Visits, City Walk, etc.

We were out and about again (big surprise!) and I took a few pictures.

On Sunday, we headed out after church to visit some of our people. We picked up the Elders from their place. Often, we pick them up at the "Pin Cushion" (see earlier post about what this is). Here is a picture of the elders coming from their small street out to get in the car. You can see that there is  little local Sunday activity in the middle of the inner city here. It is generally pretty quiet on Sunday afternoons.

We headed out to visit a dear sister in Bad Waldsee. She is pretty frail, but perks up a lot when we arrive. She loves to have us come see her. We sang to her and gave her the sacrament.

This is a picture of where the road narrows as we entered into her part of the city. They sandwich these major roads between the existing old buildings.

From there we headed out to Hasenweiler to try to contact a referral. We took a different road to get there. This is a scenic shot of that road.

The Elders did not find this person home. Here they are writing down a note for them. They seem to be pretty intent on this.

Along the way, we passed a hops field. I have not shown these before, but it seems that they won't have any shortage of hops for their beer making this year. These stands of hops are about 15-20 feet tall.

The following Tuesday, we had our district meeting in our apartment. Next week they have transfers, so we took a group shot in case anyone gets transferred. Elder Wasden seemed to want to be the shortest  on in the picture. They did a height check and Elder Moon won (the shortest).

Then yesterday, Sister B and I took a walk around the city wall area and took a few pictures.

This is not quite like wizards chess, but looked interesting anyway.

Day of Service

Today we had a day of service. The Elders decided on this and made plans and talked with a lot of people. We all went out to Deggenhausertal to help the Kiefers. We took a number of pictures to share. It was overcast and started to rain before we were finished, but the work was indoors so that was not a problem.

 She made us some "tea" - mainly cookies and some peppermint tea.

Our wonderful Elders.

This area is really out in the country, with fields and woods.

This is the road near their house.

On our way home, we passed through the village of Urnau. Sister B always wanted to get a picture of this house. There are often houses with beautiful flower boxes in the windows here.

Searching out previous investigators

Back on the tenth, we headed out to Friedrichshafen and Markdorf to look up some people from the old Area Book records - previous "Potential Investigators." We also tried to visit a few less actives. We worked together, basically with the Elders looking up the previous investigators and Sister B and I finding the members. We were able to talk with one of our member people, briefly, so that was good. She also came to our barbecue last week.

The elders mainly found that a lot of these former potential investigator no longer lived at the addresses in the book, but a number were found, but were not at home.

Here is Sister B as we were waiting in Friedrichshafen that afternoon. She is sitting on a bench in an area with brick statues - statues of people made of brick.

The last place we went was way out on the edge of town, the town of Markdorf. It was quite an adventure trying to find the place.

 They were not home, but the dogs were there (and mostly friendly).

They had this strange fountain - a mannequin with an orange vest holding a spray hose. It looked like someone was there. It gave us a start.

Scripture study journal - The Spirit as Payment for our Service

[My daughter occasionally asks that I share some of my spiritul thoughts. I posted one a while back about being led my the eye of God. I will do others here occasionally.]

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26 And the priests were not to depend upon the people for their support; but for their labor they were to receive the grace of God, that they might wax strong in the Spirit, having the knowledge of God, that they might teach with power and authority from God. (Mosiah 18:26)

I have always glossed over this verse, thinking about how we do not do our callings in the church in order to get money. This time, however, it came to me what this really says. There is definitely something that we receive because of our service to the Lord.

Earlier in the day, a thought came to me how I should consciously consider the power of the Spirit as I meet people. I always enjoy smiling at people and showing friendliness, but our real influence with others comes through the Spirit - the Holy Ghost - and people feeling that influence. The smile helps and is really important in order for people to be more open, but if the Spirit does not accompany that show of friendship, it probably will not go much further. Spirits must touch spirits in order for real communication to take place.

Then, as I read that scripture about Alma and his people at the waters of Mormon, it came clear that as we serve, the grace of God comes to us (as our payment for our service) making the spirit more powerful within us. We are blessed by that power, but more importantly, through that we are then more able to serve the Lord.

Just now, as I am thinking of that, another scripture comes to mind, from Nephi:

9 But behold, I say unto you that ye must pray always, and not faint; that ye must not perform any thing unto the Lord save in the first place ye shall pray unto the Father in the name of Christ, that he will consecrate thy performance unto thee, that thy performance may be for the welfare of thy soul. (2 Nephi 32:9)

Branch Barbecue (Grillfest)

We had a very successful branch activity this weekend. They have had this traditionally for a while and it was well attended this year. We had many come who do not often (or at all) come to church, so it was good to get to see everyone and relax together.

We went to a little park area near Lampersweiler, not far from Bad Saulgau, north of Ravensburg. In addition to the branch members, we had the missionaries (of course) including Sister B and me. Also, we had our niece and her family from Stuttgart. They had 7 children with them (their oldest is serving a mission in South Africa at the time).

Here are some pictures of the people.

 The elders were asked to sing something. They weren't sure what was expected. They sang the US national anthem. That is our niece's family sitting at the table around them,

Cazier Visit

Our niece and family live in Stuttgart, which is not too far away (about 3 hours drive). They came this past weekend for a visit. It was a wonderful time being with them. We had not seen them for many years and it was good to get to know their children and to visit with the parents. We took them on a little tour of the city and later we went to our Branch Grillfest (Bar-B-Cue). There is another post about the Grillfest.

 Here is the family walking along the path to the inner city.

 The boys are resting on the bench, waiting for the others to arrive.

 Two of the boys taking a look at the Mehlsack tower.

 The family refreshing at the fountain.

 They went up the Blaserturm tower to get a view of the city from above.

 The little Flappach stream runs through the city.

 This is at the Grill fest (see more pictures on the next blog entry).

 The boys really loved our expansion set for Siedler of Catan.

Here they are all together before they left for home. Derick was also with us for dinner

Institute, Elders, Clouds, whatever...

We had our last Institute class of the year this week. It has been a great experience. We started it early in the year after consulting with the Stake president. We have several young single adults in our branch, including one who is not allowed to leave Germany. The regular Institute for us here is in St Gallen, Switzerland, so that is difficult (if not impossible) for them to get there much, so we thought it would be useful to start our own institute here. Overall, it has been a great success, though many times, we have had only a couple in attendance. We studied the New Testament. Actually, it was the first half of the manual, which included the life of Christ - the Gospels, up to the resurrection. We have some great young people in our branch.

Unfortunately, we did not take any pictures of the institute group. Perhaps another time...
We start up again in two weeks as we begin studying the Book of Mormon.

As mentioned earlier, we have three elders here now. Sister B mentioned in her Facebook comments about us traveling around together. The three barely fit in the back seat of our little Opel Corsa.

Basically, they have the windows open so they can have shoulders and arms out the window to fit better. They even argue over who can have "the hump!" (Elder Wasden won.)

These pictures are as we traveled around last Sunday.
First, we got a picture of this sign that we see around here some. I first thought it was some advertisement for natural gas or something.

It says "Runter vom Gas!" I just now looked it up. It is part of a large campaign promoting safety, especially around bicyclists. It really means "Off the gas" or "Slow down."

As you can see, we have blue skies and clouds. It was been cooler and we have had some pretty good rain showers.

The fields are filled with the different crops. We see grain of different varieties as well as hops and a lot of orchards. They grow a lot of corn here. I am told that it almost entirely goes to the making of Ethanol for gasoline.

One place we visited is Waldburg. It is a small place, but there is a large fortress on the hill in the middle of the town.

We often travel the road between Ravensburg and Wangen and there is a beautiful hilly valley on the way. We keep saying that we would like to get a good picture of it. Well, here is our best so far, thanks to Sister B.

The last two are of the sunset that night. If you look closely, you will see the crescent moon in the sky on the first one.

That's it for now!
We love you all. Thanks for interest and love.

New Elders, a trip to the castle

We have the interesting experience of having three elders with us now. Two of the elders are fairly new on their missions, Kingery and Wasden and the other, Elder Christensen is about 3/4 through his mission. Elder Kingery was with us before along with Elder Herzog. So far, we have not split up, but it is possible that I could be going out with one of them while the other two have a appointment or something like that - divide and conquer.

We took a little excursion the past Prep day to Meersburg castle, along with Derick and I will post a couple of pictures. We also traveled to Singen to a Zone training meeting. Here are the pictures:

 Here are the foursome at the castle.

 This is on the ferry crossing Lake Constance towards Singen and the Zone meeting.

And I thought Mormons did not have horns.  (in the castle, there is a mounted head of an animal with antlers. We took turns standing in front of it just right for the picture.)

People

We finally got around to taking a few pictures of people we visit. Last time we had a nice picture of the Van der Heidens. Today I have a few more.

The Whites have been with us for about 5 months and they headed for home last week. We will certainly miss them!

Here is a good friend, Schwester Freund. She is in a care canter and is a joy to visit.

Schwester Pabel gives us a good excuse to shop at the open-air market place on Thursday mornings.

Irina lives way out in the far edges of our branch. It is fun to come visit her. She will be spending some time in Utah soon.

Well, we took a little trip to Langenargen, which is on the Bodensee (Lake Constance). Sister B took this shot. It is near sunset.  The last one is of the sunset.