Einige Kleinigkeiten

Don't get excited. We are still here. I just haven't gotten to writing anything. So here are a bunch of little reports and statements...

First of all. It is finally hot and dry here. Well, dry is relative term because the relative humidity is a lot higher than it is at home in Utah.

Sister B and I just got back from a walk into the inner city. We saw a lot of fun things and enjoyed the open-air market they have every Saturday. We picked up some vegetables, a sharp knife, a pair of bratwursts, a blue and white flag of Ravensburg and some ice-cream cones. And some hand knitted booties from a lady who was also selling brooms that looked like they were from Hogwarts (the simple ones like in the beginning of the first movie).

The walk back was long and hot. We were talking in German:  Ein Schritt nach ein andere.  and  Bis zum nachsten Shatten.  That is:  One step after another,  and  until the next shadow (shade). We survived the walk.

The Ravensburg flag is a blue and white flag with this symbol in the middle:

We like to have one flying from the antenna of our car (in the back).

Starting last night, and going until next Tuesday they have a huge festival called Rutenfest. It is kind of a "School's out" celebration beyond description. After this coming week, they have six weeks off from school. Ravensfest has a lot of history in its pageantry. They have a huge 10000 person parade on Monday, mostly children and marching bands. We hope to get a lot of pictures.

They had a web camera that gets refreshed every 30 seconds:

http://www.das-rutenfest.de/kontakt/webcams/

Now a little about the past couple of weeks...

Our attendance has been a little low the past few weeks. Mainly our active members are not coming due to sickness, work, etc. We only had 13 at church last Sunday and 2 of them were investigators (and 4 missionaries). We are still getting out and visiting people and loving the work. We had a really nice Branch Council meeting this week and talked about the whole list of less-active members and learned more about them and talked about how we can move forward. It told them that we can make progress and work towards getting an actual church building. There is hope. A branch west of us just had a new building built this past year. We can do the same.

We did a 330 kilometer run yesterday, visiting 7 different missionary apartments in Switzerland and Austria, and then visited our own later that day - our regular apartment inspection tour.

Our daughter and family arrived in Utah these past couple of days. They moved back to their home in Kaysville after living in Hungary the past 9 months. At least we got to see her and two of the grandchildren while they were living in Europe.

The Lord is blessing us in the work here. With faith, we will see the fruits of the labors of the good people here. Thank you all for your prayers in our behalf (and the letters and emails - and Facebook comments).

Tschüss!