District Meeting and a May Day walk

It was a beautiful day today. It has been warming up very slowly and today is the best we have had in almost two weeks.

It was also good because we had district meeting here this morning and we always enjoy having the elders at our apartment. There are 4 elders from Dornbirn, Austria and the two elders here. They always bring such a wonderful spirit. Today we all spoke about what it is that we love about being missionaries. Most everyone said something about having the Spirit of the Lord with us, being led, seeing the influence of the Lord on others, having the opportunity to focus on the Lord's work, etc.

Sister B served a wonderful luncheon of stroganoff and nice home-made chocolate-chip cookies (we have to make our own chips, chipped off a block of baking chocolate - that was my job). After the meeting the elders went in to the city for a "Find Day," where they all work together in an area of the city. It happens that this is a state holiday today and many people are out or relaxing at home.

In the afternoon, while Sister B was relaxing from the meal preparations, I took a walk up the hill behind our place. I took a few pictures that I am sharing with you.

After a zig-zag walk up a few small roads and runs of steps (less than a half-mile), I get to the beginning of the various pathways through the woods on the hill behind us. Here is one path that I chose today, not having every tried that one before. There were quite a few people along the trail, though I was able to avoid getting them in most of the pictures.

Through the woods and over the hilltop, I come out to a farm area.

Here is an apple orchard. In this area of Germany there are hundreds, perhaps thousands of apple orchards like this. Mostly they are very carefully pruned so that they are only just a littler taller than a man and all the branches are fairly short. Here you can see that they are starting to blossom. They are quite close together in the orchard as you can see here.

Next are a few views from the pathway where I am walking. There are farmer fields everywhere there is not forest. These fields are freshly plowed. I believe that this field will have corn.

Now this looking back to where I was when I took the picture of the apple orchard and forest path.

This is looking in the opposite direction towards the south part of the Ravensburg area. It is hazy, otherwise you would see the alps in the far distance.

Last is another picture towards Ravensburg from on top of this hill. Notice that the fields are full of flowers, particularly dandelions.

The whole walk, up and back again, took about 45 minutes. What a wonderful place to be - both for the spiritual blessings and the countryside close by.