GETTING TO WORK

WEBMASTER TRAINING AT THE MARRIOTT

Wie Geht’s! This week we actually began to do some stuff.  In preparation for a training session held yesterday, we got to photocopy and assemble training materials, put articles and pictures on USB drives and arrange taxis for the training participants.  On Friday evening we headed out to the Marriott Hotel in Weisbaden to meet 8 country public affairs directors and their webmaster assistants.  They were here to learn to use new software to put stories on new country websites in each country.  These new sites will give members and journalists full access to the church’s lds.org  internet site as well as continue to provide a native language web site in each country.  We met wonderful members from Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Austria, Hungary, Ireland, Belgium and the Netherlands.  These people have been given tremendous trust to be keepers of the electronic face of the church in each of their countries.  They are charged will keeping their websites current with interesting church news articles and teaser stories, photos, video clips and information for local media and interested searchers for truth.  We trained with them all day yesterday.

 In our continuing training this past week, the Brandes took us out to the our Europe shipping warehouse, where all the publications of the church in a bazillion languages are ordered in from various printers, then shipped to local units and missions.  We also got to go to Freidrichsdorf to see the temple grounds.  We got to see the restored home on the grounds where the temple presidency lives and enjoyed particularly the original wrought iron work on the front door of the house.  The owner of the house (and owner of the noodle factory that preceded the temple on the site) had his initials fashioned out of wrought iron and installed on the door – His initials were HLT which are the German initials for LDS (Heilegen der Letzen Tage). 

Not as easy as it looks when you only have 9 feet to make a 90 degree turn!

I took these random photos this week of some of the things around here to give you a feel for our surroundings.  It is much as John Kusterle said – the Germans are quite neat and tidy (except for lots of graffiti) and take good care of their land, homes and possessions.  The autobahn is just fine to drive on as long as you stay out of the far left lane.  A couple of times this week I thought I was dead as cars passed us fast enough to shake our car with “prop-wash” or vapor trail.  I think we are adjusting well although still a reasonable level of stress as we seek to get into a rhythm and find purpose here.  

EVERYTHING is recycled. These are for different colors of glass bottles.

Our store across the street.  Fresh bread every morning.

Living room/study

Hungry missionary on P-day

Basement with little toy washers and dryers

Bath (tub and shower behind door)

Our little toy diesel car with back doors that open backwards (notice handles)

We live up in the roof cable - laundry is in the basement.

German beds designed to control population growth