NEAT AND TIDY

 This week, Sisters Craven and Brande pretty much turned the Public Affairs storage space in the basement into a work of art.  The shelves and file cabinets are completely alphabetized with all the old stuff tossed out and everything spic span and tidy. She has also gone completely through all the file cabinets in our office, throwing old stuff out, relabeling files and folders and making everything logical and orderly.  Tis a site to behold. I will take pictures.  They are planning an open house this week for the other members of our staff.  For my week, I did more Slovak Community Oral History indexing and have been reading President Hinckley’s book, Stand for Something.  The book has inspired me to be more diligent in honesty, civility, charity and forgiveness.  We stayed home yesterday (Saturday) as it was snowing and blowing, though we did trudge through the blizzard with our bags  to go grocery shopping.  The afternoon found me reading “The Deerslayer” by James Fenimore Cooper to Elaine, while she mended my pants.  Last night we helped with games at a stake YSA Valentines party (cute German kids!).  Not sure what we will find to do in the office this next week, but the weather appears headed for improvement which should be a great lift to our spirits.

Monster pretzels at the market

The old and the new in Frankfurt

When I get home I want to make a nifty tight German wood pile

Which village person is not like the others?

HAPPY VALENTINES!

Another week passes in Frankfurt.  There were a few days last week when Martin was pretty sure time had stopped, but low and behold it is Sunday again. Thank you daughters and grandchildren for the wonderful Valentines surprise.  Your heart attack made us cry and then when we went looking for you, it was clear you had gotten away and gone home again. The highlight of the week was Elaine as our gospel doctrine teacher today. She taught us an inspired lesson on the Holy Ghost.  We filed our tax return this weekend and will put the expected refund on our list of Tender Mercies - we must be desperate!

Hearts with hands, from the Wilson boys!

A dozen red roses from my sweetheart!

No, we really weren't in Rome this week.  However we saw an exhibit of architectural models made of cork - very realistic.

The Johannisburg Palace in Ashaffenburg - still in our winter uniforms, rain, rain and more rain!

Martin gets a kick out of the strange German signage.

IT'S FEBRUARY

View of the Neckar River from above the Heidelberg fortress.

With the Coppins, our counterparts in Solihull, England, on the road to Heidelberg fortress

On the old city wall in Rothenburg with our new intern from BYU, Taylor Street

Elder Pat and Sister Ann Coppin were here from the England Public Affairs Office this week to be trained in their public affairs duties.  They have been in England since late last year but this is the first they could come for training.  Our supervisor allowed them a “cultural day” at the end of the week so we took them to see Heidelberg and Rothenburg on Friday.  It was cold and snowy, but they enjoyed it and gave us a chance to practice getting around for when our children come for visits.  We had them to dinner today with the Brandes, along with our new BYU intern, Taylor Street and a recent young convert Alejandra Diaz.  Still cold here but the sun has shone pretty steadily the last 2 days and we have enjoyed that greatly.

The three Church employees for whom we work are all in Salt Lake this week at their annual training.  Gabi will present a workshop tomorrow to all the Area Directors of Public Affairs from around the world.  She will also present our 2012 Media Book to the Church's Public Affairs team in Salt Lake.  We're quite sure a copy will end up on the desk of President Monson.

TO SHOUT WITH THE TRUMP OF GOD

Hey just think next month is spring!  This week Martin spent time listening to recordings of members in Sheffield England who came from Slovakia and are joining the Church there in large numbers.  These recordings are part of the Family History’s Oral History project to capture voice records of members of the Church.  Before they are submitted, the recordings need to be indexed so researchers of the future will know what is on the recording and where on the recording key topics were shared.  Fun to hear the conversion stories as they are translated from Slovak to English by a young Czech missionary serving in England. Elaine distributed her first Europe Area Public Affairs Newsletter last week.  It was a work of art.  Let us know and we’ll send you a copy.  Yesterday we attended the baptism of Huifeng Li in the morning and in the afternoon went to Mainz to the Gutenberg printing museum. We learned all about the history of the famous bible and got to see one of the 42 remaining in existence.  There were 180 2-volume sets printed in the day circa 1450-ish.  

Startled tourists at Cathedral in Mainz

Huifeng Li, studying business in Frankfurt, finds the  Church  from  a street contact

City skyline from our balcony

Taunus "mountains" from our balcony in the 10 minutes of sunshine we've had in a month.

Jewish cemetery - also from our balcony

OUR FIRST TRANSFER AND WE'RE STILL COMPANIONS

This week was our first transfer.  We've come from out in the country-side to Frankfurt-proper and best news is we are still companions.  Our new home is the large apartment building next to the Area Office - home to most area office senior missionaries which allows less use of cars and easier sharing of the cars that are available.

This week we fixed mistakes in photos (changed TIF files to JPG) we had previously uploaded to the church’s computer and sent out to the county directors.  Aso turns out Lisbon, and a few other towns aren’t really in Spain after all, causing us to have to resort picture files and reburn disks for Spain and Portugal.  We are pretty provincial, I am afraid. We also attended our first budget review, pleading for money requests for the 2013 public affairs projects of our assigned countries (we have the Scandinavians).  Had to tighten  belts and few countries got all the money they requested. France didn't submit a budget so Martin got assigned the tedious job getting approval for every single request they will have to submit to him. (Gabi has discovered Martin's financial skills.)  We also ran into a snag with the printing of our media book which will not be delivered on time. (Printers fault, not ours).  Elaine's been assigned as editor of a monthly newsletter with several feature articles which will go out to all the public affairs directors in Europe once a month.   

It has been colder and snowy here, but temperatures up to 50 degrees are forecast for next week. Could an early spring be coming? Probably not, but will be good to de-ice for a while. Next week our ward will have its third baptism in three months and it will be the third person in their 20’s and the third not from Germany.  Lee Funxin (sp?) is from China and the Church will be required to inform the Chinese government of his baptism, which makes you wonder what life has in store for him when he returns home. Our last two new members are young people from Africa and from Peru.

Firm mattress is a nice upgrade

The washer also is the dryer!
The bathroom is also the laundry room!

No Elaine is not in a closet and yes you are seeing the entire kitchen

Ok so the halls are a little scary and the smells are, shall we say, foreign? 

HASTENING THE WORK

Frankfurt and the Main River at night

Winter flowers

Missionary friends on P-day

Winter flower box

Our sacrament meeting speaker today was President Swartz of the Frankfurt Mission.  He challenged us to pray for missionary opportunities and gave examples of people who come into the church as a result of small things – a pass along card, a brief word to the person waiting for the light to change.  The Frankfurt Mission has 178 missionaries and he is expecting that number to climb to 270+ by year-end.  He said we have now 58,000 missionaries serving world-wide, which is expected to grow to 100,000 this year.  He, and the high councilor who also spoke, told of when President Kimball was in Germany in 1976 and prophesied that one day the German speaking countries would have “hundreds of stakes” within their borders. We may be on the threshold of that day as the Lord hastens his work.

WHATEVER INTELLIGENCE WE GAIN

Work in the public affairs office is picking up - got paid overtime last week (ha).  Elaine has been given the assignment of publishing a monthly newsletter to be distributed to the directors of public affairs in our 30 countries.  She asks “can you image me with so little computer experience being editor of a newsletter?”  Her ward calling is a similar idea as it’s the weekly Relief Society newsletter which also gives her an opportunity to learn all sorts of technical skills in MS Publisher and Outlook .  She is really growing in learning how to use these programs and perfecting her already fine writing skills. 

We continue madly working on the 2012 media book which will be a sampling of all the attention the Church has received this past year in Europe.  Interest has come as a result of the US presidential campaign, progress of the Paris and Rome Temples, celebration of the 175th anniversary of the Church in England and the recent missionary age announcement. Tomorrow we will spend the day carefully proof-reading each page before it goes to the printer.  We have spent weeks collecting the articles and writing a short narrative about each one.  This entails translating the first paragraph of an article from one of 26 different languages or translating the caption from online video files of TV and radio interviews.  In the absence of a Urim and Thumim, we use Google Translate, our foreign language skills and prayer but it still can be a challenge figuring out the message. Google Translate is pretty literal and doesn’t mind just skipping the hard words. We will be glad to see the book go to print this week.

One of the blessings we enjoy here is associating with the dedicated and experienced senior missionary couples here from all over the US. They have already served in so many capacities, have wonderful stories to share and still have so much to give.  Yesterday our group took a tour of the city of Koblenz and on the hour ride there the Woods from Price told us the story of an Islamic leader in Egypt who converted to the Church, was disowned by his family, falsely accused by them of drug trafficking and sent to prison for 15 years.  Yet the Cairo branch visited him the whole time and helped him when he got out to get safely to Ghana where he now lives and serves in the Ghana Temple. We were inspired but also are reminded that, though the US has many problems, it is still a blessed place to call home.


Some Koblenz highlights:

Outside the modern art museum.

This fountain sculpture of a little boy spitting water is a depiction of a "Schangel" or the illegitimate child of a French occupying soldier and a local German mother.  It is now the symbol of Koblenz.  If you are a native of Koblenz you are a Schangel which is a title of prestige.

Koblenz from the Mosel River

Here you can see where the Mosel joins the Rhein and the city of Koblenz which means "Confluence" or the joining of two rivers

HAPPY NEW YEAR - 2013!

Happy New Year to all our loved ones and if you are reading this then this means you!  Well if you haven’t been in Germany at midnight on New Year’s Eve, you do not know what a fireworks celebration is and I am including the celebration at the mall in Wash. DC.  Here it is all private and apparently anything goes, up to small sticks of dynamite and absolutely everyone for 360 degrees around you and for as far across town as you can see from a fifth floor balcony are shooting off the real-deal sky flying, exploding fireworks that, if they are not individually as big as a commercial demonstration, far exceed any city show by the sheer number of fireworks going off across the city and the duration.  We left our missionary party after about 40 minutes of straight sky and street chaos all around us, only to feel like we were driving through a battle scene on the street and the noise continued until at least 1am.  Can you tell I was impressed?

In the office we are working on a big book that will illustrate all the media attention given to the church in Europe last year. Sister Sirtl is anxious to show it to the brethren when she goes to SLC in February for an annual seminar for all the area directors around the world.  We have also kicked off a project to video members in Italy, France, Germany and Spain answering questions about the church.  We will post these videos on the Church Websites in each country to give journalists and other seekers of truth a visual source to answer questions in their native language and by a local member.  Then we are also working on goal setting with each country director and are preparing to submit their budgets for review and approval by the area presidency.

These pictures are from our Saturday outing for a forest walk and a castle ruin exploration.

Koenigsberg ruins. Several sets of stairs allow you to reach the top of the tower.

These are some of the things I love about Germany:

The architecture. (Listening to 40 church bells with 10,000 of our closest friends.)

Discovering new places with Martin.  (The Palmergarten in Frankfurt.)

I can grow anything without it dying. (My new hyacinths which we had to move outside because they were too fragrant.)

Walking paths within minutes - miles and miles of them. (In the Taunus  hills.)

The fact that Germans can put the nativity in every public square during Christmas without anyone complaining.

The artistry of their window boxes even in the middle of winter.

How charming all the little towns are.

CHRISTMAS IN GERMANY

Christmas Eve dinner table.  Elaine is a master at recreating home.

 Looks like we are going to make it through the season and  into a new year.  We still have our Christmas tree up, but Mutti admits she is glad to have it behind her as she was a bit teary at times.  We enjoyed some beautiful sunshine yesterday that is a great lift to spirits and have again enjoyed some nice walks in the country.  We are jealous of the Utah snow, but not the cold as the temperature usually climbs into the mid-40s during the day. Our country pretty much shuts down between Christmas and January 7^th, when the 3 wise men finally make to Bethlehem.  We were about the only senior missionaries in the Area Office last week and this week we get Monday and Tuesday off for the New Year’s holiday.  We are invited to the Brandes to welcome in the New Year with other Seniors on Monday.  We had better take a nap first. To my surprise, fireworks are allowed but Chinese brands are considered unsafe so Germany makes its own with fun English-sounding names on the packages like “Sky-Banger” and "Hero of the Night"!

AND THE WINNER IS..........

Well in my book you are all winners and we enjoyed your answers to last week's quiz.
Submissions were:
"Archery range ahead (with human targets!) - Bryce Craven
"Hunger Games Here" - Natalie Busath
"Trail Head" - Rich Busath
"Gathering Place" JB  Watsabaugh
"Pedestrian Crossing or Hey I'm Walking Here" - Ali Thackery

And the Prize goes to our good friend JB Watsabaugh for coming closest to the idea of the thing.  Apparently, if the nearby building has a fire or other catastrophe, the area around the sign is where people are supposed to go to meet up and be accounted for.  We have now noticed these in many areas and become more convinced there is a sign  for most everything here, we love it.