It is a wonderful experience to see a young couple in our branch get married and sealed in the temple. Sister Schaal has been with us since we started here, she studying at a school near here. Brother Barluschke served in this mission the last couple of years and got a job and schooling here as well and they were married this past week.
We headed out to Stuttgart on Tuesday. The wedding ceremony would take place at a Rathaus in Stuttgart on Wednesday afternoon and the sealing in the Frankfurt temple on Thursday afternoon. Due to legal requirements, people in Germany must be married civilly first and the sealed soon afterwards in the temple.
I like this picture that Sister B took of some of our niece's family in Stuttgart. As you can see, Jenny is so busy with her family, that she is just a blur in the picture. We had a very nice time visiting with them in our stay in Stuttgart.
We went to the Rathaus in an old part of Stuttgart where they have their official offices. It was a beautiful old building. The elevator is all glass. You can see it a little in the picture Sister B took of me while we were waiting.
Looking down, you can see some of the guests gathering, including another missionary couple that serves in Stuttgart.
The ceremony took place in this official room in the building. They took pictures here and then had a formal signatures ceremony as well.
They have a log-sawing custom. This is a large white-birch cut by the newly-weds using a two-man saw.
Here is the couple with her parents and his father (his mother passed away a few months ago).
I had to get a picture of the father and brother taking pictures
Sister B wanted to pose with this interesting set of statues near the Rathaus.
Earlier that day, Jenny took us to see the castle, Schloss Solitude on the hill overlooking Stuttgart.
You can see the view from the Schloss overlooking the city.
On our way to the temple the next day we saw an interesting sign. Traffic is quite often waiting a lot at the lights. They want you to turn off your engine while waiting.
When the temple was built, there was an old estate house on the property. The sellers required that the church keep the old building, so the church set it up as the residence for the temple presidency and some missionaries. It is interesting that the initials on the door are HLT (German for LDS). This was the name of the original owner family of the building.
Here is the Frankfurt temple.
The sealing ceremony was beautiful. There were many present. It is often the case that young people do not marry in the temple, many not even marrying members. We are so happy to see this couple united in the temple and especially that they are now living in our branch!
We experienced a number of "tender mercies." As I was in the temple. I noticed that a brother worked there whose name I recognized. It turned out that he is the father of one of our less-active members and we have been having troubles locating here exactly. He will be helping us find his daughter now.
We left the temple after visiting a while with the family and with some missionaries who were there (including an Elder Thompson from Indianapolis, who lived in a ward where our son served on his mission a while ago.)
We left to head home, planning on trying to visit the sister of one of our members (the one we took the sacrament to last Sunday). She lives in Weinheim. As we arrived in Weinheim, it was almost exactly 5 PM. The lady runs a restaurant there and we hoped to visit the restaurant and perhaps talk with Frau Schmitt (our member's sister). The restaurant was closed and we were about to leave, when they opened the doors. We went in and had a nice visit with Frau Schmitt. Had we been any earlier, we would have abandoned our visit, thinking they were closed because it was a national holiday (Unification day). Had we been much later, it would have been open, but she would have been busy cooking for customers and we would not have visited her. These were a few of the "Tender Mercies" we experienced on this trip.
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