THE FIRST ADVENT OF CHRISTMAS

With Taylor in Petite France, Strasbourg city center

 This past week it turned cold in Frankfurt, we had a good little snow storm Friday that left us with a light layer of snow and temperatures that stay below freezing.  They must use salt on the roads though as we haven’t slipped around much.  We spent last week in the office helping compile a Media Year Book to show Salt Lake how busy our countries have been in handling all the media attention this year, apparently no area has received as much interest as western Europe.  Our intern went home yesterday so we had a nice Christmas goose luncheon for her at a traditional German restaurant last Tuesday (mom said don't pass up any opportunities while we were here, so we are lenient with our diet from time to time).  Our director has a tender constitution and has been out sick all week. Last Friday was the employee/missionary Christmas devotional/luncheon and Elaine’s double quartet was the featured number for the devotional. Then we sang some hymnal carols for the lunch party afterward.  The little group gets to sing the same devotional song "Away in a Manger" in our ward today and in the Freidrichsdorf Ward next week.

We learned that our niece, Laurel McConkie and her husband, James, will be arriving in Prague this coming July to preside over the Czech/Slovak Mission.  So excited to have family only a couple hours away. They are recruiting office help if any of you are ready to serve as senior missionaries.

Christmas spirits!

We had a fun and different Saturday this week.  Taylor Anderson (married to our niece, Teresa) is in Germany on business, so we drove south a couple hours with the Brandes and picked him up at the train station in Karlsruhe, west of Stuttgart, then the 5 of us headed south another hour to Strasbourg, a French town just over the border.  

What a difference it made to Martin to be able to read the French signage and understand the people. (I learned compassion for Martin here in Germany as I suddenly couldn't understand a word. Martin's French came back, ordering French waffles and handling purchases for us all.)

The real deal - magnifique!

It was a sunny cold day and we spent some money in the open air Christmas markets set up in the town center areas (bought some fun French poster art), visited the ubiquitous old Catholic cathedral and then had a most fabulous French gourmet lunch with a price that confirmed how good the food was. We wanted to stick around till dark to see the lights and wandered into a Protestant cathedral that was just starting a public sing-along. That was a highlight of the day as we sang Christmas carols in French with the locals and tourists in the big high ceiling cathedral. We brought Taylor back to

Frankfurt last night as he is working here this week and we will pick him up for church and have him over for dinner afterward.

We are doing fine.  Maybe feeling a bit homesick due to the Christmas season, but I remind Elaine how she Is not stressed with the pressures of all her traditional Christmas preparations – don’t think it’s too much  consolation however.  We will do a 12 days of Christmas and go hometeaching this week, that should help.

This is the choir at the church sing-a-long - there to help us along.