January has been our busiest month so far. Winter has definitely settled in. While many of you are experiencing an unseasonably warm winter in the states (at least out west), ours has turned grey and cold and heavy! I've found it takes it's toll on young missionaries who are out and about all day long and burning the candle at both ends sometimes. Flu season here has been pretty brutal for both the young and senior missionaries. It hangs on for days and is a challenge to treat in some cases. It's very interesting to me that some missionaries know right what to do when they start to get sick and then others don't have the first clue. Many moms send arsenals of over- the-counter remedies for all kinds of illnesses and others don't send anything. To tell you the truth I don't remember if I sent our own out-of-country missionaries, Tate and Devin, OTC medications. I don't think I did. I do know that none of them had mission nurses and yet they all survived somehow! Here it's a real challenge to find exactly what you need to give them to help them get better. Through experience, I am learning so much. They use very few USA products so we research pretty carefully what we're advising for the missionaries to take. Surprisingly, the Germans are very herbal-oriented, even many of the doctors themselves. I must admit that sometimes their concoctions are very effective and we've used them. For the most part we don't. Pretty interesting.
We're sure that many of you know that the Rome, Italy Temple is under construction. The Church is bringing several new contractors (Church employees) and their families over who will guide the project to completion. Getting them the correct visas and meeting all the country's requirements for entry has been a complicated and challenging undertaking. Laws have changed and these matters must be done carefully and with every legal consideration met properly. These specialists can't begin their work until this documentation is completed. Lowell has been at the forefront in helping to get this done as he has worked with Italian attorneys in Rome. I had never imagined how complicated this all can be. He also works with many missionaries whose visas or passports run out while they're on their missions because of unintended oversights in their preparation. This can present a web of problems with deportation as the always threatened outcome. If they are deported, they will most likely never get another passport. It becomes an urgent and high priority and also very labor-intensive project. Trying to get a missionary with little education from a poor country like Cape Verde or Romania to his or her intended mission field can sometimes be hard as the officials become suspicious that the missionary will never return. This requires much more paper work, documentation, etc. that Lowell will manage from Frankfurt, again with local attorneys. It's pretty exciting to see what an international legal consultant he is becoming.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, Gaby Harth!! We took our sweet friend to her favorite restaurant in Konigstein which was so cozy and inviting. It apparently has been there for many years and Gaby said she and her late husband always ate their anniversary dinners there. She admitted that this was the first time in about a year that she had eaten out. She prefers to cook meals at home and is, by the way, a marvelous cook!
She seemed delighted and savored every bite. We laughed a lot and had a wonderful evening with her.
Gaby has one son who has a wife and 2 sons. Her son was her Bishop and is now her Stake President.
She's very proud of them all. You would never know she is 76. She walks the mountain trails every morning for a couple of hours and carries a busy schedule helping out at the Area Office Building. She's a very inspiring lady!
This was our first Senior Missionary Zone Conference. It started with a session in the Frankfurt Temple which is located in the same complex as is this church house. It's wonderful to spend that uplifting and spiritual time gathered together in the same session with this force of exceptional missionaries. We then met in the chapel and were privileged to hear from one of the couples who soon will be departing from Germany and also from Elder Dyches, a counselor in the Frankfurt Area Presidency and a member of the Second Quorum of the 70.
Pictured above you can see Lowell, then the Harrisons from Price, Utah, who do Real Estate work, then the Greenwoods from American Fork, Utah who are medical advisors and the Smiths from Orem, Utah who are the Infield Representatives that handle all the emergencies for 6,000 missionaries in our Area.
These great ladies are Sister Purdy from Kentucky, one of our Mental Health Specialists, and Sister Saunders from SLC who works with her husband in the Finance Dept.
First are Elder and Sister Vassel from Draper who coordinate Self-Reliance Centers in the Europe Area, then Elder Riggs from Tennessee, Associate Legal Counsel, and to the far right is Margit Ezard from the UK who works in the Area Presidency Office.
This is our Area Family History and German Church History Group of Missionaries. They all work and live in Friedrichsdorf, a 20 minute drive from Frankfurt.
On this particular January Saturday, we purposely planned part of the day inside because of the cold and wet weather. These pictures are of the Auto and Technik Museum in Speyer. Elder Greenwood is checking out a mini sub from WWII. The mammoth show rooms were once used for Industrial production of planes, some 2500 of them back in 1930. Jumbo Jet (outside), war planes, private planes, cars, trucks, tractors, motor cycles, space ships and everything in between.....this place had it all and we got great exercise walking the immense space to see everything.
I'm including just a fractional sampling of all there was to see. The cars were phenomenal and Lowell was pretty impressed.
We're including this picture of an antique tractor in honor of our dear friend, Phil Frandsen, from Phoenix, Arizona, who has about thirty of his own.
How's this for a motor cycle?
This is a tiny, front-entrance "pop can" car.
This is a very unique Western inspired hauling truck.
This little bug is the exact year (1964) of the grey one Lowell bought in Germany for $1200 and had shipped to the states after his mission.
This was the best of the best, the most expensive and best constructed car in the world, the Maybach. We put our order in for Father's Day.
Here I am playing Engineer for the huge black train along with 5 little kids up there with me!
The girls up near the cockpit of the 747 jumbo jet. We were up so high to even get into the plane (which was at a tilt) that it gave us a "dizzy" sensation as we walked through it.
This is the German's answer to our space shuttle. Their version, unfortunately, was never successful.
Before we left the Museum, we had the thrill to see an hour IMAX movie about Jerusalem on a dome screen. It was an amazing experience. The rows of seats were almost at a vertical angle, one row above another, with the huge dome covering your view from all directions. Seeing the panoramic movie on that screen was like being suspended in the movie. It was a breath taking sensation.
Our next little expedition took us outside into the clearing weather and up the hill to the Speyer Cathedral. I was very taken with the stunning carved door entrance.The inside chapel was certainly similar to others we've seen with the exception that it had huge murals all along its length near the arch of the ceiling.
They were so high up that it was difficult to fully appreciate them.
Here's a close-up so you get a better idea.
Such detailed workmanship in the door of the confessional.
Notice the size of the people in relation to that beautiful doors.
The outside of the cathedral.
By this time of the day we were starving and ventured further into the town to find a good restaurant. What we found were dozens and dozens of people gathering and wearing the most unusual, elaborate and crazy costumes you've ever seen. What we came to find out was that it was their German Marti Gras Parade night. How lucky for us for us to be right in the middle of this cultural gem.
These were some of my favorites. They varied from the elite and elegant to the cheap and preposterous, believe me!
This beautiful couple look like something from National Geographic magazine, don't they?
These masks look like New Orleans to me.
Friendly, fun people!
Here we are warm and cozy inside while the parade gets ready out in the freezing cold.
This is the back of the crowd who were facing in towards the parade. Besides the interesting costumes, there were a couple of marching bands and many, many drums pounding and people whooping it up with the help of gallons of hot drinks not of the hot cocoa type. It was pretty wild AND, as I said before, freezing cold. It was quite the shindig for a bunch of missionaries (us)!
