BLACKBERRIES

Elaine's wild birthday party with German
 chocolate mousse cake

It is feeling like fall in Frankfurt.  We see people bringing apples home from their community gardens and we see the myriads of what we thought were wild raspberry bushes along the bike paths turn from red and bitter to black and sweet. Turns out they were really blackberries.We rode out to the farm fields last Tuesday night with the Swifts and picked a few.  We thought it would be like strawberry picking, but black berries have double the thorns of a rose and we paid a price for trying to reach up high to get the big ones others left behind. The Germans have an easy mix for jam in 3 minutes and so Elaine was able to make a quart or so of delicious homemade blackberry jam that we are now enjoying - more so because they were so painful to pick.

This week we sang in the choir for a funeral in our ward.  We went hometeaching and a dear inactive sister let us in so we felt like successful missionaries.  Had one mid-week day off because workers are installing new A/C and used that to explore the way to our Offenbach chapel by bicycle.  Friday was temple night and we got to do ordinances half in German and half in English depending on the ordinance worker's language capacity - pretty fun. Then Saturday we used our knowledge to ride our bikes the the Ward BBQ, which took about an hour but the route is along the Main River and very pleasant.

Homemade blackberry jam on a thin crisp rye cracker!

                                      The worker bees, hard at work in the Area Office