WHAT TO DO WHEN YOU ARE KICKED OUT OF YOUR OFFICE BECAUSE IT IS BEING PAINTED:

1. Hop in the car and head south.  Pray the fog lifts so you can see something.

 2. Check into your hotel in Oberamergau and look at the view from your window.

 3. Catch a cog train in Eibsee.

 4, At the top, view the alps of Switzerland, Austria and Germany.

 5. Go sledding. On a glacier. On the highest mountain in Germany, the Zugspitze.

 6. Make friends with the locals.

7. Visit mad King Ludwig's Linderhof Castle.

8.Return to the city of your childhood, Munich, and view the crown jewels.

 8. Eat in the Ratskeller on Marienplatz.

 9. Learn what the Germans mean by "a glass of beer" at the Hoffbrau Haus while hearing the locals sway and sing along with the oompah band.

 8. With the best companion a missionary could every ask for.

1.  

PRESIDENT MONSON'S VISIT

President Monson addresses the Saints at a special meeting in Frankfurt on October 21, 2012



















He observes that speaking to the Craven's is like preaching to the choir

Elaine tells me someone read our blog last week and so we must keep it up.  She is so good to me that I must comply.  Today was a spiritual feast.  We were at Frankfurt’s Centennial Hall early this morning, about 8:15am, for one last choir practice before our special meeting with President Monson at 10am.  You would have thought it was 5 minutes before 10am as just about everyone was already there waiting for the doors to open.  Indeed by about 9am the hall was absolutely full of excited Saints, and we could have started if our speakers were there.  President Monson inspired us to reach out to the lonely, the forgotten and the friendless in love and compassion – to include them in our lives and invite them back to the faith if their step has faltered.  Elaine and I loved being in the choir, very fun to be on the stage and see the mass of faithful members, so small a group in their respective communities but a powerful strength when assembled to hear and honor their prophet.

After church we took a nice long walk in the beautiful fall weather, but came home to a note on our door from the neighbors below complaining that water was running down their kitchen and bathroom walls.  We were able to get the landlord over and she will call the plumber to figure out what is going on.  Repairs don’t seem to happen very fast around here so we are a bit anxious about prospects of having a torn up kitchen.

Yesterday we went with the Brandes to Rüdesheim on the Rhein River about an hour west of here.  The weather was beautiful. We rode a 2-person tram up the mountain, strolled through a forest on top to a chair lift that took us down to another town further down river.  After pleasant lunch of fresh trout and turkey curry schnitzle over spätzle noodles, we took a short boat ride up the Rhein to where we started the day.

Here are our tourist pictures for the week:

We drove up this street.  I don't know what we would have done if we had met a car coming down,

Above the fog on the mountain top

Our wonderful friends, Elder Jim and Carol Brande, also Public Affairs Missionaries

Grapes growing straight up the steep mountain side

People were shorter in the 1500's

Self-portrait on the chair lift

Rudesheim is a charming little berg - or is it a dorf?

In the forest on the mountain top

PS: For dinner today Elaine today made the most excellent Ratatouille Nicoise over couscous that I have ever tasted.  I should have taken a picture of it in honor of Scott Jacobson!

WE WITNESS THE MORMON MOMENT

I found Grenadine syrup – we may not ever come home. 

Just home from church and need to tell you about the International Ward in Frankfurt.  Its members have in common the Gospel and that German is not their native tongue.  Our bishop is from Spain and his counselors are Irish and American.  The sacrament was blessed by priests from Denmark and Ghana.  The cute family in from of us is from France and have their three boys in German schools.  We heard testimonies in fast meeting from all over Europe, but the spirit is still the same and the fellowship of the Gospel unites us in love.

This week we witnessed more Mormon Moment miracles in Europe as newspapers, radio and TV stations in many countries contact the church to make appointments to visit and photograph church services and interview members, then publish the stories in the local media.  These stories are increasingly positive and fair and are giving the church tremendously increased visibility.

This week we’ve been helping set up interviews for members in the United Kingdom for a project our office has undertaken to create “I’m a Mormon” style interviews with church youth and adult leadership. Members will be filmed answering typical questions being asked - our response to the B of M musical, missionary work, baptisms for the dead, blacks and the priesthood, temples, tithing, etc.  We will then post these interviews in the Newsroom section of the UK’s church website.  If it goes well, we’ll repeat the interviews in each of the countries where the church has substantial numbers.

At week’s end we got to sit in on training a new Public Affairs director for Macedonia, where we have 2 members.  (Where, you may ask, is Macedonia?) Klemintina is a returned missionary, living in Hiedleberg, who came to Germany when she was 6 and is sharp as they come. It was fun to sense her confidence and enthusiasm for the future of the church in Europe.  Through the web she will be the face of the Church in Macedonia even though she lives in Germany.  There are 2 elders there and one single couple and no one can proselyte. 

This week we also received an assignment from our zone leaders to organize periodic ward service opportunities for our senior missionary group.  The area seventy wants us to develop closer ties with our fellow ward members in the International Ward by serving them.  Any suggestions? Volunteering in Germany is not like the U.S.  You can't just get a group of people together and go clean up the park.  Everything is done through recognized organizations so this may be more difficult than it appears.

Most exciting news is our next assignment after sorting file pictures for 2 weeks.  Sister Sirtle learned Elaine is a photographer and wanted to see some of her work.  She was impressed with her talent and is sending us off to Sweden, Finland, Norway and Denmark to photograph members and church activities. This is so the Public Affairs directors will have local photos to accompany news releases and articles on the country websites.  Stay tuned to see how that unfolds. Busath Photography may have new competition!

The photos below continue along the theme of Stuff You Won’t See Back Home.

A trailing geranium tree

Robot lawn mower

The puppets are coming

Neat and tidy fields with no weeds

Forests, forests and more forests

Gate across the entry to the grocery store.  Closed by law on Sundays

STRANGE THINGS YOU DON'T GET TO SEE BACK HOME

There is a 90 acre cemetery near our offices where we go for  walks.  Quite a few headstones have  this sticker on them, notifying the family that if they don't pay their past due rental fee, their relative's bones will be removed and burned! In Germany it appears there is no certain rest for the dead.

 This week we continue to review photos and film footage taken by photographers across Europe. We are sorting these into files for each country so that they will have picture resources to use on their websites to accompany their news release stories.  Next we will go to the church website to search for pictures to augment a file we will eventually provide to each country.  We receive almost daily interesting multi-page articles from major media sites across Europe who are informing their readers about who these Mormons are that Mitt Romney belongs to.  Today we watched a recent excellent 8 minute British public television story from a reporter who had traveled to Utah to interview members, missionaries, welfare square managers and general authorities.  His concluding comment was "if the "end-of-days" comes, I want to be with the Mormons.”  We had a mid-week holiday this week commemorating the 1990 reunification of Germany.  It was a quiet day, no parades, flags or even people on the street. We used it to go for a bike ride around the 90 acre cemetery, a park and a huge gardening area near the offices.  We also participated in a 3-hour (not a typo my friend) German choir rehearsal for the Saints who will sing during President Monson’s visit on October 21^st.  We are singing his favorite songs, "Hark All Ye Nations" and "There is Sunshine In  My Soul Today" which are both great marching songs and a number from the old German hymn book that sounds like a polka with lots of eighth notes.  We have a couple more 2 hour practices before the meeting as these volks vant it to be perfeck!  Here are a few pictures for this week, whose theme is “Strange things you don’t get to see back home”

Cigarette vending machines on the sidewalk for easy access by all ages. Still a popular habit here.

Contact lenses without a prescription on the drug store shelf.

Ugliest wall sockets I have ever seen.

So called "Turk" piles, named by the missionaries, for the piles of recycle trash (?) made by the emigrants.  I am surprised the fastidious Germans would put up with this.

My favorite - notice how this toilet has a nifty shelf where things would normally be expected to drop into the water.  Good for people who want to review the final result of all their dietary choices and who enjoy cleaning the toilet every time they use it!!!