Seniors Conference, Spring 2013

We took the train to Munich last week and attended a conference for the Senior Missionaries. There are 20 couples serving here in this mission, plus two sister missionaries who are serving in the mission office. The first evening, we had a talent program where all participated. Here is a picture of one couple who played alp horns for us. It was beautiful. They are serving in Switzerland.

On Friday, in the morning, we went on a tour of Munich, led by a member of the local ward. The Rathaus (town hall) has a glockenspiel with 43 bells that plays every day at 11, 12 and 5. We watched the characters move and heard the playing of the bells. The top set of characters depicts a wedding between the local Munich prince with a princess from norther Germany. The bottom group shows some dancers. The top group also shows a joust of a knight in blue, representing Bavaria, and one in red representing the kingdom of north. In the process of the playing, the jousters miss each other the first time around, but the red knight gets defeated on the second time around to everyone's cheering.

They also have a story of the dancers. They were coopers, or barrel makers (for beer). Between the 1300's and 1650 Munich experienced 25 different outbreaks of the black plague, one of the worst was the last one that happened at about the time of the end of the 30 years war in 1648. The people of the city boarded themselves up and would no let anyone come in because of fear of the plague and the coopers could not sell there wares and were starving. The coopers came in to the town and played music and danced and the people finally opened up and the fresh air came in and helped eliminate the plague. They have dances every seven years in honor of this and the dancers in this display represented that saving action of the coopers.

There was an interesting statue in the center of the plaza. The center statue was of Mary who is the patron saint, but on each corner it depicted angels each defeating an enemy. The Brother who gave the tour said that this represented the four angels sent to protect the Savior as described in Psalms 91:12-13 the lion, the basilisk (adder) - see the statue, the young lion and the dragon.

This is in one of the churches:

 This is in the church entryway. They say it is the devil's footprint.

Here is a brass depiction of the old city:

We ate lunch at Hofbräu ( a famous restaurant).

There were more sessions at the class in the afternoon and a testimony meeting in the evening.

We checked out the next day and rode with the mission president to the mission office and then to the mission home and had a tour there. They showed us the "Monson Room" where President (then Elder) Monson liked to stay when he visited. An elder from the office drove us to the train station. There were many dozens of police cars, trucks and buses all around the train station. We never did find out what it was all about. We got onto our train and arrived home without difficulty.