On May 11, 2016 Ian and I attended our ward temple night at the Salt Lake Temple. We enjoyed a great session doing sealings with a few people from our new ward. We got to talking with our sealer for that session and he commented on how unique our last name was. He asked us if we knew where the Bedingfield name originated from and we couldn't give him an exact answer. We knew that it was English and that we thought it originated in Wales . He explained to us that in England, most names like ours came from literal "fields" in England. He challenged us to go home and figure out where the Bedingfield name originated from. Then he looked at us and said "I'll tell you what. You go home and find out where Bedingfield originated from and I'll send you to England."
We thought he was just really encouraging us to do our family history. Until he wrote his email address on a paper and handed it to us as we walked out of the sealing room saying that if we upheld our end of the deal, he would uphold his.
We went home that night excited and slightly skeptical, wondering if this sealer would really send two complete strangers to England just for googling their last name. That night we spent hours finding out information about our Bedingfield history. The Bedingfield name originated in Suffolk, England by a Sir Edmund Bedingfield. We emailed him back the next day with our new found information.
He emailed us back a short while later. He had done some research on the name as well and found essentially the same thing. He commended us on upholding our end of the deal and then said it was his turn to uphold his end. All the email said was, "Well done. Now I owe you two tickets to England. Your move".
We sent some more emails back and forth and decided on a September travel date. Ian and I decided that if we were going to go to England, we were going to go for two weeks and live it up. Europe has been our our bucket list for a while but we've just never had the means to go. This kind sealer booked two, round trip tickets to London from Salt Lake City and we started our preparations for our trip.
We were left speechless. Why should two ordinary people like Ian and myself be worthy of such a blessing? We thought for sure someone would jump out with a camera and say "just kidding!". But he wasn't kidding. He was generous enough to think of us and make our dream come true. It just helped us to believe that there is still good in this world. There are good, good people in this world. And this trip proved that even more. I can't wait to share with you our trip to England and introduce you to the people we met along the way. Enjoy!
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