INDEXING AND RAIN

To make more productive use of our time in the office we have started indexing.  We indexed over 200 Canadian border DOL immigration forms from the early 1900's in just a couple of days so have a set a goal of getting a 1,000 done by the end of the month.  We selected the easiest level of records but still find deciphering the hand writing much like detective and plain old guess work.  We are anxious to see what % success rate we achieved when our work is duplicated by someone else and then differences are reviewed and reported by an arbitrator.



P-day turned wet and rainy early.  We took a chance and beat the rain on bikes to the city and flea market, but were glad we had our umbrellas once we got there.  The vendors did their best to keep their goods dry so it was otherwise business as usual.  During the worst of the storm we took in the Staedel Museum along the river.  They actually have some of the paintings we studied in school, including some by Rembrandt, Cezanne, Renoir, Van Gogh, Manet.  We enjoyed it immensely but found it easy to get sensory overload after a couple of hours.

Martin needs to remember to smile for pictures, we actually were having a great time and found the trees above the outdoor market to be beautiful after the rain

 These trees seem to be the inspiration for camouflage.

 This is Frankfurt's old town touristy center.  We think they are setting up for campaign rally speeches.  Elections are next week and Germans are far more politically active than Americans.  They have multiple viable political parties including some with a single purpose in life - like the "Get out of the Euro" party that actually has a chance to be heard if Angela Merkle is forced to make a coalition with them to stay in power.  Obviously we know nothing about how politics work over here, but the Germans seem to have strong opinions and are ready to voice them.

Pretty sure this is a booth for  the environmental "Green" party.  We think Germans are naturally pretty green in spite of an apparent lack of interest in this booth at the moment.

The famous Zile shopping mall strip.  It seems its always packed and tells us Germany's economy is doing pretty well these days.

Not sure if these are Christian Democrats or the Christian Socialists.  But pretty sure no one remembers when or why the "Christian" party of their name came into being.

Really - there is a party for everybody. Can't find what you like, why not join the Pirates?

Elaine thought you'd like a picture of this grill at the flea market. The charcoal basin must be about 6 feet across and the aroma from the many varieties of wurst was almost irresistable.  Ever careful to live healthy, we had found a tomato and cheese on a bun and wished we had some salt.

BACK TO SCHOOL?

September brings new missionaries to Frankfurt.  Four new senior missionary couples and about 30 new young elder and sisters.  The Frankfurt mission had a record transfer on Thursday that required over 150 missionaries to be at the main train station at the same time.  Sorry we don't have a picture, it looked like something like a flash mob.

Things have been slow in the office.  We were kicked out for a few days while they redo the air conditioning in our ceiling.  We tried to work from another office one day and attended the temple and had a genealogy lesson on another.

Lately our bicycling goal has been  to find new places to ride bikes on the weekend.  We found a little forest southeast of Frankfurt about 8 kilometers from the apartment on Saturday.

Our dear friends Theresa and Steve Heath sent Elaine these handsome and beautiful kitchen aprons for Elaine's birthday.  Elaine's is hand made, reversible and a work of art.  Mine is very manly and just vat is vanted for grillink der bratswurst.  Danke danke dear good friends.

On a recent outing to Strasbourg with our friends the Eyres we stopped at a little French town with a German name - Souffenheim. Seems its known among clay pot connoisseurs for ceramic art.  We found dozens of little shops in the town and each one had a different art style and color theme to their work.  We got to watch them a small shop in action at Ludwigs Atelier We came away with a few souvenirs which by the way is a French word meaning "to remember".

Not a very flattering picture, but a good meal at the Nouvelle Poste restaurant on Rue du Parchment in Strasbourg.  Am I really sucking my thumb in public? No, I think there is a phone in there somewhere.

The most famous building in Strasbourg is the Cathedral with its 140 meter steeple and 300 year old astronomical clock. The clock still works and tells all kinds of things about what is happening in the solar system, but is was all in French and wasted on us.

These doors rival those of Notre Dame de Paris for grandeur. (trying hard to intersperse French words where I can).  By the way, we have decided that our spelling is now absolutely shot as a result of seeing so many German, French and English words similarly but not quite spelled the same as in American and especially when we read English signs and instructions which use English spelling rules instead of American. 

The highlight of our outing was a trip around the Le Petit France portion of Strasbourg on a tour boat.  We got to experience going through several locks that are required to keep the water deep enough for navigation.

French bread is an art form, coming in many shapes, sizes and flavors.  We splurged and treated ourselves to Pistachio ice cream cones, pain au chocolat and mille feuilles.  The mille feuille reminds me of the old missionary days when we would reward ourselves with one after a hard week of tracking.

Sunday we invited two new missionary couples over for dinner,  The Jacques on the left are mental health missionaries and the Footes are Young Single Adult coordinators.  Sister Foote is holding up our visual aid we used to teach how to sort garbage into 5 different cans.

We went to the temple this week and found the gardens at their pinnacle of beauty for the summer.  In their German way, the equal of the Salt Lake temple grounds, as you would expect.
The two flowers in front may look past their prime, but they have left seeds that far eclipse them.

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

I'M SO GLAD YOU WERE BORN

The biggest event in the mission this week was Elaine’s birthday today.  Thank you all for your nice cards, letters and emails.  We spent this past week working on the Country Fact Sheet project, continuing to organize our department’s master records file on the computer, and preparing to brief Elder Christopher Charles, the Area Seventy for all the eastern countries in our area, plus Greece and Cyprus.  We spent a delightful couple of hours with him on Friday, sharing what Public Affairs does in Europe and what his responsibilities are as advisor to the Directors in his countries.  We treated him to dinner afterward at a nearby Biergarten so he could have a German cuisine experience, as he is from England.  All the new area seventies are here this weekend to be trained by the Area Presidency, but only Elder Charles asked to get some Public Affairs training as he is brand new.  We were fascinated by his stories of Greece where he was most recently Mission President.  

Christian Terreaux and the Cravens at the Huggenotten Garten

Midweek this week, we went to dinner with our wonderful French friend Christian Terreaux who was here for French week at the temple.  

Then on Thursday night our missionary friends the Swifts, invited us to the Palmgarten for an outdoor blues music concert staring several legendary American blues player/singers who we had never heard of but who were really good.  It was fun to see the conservative German crowd loosen up and dance in the aisles.  A little lager helped raise their spirits.

Saturday we enjoyed a lovely walk in the forest with our friends the Livingstones and our friend Gabi Harth who takes care of the missionaries registrations and drivers licenses. The Livingstones go home in a couple of weeks we will will feel the loss tremendously.  They have been such a perfect example of the Savior's love shown by service.

Gabi and Robbie on the left, Martin middle, Elder Livingstone right

Sister Livingstone, Gabi and Elaine

AN ATTITUDE OF GRATITUDE

Farewell lunch  for Tasha Singer, out dear adopted daughter and intern

       Lorenzo Snow’s priesthood lesson #15 today was really an admonishment to cultivate an attitude of service where ever and whenever we are in life.  A great way to cultivate desire to serve is to cultivate an attitude of gratitude – in other words to count our blessings and acknowledge their source!  We daily express gratitude for all the “big” things – testimony, good children, beautiful grandchildren, faithful heritage, extended family that love us, health, sufficient moola for our needs.  But here is our list of little things we are grateful for this past month:

1.     the car Martin backed into in Zwichau didn’t sustain any damage, whew!

2.     we had our little A/C unit during Germany’s two weeks of summer,

3.    summer only lasted 2 weeks and now we’re into fall,

4.    the beautiful view from our balcony,

5.    the little grocery store in our building,

6.    Elaine is such a good cook,

7.    we can go exploring on our bikes,

8.   CISCO VPN, Netflix and an Ipad – technology that has been a mental life saver, not to mention related apps – Facetime and Intsagram in particular.

Well could go on for a while but that’s it for now, keep smiling and say your prayers.

Drenched to the bone from being caught in a sudden rainstorm while biking downtown.

Sweet Tasha, makes us a sweet goodbye card!

What happens when you don't know how to play volleyball.

With Dan and Ann Eyre in Marburg, our dear friends who came into the field with us.

A Saturday outing took us to Marburg and St. Elizabeth's Cathedral

The east choir houses the remains of the famous.

Marburg University is where Martin Luther studied and questioned the Catholic doctrine.(actual photograph taken during a heated scriptural debate)


 

39 YEARS

We spent most of this week in the office working on odds and ends, but Friday got to get out for a drive down to Heidelberg to make a What-is-Public-Affairs presentation to the senior missionaries serving in the Frankfurt mission.  This group of 36 missionaries are assigned in little towns all around the mission, mostly doing Young Adult outreach and member support but also watching over the younger missionaries.  We told them about some of the more colorful higher profile events that have happened in Europe recently and got in a little message on how they can be good media spokespersons by always focusing on our key messages.

Oh and last Friday, we celebrated 39 years of heaven on earth (and our wedding anniversary) by driving up the Neckar river and having an ice cream Sunday after the missionary meeting.

Saturday night we supported the missionaries by playing volleyball at the ward with their investigators.

Today, Elaine was sustained as Ward Primary chorister.  I sneaked in and took a picture of her on the job.

TRUTH WILL PREVAIL

British Pageant Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzMKpGSPNwU

The link above should take you to a You Tube video of the Dress Rehearsal of the British Pagaent

The British Pageant opened on the Preston Temple grounds last Thursday and plays through next Saturday evening.  The weather has been extremely wet so the organizers did so well to arrange for a massive tent to hold 300 cast members and 1600 audience each night.  We read the first night's report from the Pagaent President, Stephen Kerr and it sounds like it is off to a resoundingly successful reception with a full house of appreciative audiences.  Next week the Pagaent will host 3 apostles and 3 Seventies from headquarters.  As best we can tell it is also getting good coverage from the press.  It certainly will be a life-time memory for those who participate or attend and hopefully will reenergize the British Saints to share their gospel heritage. We have so many young missionaries in the field now, they need people to teach and they are going to come from the efforts of the members.

This is 100% Martzipan, made to look like fruit - but so much better!

You can even get your Martzipan fix pretending you are eating vegetables.

We enjoyed this recently seen ad poster for head phones.  Try to find words that really are German.  I wonder if they have made up all the other words they use from different languages.

We took the Kagels to the Mexico Lindo restaurant in Mainz this weekend.  Their menu is in English and points out that the restaurant is run by "real Americans" (the source of all authentic Mexican food).  Their name is Rameriz however the food tastes real to us.  The best part shown above is that they serve ICE water from the tap and you don't have to pay extra for it!!!!

Weisbaden is next door to Mainz and Elder Kagel served there so we stopped by the Russian Othodox church.  Actually we wanted to buy some more frankenscense but apparently it is a seasonal kind of thing. (ok,you spell frankenscense!)

This is real live Edelweiss.  It was velvety soft but looked hearty enough to poke up through the spring snows of Austria.  Not much to look at however, reminded us Utah sage brush in color.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzMKpGSPNwU