GOODBYE DEAR FRIENDS

We just dropped our senior missionary mentors, the Brandes and the Derrs, off at the airport for their return home to Salt Lake City.  The Brandes picked us up when we came last fall and were our fellow Public Affairs servants. The Derrs were our Paris guides last March and our  Zone Leaders- they were Family History specialists. So hard to see them go, the Brandes were good teachers, good examples and good friends to us here in Germany and we will miss them sorely.  This week Elaine handled the newsroom translation requests and Martin prepared for our next assignment in Copenhagen to assist with training missionaries to be good spokespersons for the church when interviewed by journalists. We are also helping to create 2-page fact sheets for each of the 30 countries in our area.  Church representatives use these fact sheets when meeting with opinion leaders or hosting government officials such as ambassadors in their countries.

Goodbye dear Brandes

Goodbye dear Derrs

SPENCE AND XAN GET A HONEYMOON

Francesco DiLillo, Assistant PA Director in our office, and his wife Manuela  invited the Brandes and us to dinner this week.  We enjoyed being with their cute young boys and feasting on fabulous Italian cooking by Manuela.  The Brandes are heading home in a few days and we are going to miss them dearly.  Not sure how we will be able to get along without them.

Spence and Xan came for a visit this week and we took them south for a few days to see Bavaria and our good friends the Schoenwalds, Berndt and Angelika.  Angelika and Elaine were childhood friends here during her dad's mission and we exchanged children back in the day, with Emily and Ali coming to their home for a month.  Xan is taking the picture here just before we head off to church.  Ruthie is kneeling with her daughter.  She came to our house with her cousin for a month many years ago.

On our way back north we passed by Dachau and stopped to visit this concentration camp war memorial site.  A very sobering experience to feel the breadth and depth of these victims agony and to contemplate how it could be possible for humans to be so cruel to their fellow man.

The beautiful land of Bavaria in southern Germany.  Don't know if we will ever be able to re-acclimate to Utah.

Fun to wear our missionary tags when traveling on P-day. It gives us the opportunity to meet many vacationing members and update them on the progress of the Church in Europe.

Can't describe how wonderful it was to be with our baby boy and  his sweet bride.  We are  comforted to see how happy they are and excited about life and doing so well.  We cried when they had to go, not knowing when we will see them again.

It's still hard to believe parts of this country are for real.  Charming doesn't begin to describe it, especially if you could hear the accordian and guitar playing in the background by two leder-hosened Bavarians.

The art of Marzipan 

This is Obersee or Ober sea above Koenigsee in Berchesgaden  National  Park.  The  little berg hut  on the shore in the distance below the water fall with cows grazing near by was over the top spectacular.  The lake reflection is near perfect.

A GLIDE IN THE PARK

Germany has generally has pretty good playground equipment in their parks and we have visited several with zip lines. This past week on a walk after dinner we tried out one close by our apartment and Tasha, our BYU intern, caught Elaine on "film".

 This week our assignment was to watch all the video footage that was taken for the five country Newsroom Video project and confirm that we had signed permission to use each person's interview.  The Church is very careful and will not use a picture of a person if we do not have a  release to use image in our files.  Elaine also practiced her photo editing skills to polish the member photos she took in Sweden before making them available to Sweden's public affairs team.

We are trying to get all the information we can about the assignments the Brandes have before they leave the 1st of July so we can show the new missionaries how to do what they were doing.  Sister Brande is in charge of getting newsroom articles translated so Elaine is figuring out how that works.

On an evening bike ride we went past a pick-yourself strawberry field, so went back yesterday and picked a couple of kilos just for fun.  Elaine made these tasty fresh strawberry pies that we served to some lucky senior missionary couples today.

FIRST PHOTOS WITHOUT OUR COATS ON!

On our cemetery walk we came on this dumpster full of head
stones of those whose families had not paid
the rent due on their plot

Here it is another Sunday night in Frankfurt, but feels very different this week.  It is hot, we have all the windows open and my sleeves are rolled up.  We smell the cigarette smoke of the other tenants in the building as they sit on their little balconies and enjoy the evening air.  Did you know compared to Utah, Germany is jam packed with birds. It’s a constant chorus night and day – a birdwatchers paradise. We rode our bikes downtown yesterday to see how high the Main River was and to get Nana’s bike fixed at the flea market.  The weekly flea market is a site - all kinds of strange junk for sale and the people are from everywhere – lots it seems from Turkey and Russia. 

We had the sister missionaries and the Elders over for dinners this past week.  The sisters report they are so busy they have a very hard time getting around to all of their investigators.  They have some baptisms coming up and people coming to church Sunday so they are excited.  The Elders are equally enthusiastic and positive about the work and its inspiring to be with them.

People swarm to the park on the first hot day of the year

Copied pictures of our NDPA seminar for all 25 countries who attended

One on-going job is to keep these hard copy files in case our hard drive crashes?

Our new intern, Tasha Singer, assists with the Newsletter. ( Actually she does it all and I send it off.)

The flooding is now getting worse in the north.  The Main has peeked.

Our biking buddies, the Swifts.  We rode an hour to the Frankfurt forest - miles of trails.

The Germans have a rhyme that goes "In heaven there's no beer so we must drink it here."

Our family away from home.  The Frankfurt missionaries at the temple after zone conference.

FLOODING IN GERMANY

This before and after photo is of Passau, a city in the south of Germany in Bavaria where the Danube and two other rivers join together.  We have umbrellas, turns out we need paddles.

http://www.spiegel.de/panorama/foto-vergleich-zur-flut-passau-vor-und-waehrend-des-hochwassers-a-903482.html

NORWAY IN A NUTSHELL

Our way back to Frankfurt from Sweden this past week included a detour over to Oslo Norway for "cultural experience" .  We took a 16-hour round trip train ride east towards Bergen Norway with a boat ride on the Aurlands Fjord in the middle.  Norway has to be one of the most beautiful places on earth.

After putting 2200 miles on the car we are glad to be home in our own beds and eating home cooked meals.  Friday in the office we began editing photos and working on a list of requests to help the Swedish Public Affairs Council.  The Swedish saints are disappointed that President Monson will not be coming as expected but look forward to Elder Ballard and his CES devotional which will be broadcast to buildings all over Europe.

Friday evening we again enjoyed our monthly temple outing with the senior missionaries.  As friends depart for home we meet new couples who bring new talents and enrich our lives.  This week we look forward to being instructed by Elder Richards, counselor in the Area Presidency, at our zone conference.  These gatherings always uplift us with the Spirit.

Eating Norwegian salmon on a slice of fresh bagette.  We buy lunch at grocery stores and always find fun picnic stops on the road.  The house in the background is floating in the middle of the lake.

Norway has more lakes and forests than we've ever seen.  We were the same latitude as Juno Alaska.
We enjoyed sunlight from 4 a.m. to 11 p.m.

Frozen lake near Norway's summit.  No roads here and above the tree line.  The train took us through 20 tunnels, many dug by hand at a meter a month.

On the Aurlands Fjord

As many as a dozen waterfalls could be viewed at once

This "twisted torso" building is in Malmo, Sweden where we stayed on the way home.

It's a permanent parade in downtown Malmo.

STOCKHOLM

  We put Rich and Natalie on the train to Paris last Wednesday, then hopped in the car to fill an assignment this past weekend in Stockholm Sweden.  We made it to Copenhagen Thursday night. taking the ½ hour longer land route up Denmark to avoid the cost of the ferry, but found we had to take a toll bridge which was about the cost of the ferry anyway (sometimes being cheap backfires).  Then we let the Garmin pick the route out of Copenhagen on Friday and it took us straight north to another ferry instead of across the bridge to Malmo, the land route.  I think a Rick Steve’s Denmark book may have been worth the price.  We made it to Stockholm Friday night in time for the 6pm endowment session.  Elaine and I got to be the witness couple as there were only 2 others on the session.  We are staying at the temple apartments which are much nicer than our Frankfurt apartments and have met the couples serving here. Interesting they are Johnsons and Hansons who served Sweden or Norway missions in their youth!  We felt the spirit of Spence and Joyce Jenson here.  They presided at the temple back in 2000.  Our Sweden PA director’s daughter was sealed by President Jenson and Sister Jenson is still remembered for her unusual sense of humor and for being a card cheat. :) We spent Saturday with Sister Ingrid Nilsson as she trained her stake PA directors and they made their plans for 2013-14.  We shared with the group some of the presentations made at the Brussels seminar in April.  On Sunday we attended church and Elaine took photos in the meetings for use on Sweden’s newsroom website to illustrate stories that appear there.  After church Sister Nilsson invited us to her home for a wonderful dinner.  As it was Mother’s Day in Sweden, 3 of her daughters came with their husbands and children to honor their mother and grandma.  It was a beautiful site and made us long for our own family back home.

Public Affairs Team Sweden at the Stockholm Temple

BAVARIA

Rich and Natalie arrived to visit on the 15th. We picked them up at the airport and headed south to Bavaria for a little site seeing and family visiting.  Beautiful country and fun to be with our kids.

Headed to King Ludwigs place on Herren Cheimsea

First real German food

Wiener Snitchel!

Koenigsea at Bertchegaden

Heidi

Heidi's grandfather minus the beard

THE LONGEST DAY

Jurgen and Claudia Sauenwald, Dieter and Liona,
Katerin and Max, Armin Frass on end

Another midweek holiday this week – Christi Himmelfahrt, which, if you ask the average German, is translated as “yes!.. another day off work!” Its Christian origin actually celebrates Christ’s ascension to heaven 40 days after his resurrection.  After 2 failed attempts earlier in our mission, we took the opportunity to visit Elaine’s Buttler relatives in a little town just outside Hannover 3 ½ hours north of here.  We were treated like royalty by Dieter and Liona Ebeling.  Liona’s grandmother was Elaine’s grandma Bertha Buttler’s sister. We spent the day with them and distant cousin Armin Frass (Liona’s cousin) and his two children and their partners, Jurgen and Claudia Sauerwald and Max Frass and his girl friend Katerin.  They were so kind to us and treated us to a wonderful restaurant dinner, then cakes and drinks at home afterward.  We had a pleasant time and they were so good to treat us as true relatives.  Martin says it was also the longest day ever.  Elaine had full responsibility to keep up our side of the conversation and Martin had to look interested and engaged despite not being able to say anything much.  Luckily the children spoke some English, so could converse a bit with him.  It did make him wish he had tried harder to learn German.  He heard more German in two days than in his whole life time and was actually starting to pick up some stuff by the time we left.  Max Sauerwald, Armin’s grandson, is currently working at the ranch with John and Barbara Winch and, according to his parents, loving every minute of it – okay maybe not three-hour church.  They showed us photos of him with his horse, Casper and of him holding a calf.  The Ebelings graciously showed us around Hannover and its gardens and Marienburg Castle the next day.  Liona sets a beautiful table with fresh flowers from the garden and fresh rolls right from the bakery. 

Breakfast at the Ebelings

Beautiful breakfast (eggs under the chickies)

Christi Himmelfahrt lunch with our German family

Hannover gardens

Hannover garden tulips