You should have seen the look on his face! It was like a light went on, instantly! He immediately began trying to put his tobacco back in his pouch and into his shirt pocket, and we could see the excitement on his face. He turned to us and said," My bit o' baccy is me only bad habit, mate. Glad to meetcha, glad to meetcha, and put out his hand out and was so excited to shake the hands of two Mormon missionaries! Elder Sparks and I just stood there, not believing what had just happened, when I was the one who had told Elder Sparks, "Let's just skip this one." I will never forget that feeling. The only member on the island and we didn't knock on his door. We found out that Simon Tayler (Taylor) is 87 years old and joined the church when he was a small boy, probably eight or nine (church records I just researched said about 20 years). Evidently some elders stopped off in the Channel Islands as they were returning home from their mission somewhere in Europe, and they decided to spend more time in Guernsey. This had to be the late 1800's when this occurred, since Simon Tayler was now 87 years old and we were meeting him in 1965. Those elders baptized his parents, and his brothers and sisters, including himself, and eventually they all immigrated to Salt Lake City, but Simon chose to stay on Guernsey. As we were standing there taking this all in, Brother Tayler bore an incredible, powerful testimony of the gospel. Even though the church had not been there for decades and he was baptized when he was a small boy (possibly 20 years of age) he said, "Once a Mormon, always a Mormon. and I'm proud of it." He is a little old man, and can't be more than 4'10" and about 90 pounds and 100% Mormon, all the way through. It was such a choice experience to see his face light up when he realized we were Mormon missionaries. He and his wife adopted a girl, who was now 17. We met her and she said she is going to start coming to church with him also... (NOTE: I (Sharon Hewlett) have researched the records here in Guernsey and can find no marriage of Simon Tayler, and Dale Jenkins says her doesn't remember meeting his wife, but the daughter/adopted daughter/family member, Gaye Tayler, was baptized about two months later). We went to our Sunday meeting ... Just as we were singing our opening song, in walks Brother Tayler (Taylor)! He was in a suit and tie and so excited to be there. We had told him when our Sunday services were held, but we had no idea that he had any intentions of coming to church. But, there he was! He sat there with the most contented look on his face and we knew he couldn't hear a word that was said, but he was so happy to attend our meager little Sacrament meeting. We talked to him after the meeting and he said he had to catch 3 different buses and it took him over 3 hours to get to church, because the bus schedule on Sundays isn't very good. He said he will be here next Sunday as well. NOTE: This was Elder Jenkins last Sunday on Guernsey. Elder Sparks stayed another two months. Elder Jenkins said that Simon never missed a meeting. "

According to my research Simon died two years later, "A Mormon to the end!" I am still looking for information on the girl he adopted and who joined the church. Last week as I opened up my hymnbook I noticed an inscription on the inside front cover that read, "I need to find this family, Maybe some are still on Guernsey.

We had a delightful Saturday evening dinner with the Jenkins and President John Crew at Le Gouffre Restaurant, which is one of our new favorite restaurants. We love President Crew and the other members of our Stake Presidency. Both they and President Crew spoke the next day in our branch conference. President Crew challenged us all to fast the next week, beginning at noon, to find places that the missionaries can tract and people that they could contact.

One of the original articles in the Guernsey Press highlighting the new missionaries on the island.

An additional 1965 articles in the Guernsey Press.

I had requested information from the Church Historical Department on Guernsey and as I read this 1900 document it mentioned the impending baptism of Mr. Tayler. It could be Simon or his father or another family member, but Simon was baptized before his father.