A Wonderful Day!

We came home tonight exhausted but immensely blessed  and happy.  Our dear Wladimir was baptized tonight in the swimming pool in Baienfurt! It was a wonderful experience. We have also learned how much the adversary fights against anything good or valuable. We had a lot of setbacks, just today, but worked through it all and had a wonderful experience. Wladimir just glowed and as he came up out of the water, he said, "Ich bin ein neuer Mann." (I am a new man).

We were last minute chasing down clothes, working around missed communications about talks and prayers, but gave the difficulties no room to mar the experience. It was glorious. This is the first baptism here in about 3 years.

Here we are at the pool, jus before the baptism. Elder George performed the baptism, just two weeks before he goes home to Canada.

After the baptism service, we visited with each other at the church and had snacks.

Sister B made some chocolate chip cookies.

Earlier in the day, we took the Gurneys into town to see the marketplace and to enjoy the sights of Ravensburg. They had to leave before the baptism, but we had a nice time with their visit. They are serving in the city of Singen, Germany and will be going home to Utah next month. We love them and enjoy their friendship.

Lindau

Last Sunday we had visitors again to church which brought our attendance count to 30. We did not run out of sacrament cups this time, but it was really nice to have so many in attendance. It was also nice  to celebrate Easter. We loved the new "Because of Him" YouTube video and shared it with others, mainly in German and also once in Italian.

After church, I was busy with several things, including helping to give a priesthood blessing to one of the visitors, showing some family history on a microfilm for one of our members (I love doing research and showing others how to do it) and helping with finances. Later in the day, we visited a wonderful sister in a care center, along with her less-active daughter and a granddaughter. The granddaughter is one of those angels in the world who is severly handicapped (probably cerebral palsy) and can really only move one finger and her eyes. She is almost 17 and communicates using a computer. We do the sacrament for them and sing some hymns. It is always a joy to visit with them.

On Monday (preparation day), we went to Lindau and some places along the way. Lindau is an island city on Lake Constance (Bodensee) and is very old. It is actually part of Bavaria and not Baden-Württemberg (where we are). Along the way we tried to find a couple of old fortress ruins. I got a few pictures. We had the Elders and Derick with us on the trip.

Here is Derick and Elder Thompson looking at one of he stones of Drachenstein fortress. There is nothing left of it besides some walls buried in the earth and these very old stones. Drachenstein literally means Dragon-stone. We only found this one stone, but I read that there are a few others around. The place was totally unmarked and we found it off the beaten track behind a farm on a hill.

Here is the farm and a few calves who wondered what we were up to.

Next we tried to visit Alte Summerau. The path entrance was locked so this is the best we could do. It is a set of old castle walls.

Between these old ruins and Lindau we passed by Degersee (Deger Lake). It was quit beautiful.

Here is our fist picture of the Lindau area. Here we had just crossed the bridge to the island.

Elder Thompson, Derick, Elder George, Elder B

A tower in Lindau

Having an ice cream along the way

an old bakery building, the oldest date is 1380 AD

a guy giving a tourist guide on a tricycle

a church and Monastery

Derick and Elder Thompson in the Monastery

walking towards the lake

on the lake (Lake Constance)

They trim their trees back to these stumps. I think of the womping willow.

Sister B wanted to take this last picture.

Tettnang, District meeting, etc.

Today we visited a member in Leutkirch for a while and then tried to find some contacts from the missionaries' lists in Tettnang, another city, south of Ravensburg. On Thursday, we had a special district meeting with President and Sister Miles with us. Also that day, Sister B had a watercolor lesson. In the evening (Thursday) I needed to be in charge of our Genealogy Center because our specialist (my second counselor) was away in Sweden helping them set up their official LDS website there. In the evening, we had our Branch Council meeting.

District meeting with the president: (Back l ro r) Pres. Miles, Elder Stuart, Elder Aardema, Elder Nielson, Elder George (Front l to r) Elder B, Sister B, Elder Thompson and Elder Weston.

We helped in cleaning the church later in the day on Thursday. This is our wonderful "Staubsauger" - literally a dust sucker. Fortunately we only have 7 rooms to vacuum. This room is our Primary (the whole thing, the nursery is next door, also this small).

This is a view of one of the valleys near us. We love the view of this valley.

... and off in the distance are the Allgäu alps.

passing an old farmhouse on the road to Tettnang.

I have wanted to get a picture of the common building materials they use here in practically every building. Where we use concrete blocks or poured slabs, they use these orange blocks. They are heavy, though not completely solid (some air space in the block). They last for centuries.

OK, I finally got a good shot of this sign. MacDonalds in the town of Bürgermoos. It made me think of MacDonalds serving Moose burgers.

A trip to Wangen

Last Tuesday, we went to the city of Wangen to try to visit some of our less-active members. Wangen is a fairly common name, so here it is actually "Wangen im Allgäu" meaning that it is in the Allgäu area of Germany, known for it's hilly terrain with pastureland and dairy (not as much crop farming). The German word Wangen, actually means "cheeks," and I have no idea why places are named that way.

On our way to Wangen, we stopped by one of our sisters who lives in a care center in Waldburg, Sister Freund, who is 91. We sang to her and gave her the sacrament. She is quite active, actually, and we have a good conversation with her.

In Wangen we found everyone home and had visits with all, though some were short visits at the door. We also looked up some previous contacts in the missionaries' lists. That is where post of the Wangen pictures come from.

On our way home from Wangen, we saw a beautiful sunset and got a few good pictures (one at the end of this post).

Elders George and Thompson in the back seat.

A small store in Wangen - Brugger's gift shop. I took this picture thinking of my grandfather's sister's family. Great-aunt Carrie Myrl married Archie Brugger. I see the Brugger name a lot around here.

The elders and Sister B after trying to contact a potential investigator.

The signpost shows the way to the mini-golf area to the left and pathways 3, 4, 5 and 6 to the right. Straight ahead goes under the highway into the center of Wangen's inner-city.

Sister B on a train in a play area near the wall of the city.

This is a statue of St. Gallus and a bear. Legend has that St. Gallus came from Ireland into this area and into Switzerland about 800 AD and trained a bear to help him get wood and build a cabin. This statue along the road in Wangen actually looks like he is trying to kill the bear with a knife. For a long time I just thought it was a mountain man attacking a bear

Sister B drooling over a Ukelele in the shop window.

A set of statues portraying a man with some pigs.

on the sidewalk this shows the building built in 1600 being renovated in 1980. (The text is shown below.)

Our sunset on the way home.

An Amazing Week

This has been a wonderful week. We have been quite busy every day. Last Monday we went to Singen to see the Hohentwiel castle ruins and then we had our district meeting in Dornbirn. There are three new elders in our district, Elder Thompson with us here now in Ravensburg and Elders Weston and Stuart in Dornbirn. We enjoyed getting to know the new elders in our meeting. Elder Weston is going to be getting his education as a cook and already has some wonderful recipes to share. He gave Sister B a very good recipe for Chicken Alfredo that we made last night that was simply delicious. Later that day (Tuesday) we visited a Sister in the branch and a family. In both cases, we showed talks from the most recent conference. I have only had time to download two talks, the one by President Uchtdorf on Thankfulness and the one by Elder Bednar about loads. They fit so well with the struggles our members are facing.

On Wednesday, we went to the church for our open hours there, watching more conference while we were there, and then visited a few more people. One lady we visit is not a member of the church. She is older and does not always remember us, but when we meet her, she always starts beaming and then says, I was just thinking about you today. We visit with her and read some out of the Book of Mormon to her. We also visited a less active sister who has been really good in helping us introduce the Gospel to her friends. Last week we gave a missionary lesson to one of her friends. In the evening we had our usual Institute class and had a visitor from the area who is over the seminaries and institutes here.

Thursday we did our turn at cleaning the church and also visited one of our younger sisters. Friday we had an appointment with two sisters who live in the area of Salem, Germany. One is the daughter of the other. Also in the meeting was the niece/granddaughter of these sisters. We had a very nice discussion, including doing a missionary lesson about the restoration and the Book of Mormon. The niece was interested and accepted the Book of Mormon. We will be returning in a few weeks. They requested that we also bring the younger missionaries and to come when the husband of the one sister is home. The niece will also be there so we see this as a good missionary opportunity. Generally, we as a senior couple do not have many direct missionary teaching opportunities by ourselves, mainly helping the elders in their work. We are loving these great opportunities.

Saturday, we got tickets from one of our less-active members to go to the Aviation expo here in Friedrichshafen. It was fun seeing all the new styles of flying machines. They also had a lot of flight related products and education. They even had a used-plane lot. I have a few pictures to share.

Later in the day, we went to Dornbirn, Austria again, this time for a baptism. We took our investigator with us. He has a baptism date for April 26 and we wanted him to see a baptism. The Dornbirn ward is fairly large and the service was well attended. Our investigator was a little nervous at first and has some concerns about the baptism. He enjoyed the service and the baptism and felt a lot better about things after that, but the best thing is that he met a member who had served his mission in Russia so they spoke in Russian together (our investigator is from Kazachstan). It was a great thing for him.

Today we had 34 people in Sacrament meeting! There were three families with children who came who are here on holiday for the Easter season. We also had a couple of visitors from the stake so it went very well. It was great.

Well, here are some pictures.

Getting ready to leave District Meeting - Elders Thompson, Nielson and George.

Here is the main road we drive between Friedrichshafen and Ravensburg. See how wide it is?

Another place along the road. See how narrow the road gets as it enters the village.

Here are some beautiful clouds on our way to Dornbirn. There are also 4 hot-air balloons in the picture if you can find them.

Pictures from the air show.

The used airplane lot.

a Zeppelin flying overhead.