Ferry to Switzerland, apartment, more pictures

Here are some more pictures.

First showing the inside of our apartment.

As you can see, the living/dining room is quite spacious. On the bottom picture, you can see into the small kitchen and the ajar door leads (right) into the hall with the two bedrooms, bath and toilet.

We went up to the hilltop behind our apartment. This is the view to the south towards Bodensee (Lake Konstanz) and the alps.

These two are of our ferry ride across Bodensee to Konstanz on our way to interviews with the mission president in Winterthur, Switzerland. Above is Elder Pop and Elder Hyatt (l to r). Below is Sister B and Elder Pope watching a seagull gliding along with the ferry boat.

We had a nice dinner with a couple in the branch. The road here is called Panorama Street. You can see the alps in the distance (a plowed field on the right, the homes on the left).

Trip to Munich, getting to know people, etc.

We have been busy getting to know people, setting things up, etc. Earlier this week we needed to go to Munch to get our visa (permission to live in Germany) finalized.

It is interesting. It seems that we have been the exception, rather than the norm in most everything since before we even got here. Our call was long in coming, but we ended up coming to Germany rather quickly once we received our call. Our start here in Germany was a bit unusual. We lived in Munich for a few days and then started our work in Ravensburg (couples are usually sent the same day to their assignment). Our Visa papers usually take 4-6 weeks to complete. Ours came in less than 3 weeks (hence the quick trip to Munich). I received my call as branch president after being here barely one week. We feel that things are being directed to happen in unexpected ways. Most are small issues, but taken together, I believe that we see the Hand of God in it all.

We are really loving the experience of getting to know the people. Everyone is so kind-hearted. We have met some good sisters who are in care centers who cannot get about. They have such wonderful spirits and live the Gospel as best they can being confined. We have had meals with a number of people. We have had everything from a home-cooked Philippine meal, to a lavish German dinner, to lunchs at Subway with our Nigerian young man (new convert), to Burger King and McDonalds, to a bratwurst place in a mall run by Chinese restaurant people. The shopping is interesting. All milk comes in smaller containers than we are used to, 1 liter cartons. They have regular (fresh) milk and shelf storable "haltbar" milk that lasts weeks without refrigeration (and tastes that way as well) but you cannot buy sour cream. Bread is wonderful and bakeries are everywhere. Baking powder only comes in very small packets (about 2 tablespoons per) and baking soda is unheard of (except for chemist supplies).

Last Sunday there were only 12 people at church, including the 4 of us missionaries. We hope things will improve as well visit some of those who do not attend. We have been well-received.

I will post some more pictures in the next blog.

Huzzah! We are online!

As of about 30 minutes ago, we successfully established internet access to our apartment! We should now be able to respond in a more timely manner. Also --  drum roll -- we can Skype!

Now what...

It has been so long, I am trying to remember what we did ...

Around Town

Now you will be able to see a little bit of our area. It is definitely winter here as you can see. Here are some pictures!

This is a picture of me standing in front of our apartment building. We are on the top floor in the opposite corner from what you see here.

This is the back of the building. Our "penthouse" apartment is in the upper left of the picture, on that corner. We have a very nice view of the canyon that leads into the city.

Here is Sister B in front of our garage, the last one of the line of garages. It is a narrow affair and I have only hit the left side mirror twice backing out. We have to some of the snow clearing duties as well (I did take my turn).

This is a pathway we take (a shortcut) to get to the city from our apartment.

Here is the Obertor, the gate at the top part of the city. We go past that every time we walk into the city. Only cars (single file) can go through the Tor, pedestrians have to walk around the tower.

They have a lot of statues throughout the city. Here is Sister B standing next to one showing several people in a circle. Someone put a red knit band on one of the girls of the statue.

Here I am standing by a local tavern, called "Wild Man." Behind me is an old church that was built in the 1300's. Most of the city was undamaged through the wars. This is about as wild as I get.

We are now well established

I can with fair certainty say that we will be here for our entire 23 months. Our first seven days here were a mix of being busy about business and being without much to do. Sister B bought a nice Ravensburg jigsaw puzzle and has been working on it as I work on learning about the branch. We finally got our bank account and are closer to the internet installation in the apartment. We usually visit the branch president's office once a day to do email, etc.

It seems that the Lord doesn't leave us idle for long, though. Last Thursday evening, as we were relaxing and playing a hand of Canasta, I got a phone call from the stake president, from St. Gallen. On Friday, we traveled to St. Gallen, Switzerland for a visit with him.It was our first experience being in Austria and Switzerland (we had to drive through Bregenz, Austria to get to St. Gallen, Switz). Then, yesterday (Sunday) I was sustained and set apart as the Branch President of the Ravensburg Branch (Zweig). What a humbling experience! The stake president and high council were concerned about what to do with the branch. The former president had been serving for 5 years (he only expected to be doing it for one year) and he lives in a town south of St. Gallen. He was at one time the stake president. It was a great blessing to speak to the congregation and bear testimony, all in German, and feel the love and support of the people.

Sister B and I traveled with the Elders Sunday afternoon and visited some members who live in care centers. We met some wonderful and faithful older sisters, one who could barely talk and the other who did very well at speaking, though it was very heavy in the schwäbish dialect. It was a wonderful experience.

Our car is equipped with a GPS (called a Navi in Germany). The previous couple named her "Tina" (for a tempermental cow he once had) and we were very grateful that Tina helped us get around the local countryside and down through Austria and Switzerland. She speaks with a Britisch accent and warns us about the speed limit changes as well and the intricate road systems. It seems that the speed limit can change many times within a few short blocks. Now that we will be visiting members a lot more, I am very glad that we have Tina.

The Lord blesses us and we see His hand in the work here. We hope you all can feel a little of the love we feel in our experiences here.

A quick update

We are established now, except for the Internet. We were told that service here is slow. Most things require a few weeks to get done. In order to order the Internet connection, we had to have a bank account set up. We got that set up. It was still not active yesterday, but at least we had a number to give the O2 people (the providers). They told us it would take 2-3 weeks to get it installed.

We are getting a lot of exercise walking into the city from our apartment. It is 1.9 kilometers each way, plus walking around once we get there. I will get some more pictures for tomorrow's post.

We had about 4 inches of snow overnight and it is -4 degrees (not F). I think that is about 23 or 24 F. We know that it is a lot colder in Utah so we don't complain.

Pictures, etc.

Here are a few pictures of our area. The first one shows our car (Sister B is in it) as we stopped a bit on our way to Ravensburg. The second one is the view out our back window. We have a lot of windows and are on the top (3rd) floor. It is quite nice. The last one is a picture of Sister B standing in one of the small alleyways. They built their buildings quite close together and not in straight lines. The cobblestones are the standard pavement within the inner city.

We tried to set up our Internet to the apartment yesterday, but they require a local bank account, so we hope to get that set up today. They say that it will take between 2-3 weeks to be installed, so we are still going to have limited access for quite a while yet.

I am going to give our cell phone number to one of our sons in case of emergency.

We found that the best equivalent to Walmart here is a store called Real. We were able to get stocked up yesterday.

It is a bit cold here , but I know that it is a lot colder there in Utah. We feel for you!

In Ravensburg

We are serving in the Ravensburg (Rah-fens-boorg) branch of the St. Gallen (Switzerland) Stake. There are two elders here, Elder Hyatt from Highland, UT, and Elder Pope from Missouri. They are great elders. The branch is small. In church today there were about 18-20 in attendance. The Branch President is from a city in Switzerland. The southern boundary of the branch is the Bodensee (Lake Konstanz). We are in the Dornbirn district, so we need to travel into Austria to meet with the district leader. The top half of Liechtenstein is in our district so we have 4 countries in our district.

Ravensburg is a beautiful, small and old city, with many of the old original centuries-old buildings still intact. I hope to post a few pictures in the next post. We do not have internet service in our apartment yet, so we are using the branch president's office computer to send this. The people in the branch are wonderful. Both of us had the opportunity today to introduce ourselves and bear testimonies (Sister B even did most of it in German - the people were impressed - "you have been studying only for 3 weeks?")

We are well. It is wet and we have had some snow. We are driving a nice Opel. Fortunately the GPS (Navi) tells us where to go and when to avoid speeding tickets. It is hard to go fast anyway, but the speed limits change every few blocks.

Well, that is all for now. We love you all!

Our address is:

Elder and Sister Buchanan

Kirche Jesu Christi HLT

Wangener Str. 88/90

88212 Ravensburg

Germany

Report from Germany

I wanted to send off a quick note, so you would all know that we arrived and are well here in Munich. We will be here in Munich until Friday, when we will get a car from the couple who have been serving in Ravensburg. That will be our assignment, the Ravensburg Branch. It sounds like a wonderful place. The branch president actually lives across Lake Constance (Bodensee) in Switzerland. Ravensburg is in the Zurich, Switzerland stake so we will regularly be travelling to Switzerland in our work.

We are well. It was a very tiring day yesterday. Neither of us slept much on the plane. We are going to be working on our visas and official papers for a couple of days. I am not sure how much Internet access we will be having until we get settled in, so this may be the best way to get the word out for a while.

We are having a wonderful time!

Interim few days...

We took advantage of the opportunity to spend a few days at home after our last class on Friday, but did not realize that there were reasons for us being here (other than spending a few more days with our boys and home). We did get a few good things done that needed to be done (e.g. Shauna did not get the kitchen swept before we left. Now that is done. - That was not a priority for me :-).

Anyway, we found out that a sister in the ward that Shauna and I have worked with for a few months, she as RS Pres and me as WML, was to get baptized this afternoon. We had the wonderful opportunity to attend her baptism and I was asked to be the voice in confirming her tomorrow. I see that as a "tender Mercy."

Also unexpected was our daughter-in-law needing to go to the hospital because of complications with her pregnancy. She is OK and the baby is fine, in general, as far as we have heard, but after having been in the hospital most of the day (tests, dilation, etc), she will likely be delivering the baby within the next two weeks (way early). We were needed to stay at their home to take care of the other children while they were in the hospital. She and the baby are in our prayers. We got to spend some precious time with our granddaughters that we would not have otherwise. I hope I have not said too much. They will let you know about things when they are able. The Lord will bless them and all of our family, though I suppose that we will still have some tough times. We were promised that the Lord would bless our family while we served our mission.

Now we are off to the temple for a session. Tomorrow we can attend the family get-to-gether (also not in our original plans).

We will probably surprise a few people at church as well...

More from MTC

We are having a wonderful time (as long as we stay warm indoors).

It is amazing how different the approach is now in missionary training from what we had before. I even expected that we would be reciting D & C 4 in a meeting, but that has not happened. Instead we are studying the best way to bless people's lives.

The purpose is "Invite others to come unto Christ by helping them receive the restored gospel through faith in Jesus Christ and His Atonement, repentance, baptism, receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost, and enduring to the end."  It is  remarkable to see how the Lord works with us even in our role-playing as we practice teaching people.

The MTC is quite full. New regular missionaries arrived yesterday and we could see the change. They say that by early Spring, they will be past capacity. The setup for the Senior Missionaries is pretty much all in a nearly chapel now, and not in the MTC itself. Some are housed in the MTC (not us), but all else takes place in the church. They are still working at figuring out how it all works, though we don't see any lack of organization or anything like that. It is wonderful. We are enjoying getting to know so many great people from all over. I have been enjoying my visits with a brother who was born in Oak City and knows all of our relatives there.

One thing Shauna and I learned is that after our training tomorrow, we have nothing that we need to be here for until we fly to Germany next Monday, so we are allowed to come home after sessions Friday afternoon. That will help us catch up on a few things before we leave the hemisphere.

All we have to do is not freeze to death in sunny Provo...

Happy New Year

We arrived in Provo and were welcomed at the MTC. There are a lot of other missionary couples here with us, going to all parts of the world.  We found another couple going to our mission in Germany. She will be  a mission nurse and  he served a mission in Hamburg back at the end of the 1960's.

Today we are learning how to teach. The focus of this week is to be "Preach My Gospel" missionaries. We have some wonderful returned missionaries who are helping us and guiding our learning. Our Elder returned from serving in Denmark.

It is really cold here. It was 10° this morning. Since there are so many of us, we are among those where are being housed in the Marriott hotel in town. It is pretty plush for missionary accommodations.

Tonight we are going to have a devotional with a general authority. I should be a great experience.