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

CZECH MISSIONARIES COMMEMORATE 84TH ANNIVERSARY OF DEDICATION BY JOHN WIDTSOE

On July 24, we met up with President and Sister McConkie and their Czech missionaries at the site where Apostle John A. Widtsoe dedicated the country for preaching the gospel 84 years ago to the day in 1929.  The missionaries rededicated themselves to their part in realizing the promises pronounced on the Czech Republic and its surrounding neighbors.

 Overlooking Prague from the castle on the hill.

 Dinner with the McConkies at a great Italian  restaurant on the river.  Notice President McConkie on duty 24/7.

 The Prague missionaries do a "Musical Display" near a busy subway/bus transfer stop.  They take turns with their companions, first singing a while then street contacting passers-by for a couple of hours each Friday.  Hyrum was anxious to street contact too and accompanied one of the Elders for his first rejection :(.  Now he has done the hardest part of missionary work and it will only get better.

 On our way to Zwichau to visit Christel Hafner, we stopped for an hour in Dresden and went to the top of the Frauen Kirchen where we had a beautiful view of the entire city.

 Martin Luther's statue in front of the Frauen Kirchen.  also Martin Craven with his Frauen Elaine.

 Mutti sacrificed for me and arranged for us to take the Phaeton assembly plant factory tour in Dresden.  We decided we did not need a Phaeton ($100,000-$160,000 VW) but now appreciate why they cost so much.

 We spent Saturday with Elaine's distant Buttler cousin, Christel Hafner  in Zwichau.  Her son Uwe and spouse Sybile joined us for some site-seeing, a walk in the forest and dinner.

 Christel wanted us to have our first roulande in Germany and we could not turn her down.  Our first real beef dinner in over 2 years.  Probably took 2 years off our lives, but sure was gute.

 The temple and surrounding grounds in Freiberg are very pretty.  Very warm and kind members here and in Zwichau where we attended Sunday. We pray they will find more to join them.

DOG DAYS OF SUMMER

Last week's trip to Budingen - the Frog town

It's been a quiet week in Frankfurt.  We have been preparing for our next training assignment and helping  the Kagels get up to speed with their duties.  The paid employees are all on annual leave in our office and when we call people in other departments we find most are off on holiday until sometime in August, when school starts again.  The weather has been warm but we are not complaining, gets up into the 80s and, hold on to your sun bonnet, could get to 90  this next week. There does not seem to be air conditioning in Germany, so we have lots of fans blowing all the time. We had the sister missionaries over for dinner yesterday and had a young member here on business over for Sunday lunch.  Elaine is a good cook and they are grateful. We have been enjoying our children's vacations vicariously via Path and Instagram and are grateful to be able to see our grandchildren grow up  and enjoy the summer, if only via photos.
Stay with us, we hope to have more to report next week after visiting the McConkies in Prague.
  

Looks like Elaine lives here

As castles go, Budingen is fairly humble

MOVING FORWARD

Elder and Sister Rick and Jan Kagel arrived on July 2nd.  They hit the ground running and you know how these new young missionaries bring energy and enthusiasm to the office.

On the Fourth, the Senior Missionaries got together for KFC and root beer in the parking lot at the Fredrichsdorf chapel.  Good food, great friends.

 On our way to Copenhagen we stopped near Hamburg in Northern Germany to see Buttler relatives, Anne and Gunter Dembski and their son Andreas. (So where is Andreas?)

 We spent Sunday afternoon with the family of our Denmark Public Affairs Director, Martin Stokholm.  The girls Kristina and Sophie are on the left, then wife Eva, Martin and Martin and son Michael.  These folks are the best of the best and so good to us.  Made us feel like family as we got to help choose among 6 wedding cakes, the one for Kristina's wedding on 27 July.

 Monday was our culture day.  We visited Thorvaldson's Christus, Dennis Smith's "Kristina" on the old docks of Denmark where the saints embarked for Zion, and we went to Frederiksborg Palace to see Carl Bloch's paintings of the life of Christ.

 Kristina - by Dennis Smith. Engraved bricks in walkway next to the water contain the names of some of the 20,000 saints that left from here in the 1850's to go to Zion.  Danish saints were once the largest ethnic population in Utah.

 Carl Bloch paintings in the Palace prayer room.

Got to go to Ward Temple Night in Copenhagen.  The interior is beautiful.  The Danes know design.

Most important part of the trip was training 3 zones in 3 cities on 3 days in how to be good spokespersons for the church with media representatives.  This is the zone in Aarhus, Mission President Sederholm is on the front row 3rd from left.

On the way home, we stopped by Gisela Werth and Hans Fischer's home near Hannover to say hi and renew old friendship.  Gisela was married to Ortwin who died a few years back. She now has a good friend Hans to keep her company