Around town (again)

The past week has been good. We had some more teaching appointments with the Elders and enjoyed helping. Also, we helped a member clean out a store that had gone out of business. In the process, we visited some new areas of the town and I have some pictures here.

The first picture has a number of interesting things to point out. First, it shows a very small lane where the Missionaries live, also where the store is where we spent the day today. Notice how narrow the road is. One small car fits. We have been down it many times as we visited the elders apartment. Their apartment is the upper window in the center of the picture, the building back a ways on the left side of the little street. Also, the cross street is named Grüner-Turm Strasse, or Green Tower street. Before the war, it was called "Jew Street."

The next picture is of the tower at the end of the street as it continues behind me. It shows a tower. They told me that it was not tall enough to have a name. in the distance you see the Green Tower.

Next is a view down (east) along Green Tower street. It shows a few churches and towers in that direction.

The last two are of a path (stairs) that leads over the hill between the south part of town as a short cut to our apartment. We tried it (and probably should not have). One looks down from where we stopped for a breather, the other one looks up. You cannot see the top of the trail.

Loving Germany - Sis. B's view

I had a family member ask for my point of view of our fun here in Germany.  I am having a wonderful time!  Each turn of the road is a new adventure.  Out our window we can view a hillside with walking trails.  They have been calling me so today we went exploring.  Bro. B will have to add pictures since that is his expertise.  It was fun to see the other view of our home in our little canyon.  The air was crisp and I had to shed the coat and leave it home.  At times the wind was a bit chilly but the sunshine warmed you right up, well, a little.

 (Editor's note: The building seen by my left shoulder is our apartment building, the orange porch is our neighbor's porch. Our apartment is the other half of that floor that you see.)

Two trails diverged in the woods. The right one takes us to the top and a view of the lake and the alps.

It has been fun adapting cooking in Germany.  I have to say right now I'm being more successful with desserts than main dishes, though our Chicken Pot Pie turned out pretty well.  I am slowly learning, as I create sauces since cream soups are not readily available, the substitutions need a little tweaking.  I will slowly learn to add a few more spices and seasonings with tasting along the way.  The Elders in Ravensburg along with our favorite Nigerian member seem to enjoy the experiments as they usually dine with us on Sunday evenings.  Now my desserts have more success.  Since we brought Cream of Tartar, the Snickerdoodles were a success along with my Apple Streusel and last night's Cheese Cake from a mix bought at the store.  I do have more time to cook so I can relax and enjoy.  We are loving the German breads and enjoy having a Backerei just around the corner for fresh breads.

The branch is wonderful!  We enjoy meeting with the members and one is wonderful to translate for me, along with a couple of others who will do it in a pinch.  My German is slowly progressing, but I'm learning I get what effort I put into it.  And I need a little more effort.

Another adjustment I have struggled with is not to be so busy.  Retirement is interesting!  Going from working full time with a full time church calling to being a full time missionary with days of time on hand is a new experience.  Since our mileage on our car is limited, we try to plan our visits with members as a group, catching who we can when we are in their area.  That leaves days without appointments and time to fill.  Keeping my hands busy with crafts has helped, crocheting hotpads to give to neighbors and members and using my traveling sewing machine to fix Elder's clothing and sew curtains for their apartments.  We are trying to serve whenever possible.

One of my greatest joys has been on teaching appointments with our wonderful Ravensburg Elders.  They have asked us to contribute and it has been a great blessing to feel the power of the Restored Gospel and to share its message.

We love and miss our family, friends, and neighbors from home, but know we are where we are supposed to be right now.  And we love it!

Trip to Deggenhausertal

We visit one of the members here on a regular basis and she lives quite a ways off the beaten path. Tonight I decided to film the last part of the trip. Basically, we put the address in the GPS (affectionately named "Tina" by the previous missionary couple here). She tells us what to do. I am not sure she takes us the best way to get there. Attached is the film of the last 3.2 kilometers. It lasts about 6 1/2 minutes.

Teaching and visiting

Over the past week or so we have been involved quite a bit with visiting members and working with the missionaries. The Elders here had a referral for a young woman who lives in Wangen, about 20 miles east of here (Our street is named Wangener Strasse because it leads from Ravensburg to the city of Wangen.) This young lady (about 22 years old) and her family are from Nigerian and have a strong Christian background. She has a friend who lives in Italy who joined the church recently. Sister B and I have been with the Elders now for three teaching appointment visits with her. She speaks and understands English better than German so we have been teaching her in English. She has been very receptive of the Boook of Mormon and the things we have taught. Last night, Sister B and I helped teach part of the lesson. It has been a joy to do this. The Spirit of the Lord has been strong in our meetings. We hope her parents and sister start to take an interest. We expect to see her at church next Sunday.

Yesterday, Sister B and I also had a nice visit with a member of the ward. She is a long-time member.  I hesitate to say that she is "older" because many people might say we are "older" but anyway, we had a wonderful visit with her. We had trouble finding her place. The GPS stopped us short of her place and we called her. She got such a laugh out of our predicament. Both of us trying to describe where were, my German not adequate over the phone and her not quite understanding where we were. When we finally found her place, she could not stop laughing. It was so fun.

We also had a district meeting in Dornbirn, Austria that morning. It was a nice spiritual and uplifting experience. The Elders are amazing in their spiritual maturity and insights. They also had a great time playing ping-pong afterwards while I took advantage of a piano to play.

We just wanted you all know that we do more than spend our time traveling around and taking pictures.

Well, here are a few more pictures anyway.

The first two show the tunnel we travel through going from Austria to Germany. It runs about 6-7 kilometers (about 4 miles). They are still building the second tunnel so this one has only one lane each way for now in the one tunnel. Traffic still runs pretty smoothly. It sure beats going through the busy roads and traffic of the city of Bregenz and the narrow strip between Bodensee (Lake Constance) and the mountain.

The next two show Markt Strasse (Market Street). It is the same street where they had the parade yesterday. We think of Mark very time we see the signs.

Lastly, we finally found a hat shop. I left my hat home and Sister B encouraged me to get a new one here. I hate posing for pictures. She also wanted to get a picture of the women's hats in the store for a friend back home who loves hats.

Fasching

Here in this part of Germany, there is a very big holiday season called Fasching. It is related to the celebration of Mardi Gras in New Orleans, but is very different. Basically, they have a couple of weeks of celebrating before the beginning of the Lent season. This area is prominently a Catholic region and Lent begins on Ash Wednesday, 40 days before Easter. The celebration here is most recognizable by the wearing of costumes. Each city and small village has their standard "Fool" costume. Many of them are witches, or wolves and they have different masks that people wear. Children also dress up in costumes. It really looks a lot like Halloween in the stores with all the costume advertisements. On Monday this week, Rose Montag, they had a parade in Ravensburg. I thought, "Yeah a parade... I've seen some good parades in Germany." Well, this is more than anything I have ever seen before. They had groups from all over the region. They did not have floats, but it lasted 2 hours and shut everything down in the area and was quite something to behold. Their costumes are so elaborate and there were a lot of bands. All this with about 25° weather. Here are a whole bunch of pictures.

 This is just a group of people going to watch the parade.

 Derick was with us watching the parade

 A photo-op

 They had some red smoke for some reason. The sign carried bu the hag/witch says "Fools Guild, Ulm"

 I bet their legs got cold!

 These kind of looked like mountain men and bird creatures

 I have no idea. Green wookies?

 Kind of scary black hooded people with long noses.

 Yes, Mark and Adam, these are for you. It was complete with sousas and tubas.

Liechtenstein and Apartment Inspections

One of our duties is to inspect 7 missionary apartments in the area. One of them is in our own town, one in Dornbirn, Austria, one in Konstanz, Germany and the rest are in Switzerland. We are suppose to do this every 6 weeks and this was the week for that. After visiting Dornbirn yesterday, we were headed to our Zone Training meeting in St. Gallen, Switzerland. It seemed that the route between Dornbirn and St. Gallen could be stretched a little to take us through the top portion of Liechtenstein. The sun was out that day and we got some very good pictures.

1. approaching the Liechtenstein alps from Dornbirn

2. Entering the Principality(Fürstentum) of Liechtenstein, crossing the Rhein River.

3. Yours truly in Ruggell, Liechtenstein. 

4. More of the surrounding mountains

 5. and more

6. and more

7. Heading across Lake Constance (Bodensee) - Swiss alps in the distance

 8. An interesting building in Konstanz

 9. On the road to Wetzikon.

10. Entering Wetzikon. 

 11, 12, 13, 14. scenes along to way to Ebnat.

Our Branch

Ravensburg Branch has a southern boundary on the Switzerland border and runs about 25 miles north to south and 40 miles east to west. This is roughly the same as slightly larger than Salt Lake County, e.g. Lehi to Centerville and Tooele to Park City. The city of Ravensburg has about 50000 people and is  roughly in the center of the branch. Friedrichshafen on the south, on Lake Konstanz (Bodensee) has about 60000 people, Wangen im Allgäu on the east end has about 30000 people and there are hundreds of towns and little tiny villages throughout. The map here is not really readable, but shows where most of the members live (blue pointers).

Here is picture of our church building. The church is on the top floor of an office building. It is really quite a nice, modern building. Can you tell that the address is 5?

This is the front door, then the hallway towards the chapel, with small rooms on the sides.

This is the chapel.

There is an interesting elevator in the center of the building.

Our branch is supported mainly by the diligent efforts of about 10 people who hold most of the callings. There is no Aaronic Priesthood program and only one young woman and one in Primary. The branch does have the largest family history center in the whole St. Gallen Stake. It is open every Thursday and the microfilm readers and usually constantly busy when it is open. People order films from Salt Lake and do their searching here.

We have two elders here besides the two of us. They are very diligent and are enjoyable to work with. We have gone out with them once doing door-to-door contacting, though that is not generally our assignment. We attend a number of their teaching appointments and that is a great experience.