First week of the year

Well, the new year is upon us. We now have been on our mission a full year. Also with the new year we start receiving our Christmas packages! The mail system has been really slow. We promised to let family see us open the packages, so here is the one we received on Friday.

The paper chain you see is a chain of notes written by family members. We have opened only one per day and they have been very enjoyable. It is wonderful to read personal and heart-felt messages from family. Thank you. We also love the other gifts as well. After church yesterday, I started playing songs in the new hymn arrangements book. I look forward to spending a lot of time with it when I can.

I started out somewhat discouraged on Sunday because of low attendance. It was a beautiful meeting none-the-less. Sister B described the meeting in her epistle: 'I Love Sundays!  Today we had 10 at church.  Yes, that was including Four missionaries.  I think we all wondered how Fast and Testimony meeting was going to go.  It ended up all of us bore our testimonies and we took up the whole time!  The last one to bear his testimony was Bro. Trautmann who tends to worry the most, maybe since he is Joseph's first counselor.  He said the meeting was phenomenal!  And it was!  There was not a minute between testimonies.  It was amazing and the spirit was so strong!  "When two or more are gathered together, there am I in the midst of them!"'

In my testimony, I talked about how we started a year ago and I have a goal of helping our attendance to increase and the branch to grow, but expressed how wonderful our stalwart members are. When I sat down, Brother Staubach, my second counselor, patted my back and said "nicht aufgeben!" which means, "don't give up!"

After our meeting and a nice lunch with the elders, we headed out to visit one of our wonderful sisters who is in a care center about 20 miles north of here. We had a beautiful time visiting with her. On the way home, we enjoyed the clouds. They formed a beautiful long bank, running to the south, with rippling clouds and blue sky to the west. The sun was going down. Unfortunately, we did not have cameras with us, so you just get the description. Sister B did get a picture after we got home, so you can see a little of the cloud bank (the left side of the gap).

inspection tour and other visits

We do miss the mountains and scenes of the mountain west, but still cannot seem to get enough of the sights here. Every six weeks we get to visit the apartments of eleven pairs of missionaries (9 apartments). It is encouraging to spent a little time with each of them. In addition to seeing that their apartments are clean and in order, we get to find out how the work is progressing in all of these places. This time, we also purchased and delivered a dryer to one of the apartments. We go on this tour: Konstanz, Germany (Kreutzlingen, Switzerland branch); Frauenfeld, Switzerland; Winterthur, Switz. (two pairs - elders and sisters); Wetzikon, Switz.; Richterswil, Switz. (on Lake Zurich); Ebnat, Switz.; Dornbirn, Austria; and our own elders here in Ravensburg. Here are some of the pictures we took along this tour, along with a few other random pictures at the end.

This is our driving onto the Ferry in Meersburg, Germany to cross over Lake Constance (Bodensee) over to Konstanz.

This is our red sunrise this morning.

Mountains as we approach Wetzikon

They have a lot of these trees with big clumpy ends. It makes me think of a womping willow.

This is near the apartment in Richterswil, overlooking Lake Zurich.

Looking across Lake Zurich towards Rappertswil.

Mountains near Ebnat.

Looking back at Lake Zurich and the mountains behind it.

A road tunnel near Wattwil (on our way to the Ebnat apartment).

A wooden bridge south of Wil, Switzerland.

Here are a few other random shots.

This is looking across from a member's house in our branch towards the alps in Switzerland.

OK, this is one of my silly sign pictures. There is a small place in Tettnang called Bürgermoos. There is also a McDonalds there. The name makes me think of Mooseburgers and the idea of them being sold at McDonalds, but the name really means citizens-moss. The city name Wangen actually means "cheeks."

An added bonus. We had district meeting in our apartment yesterday. Each time we have the meeting, we all stand and recite D & C 4, 3 Ne. 5:13 and our purpose as missionaries (all in German). Here they are doing their "recitables."

Winter and Christmas

Christmas has been an interesting time here. The biggest difference for us is being away from home and family - no big surprise. We loved it here and enjoyed being with the people. First, we had the goal to visit the home of each member, and some of the investigators, and deliver Christmas notes (which also contained the cross-stitch Sister B made for people). Most also received a small package of home-made cookies and candy (Sister B was quite busy). We also had copies of the December Liahona (Ensign) to deliver. There were many we only left items in the mail boxes, but we did get to see quite a few people.
We had our Christmas program (already in the blog) and also scheduled a special worship service (Weihnachtsandacht) for Christmas Eve. The Sunday program on the 22nd was specially planned with additional music, including some solos by one of our sisters - mostly Salzburg carols. We had hoped for a better attendance. There were only 13 of us in that meeting. The Christmas Eve service was attended only by 7 persons.

As mentioned before, we went with Derick to hear his choir sing in a local church - the Lutheran church in Atzenweiler.

This is the chapel before they started. The choir sang in the loft above us (and behind).

Sister B took this picture looking through a stained-glass window in the church.

After that we came back to our place and had a dinner of egusi and fufu, prepared by Derick. It is a traditional Nigerian meal.

the fufu is on the left, egusi on the right

You eat it entirely with your fingers.

Next I have some pictures from our other travels and visits.

We did not have much snow until after Christmas, but a lot of fog, which froze into beautiful scenes on the trees, etc.

This is looking out our window over the balcony.

The birds liked the bread we left on the balcony.

This is a clump of mistletoe. Here in Germany it is called Mistel. It is actually a parasite and a pest that damages the trees. Some trees have many clumps of the plant. They stay green year-round.

We received many cards from friends and family. Thank you very much!

The pine bows in the middle served as our Christmas Tree.

We were invited to a family a couple of days after Christmas. This is a creche (nativity scene) they had. Most everyone has these here and some are really quite elaborate.

The man also collected many old signs from around Germany. This is his Post office signs collection.

This is a Christmas tree in another member's home. They usually are decorated with only white lights, often as candles. Even when they decorate the streets and houses, they are almost always only white.

We drove past a home once and it was obviously an American, because it was very colorfully lit up with lots of inflatable images or Santa and others. It really stood out against the usual simple white decorations of the Germans. Sorry I did not get a picture.

December Missionary Gatherings

Merry Christmas. We are heading out in a few minutes to a church concert where Derick is singing, but I wanted to get these pictures posted first. They show our elders in various meetings - two district meetings and the last ones are this morning at our house on Christmas day. Don't be alarmed by the last one. They made a smoothie of a lot of dark berries. I had to get the picture before they cleaned it up. The schnitzel hammer was added to add to the effect. The red is berry juice.

District meeting in the Ravensburg chapel

These three show the elders walking to a house, ringing the door bell and greeting a man there.

This is the Christmas meeting in Dornbirn

Now these are from this morning:

Sigmaringen - December 2013

We had an appointment in Sigmaringen (not a missionary appointment). While we were there, we visited the castle there.

This is a church across the street from the courthouse.

Derick and I approaching the marketplace

They set up a house as an Advents calendar. The previous days of the month are open, the others are still covered. Below is the public ice skating rink.

Derick at the entrance of the castle.

Waiting to go into the main castle area. They do not allow pictures except just barely in the entrance. That is what you will see here.

These are old rifles they placed on the castle walls to blast things (not necessarily bullets - rocks, glass, etc.) at the armies trying to storm the castle.

looking out a window into a courtyard

This part of the castle burned down in the late 1800's and was rebuilt. The architect and builder used more modern styles.

This castle was home to the Hollenzollerns, a royal family who were very prominent in European politics, many married royalty of other countries, such as France, Portugal, Romania, etc. Queen Victoria arranged for some of the marriages.

The basement contained a very large collection of weapons and armor. It was quite amazing.