Mid-January wanderings

Things are turning a bit slow for a while here, which seems usual for mid-January. Our church attendance the first week was 10, the second week was 20, so we have high hopes for next Sunday. (Now whether the trend is arithmetic or geometric, we are not sure ;-) - for you mathematicians out there...

We have a new elder, so our elders are now Elders George and Kinghorn - both have been out the same amount of time, going home in about 4 months, so we wonder whether we will lose two elders at the same time.

We did have some very nice visits yesterday. We visited two of our older sisters of the branch, but in both cases, they had granddaughters, each had an 11-year old granddaughter. We really miss our grandchildren, so it was nice to have some time with someone else's granddaughters. We have no children in the branch, really (on the records) other than a three-year old who seldom is brought to church. With no children and no youth, we miss that vitality and fun. Our people are great, but it is not the same without children.

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The pictures for today were taken over the past couple of days. The first few I took as I took a walk on the hill behind our home. Over the hill is a nice view of Ravensburg. On the top of the hill where I went is a Kloster, so I took a few pictures there as well. I also couple not resist getting some mountain pictures as well.

I don't think I ever included one of the city signs, so here is one. "Große Kreisstadt" means, essentially, the county seat. A Kreis is a lot like a county in our country.

Here is the panorama view from on top of the hill, looking North. You can see the towers and church steeples in the city. On the right, in the trees on the hill is the Veitsburg, a small kind of a fortress that dates from the 1100s. Now it is a youth hostel. Just to the left of that is the Mehlsack (flour sack), a very prominent tower here. I show it also by itself below.

This is the Kloster (something like a convent) St. Christiana on the hill behind our place.

This is the church yard.

This is Obertor, or the high gate of the city, the end closest to where we live. The road goes through the bottom  opening you see there.

Here is the Mehlsack tower, which is right next to the Obertor.

We visited the marketplace this morning. The picture is looking the opposite direction from the picture of Obertor.

OK, kind of random, but I wanted to get another picture of mistletoe in the trees here.

Here is the city center of Bermatigen. We go through here every now and again. The road goes around the Rathaus (town council building) that you see right in front of us. This is the main "highway" between Markdorf and Salem. It was fun to see the very large semi-trailer trucks navigate these roads and around the Rathaus.

OK. The mountains. This is a view as we approach Ravensburg from the north, about 10 miles from the city.

This is looking out the window of the apartment of one of our older sisters of the branch. The highest peak on the right is called Santis. All of these mountains are in Switzerland about 20 or so miles south of Lake Constance (which lies between us and the alps).