Easter

Easter is more than bunnies and eggs.  Here it is a big weekend and everyone decorates. The stores have been selling Easter decor for weeks.  Our little branch will have a regular meeting focusing on the Atonement and Resurrection of Christ and the other big churches will have their yearly most attended mass.

selling watches with easter bunnies?

This fountain near the town hall is decorated with real eggs.

It makes me wonder who has the time to blow all the eggs and color them.

  Our branch relief society, all 5 of us, had a get together to make Easter decorations so I had to put mine on our door. 

Sister Grunbichler and Valantin, Sister Heemann, Sister Ernst, me, Sister Merkel

We found out yesterday that our outside doorbell doesn't work.  Sister Ernst walked over for Home Evening and rang the bell and waited for 1/2 hour before walking back home and calling us.  It has been REALLY cold here too.  We are all looking forward to Spring.  One lady in a store told us that here in Hof they have 9 months of winter and then 3 months of cold weather.

We are making lots of visits to inactive members encouraging them to come back.  We visited with a man today who said his daughter was not at all interested in the church anymore but as we talked to the missionaries we found out she has been trying to make an appointment with them but they will meet at our home.  We did have a nice talk with the dad who was an American from Boston who never went back after his military service over here.  So the work goes on.  

Art work

Just another note on keys.  Shortly after we found out how much it would cost if we really did lose a key...I lost one.  Luckily we noticed it within an hour and we went back to the store where I had lost it in the parking lot and some nice person had turned it into the lost and found.  RELIEF AND GRATITUDE.


Dave has made a goal of giving each of the members a small painting.  Here are some of them which we have kept for ourselves.  We have both noticed that he has more time for painting on a mission than at home.

 We have had sun for a few days so here is another photo out our window and the painting Dave made of it.

 We had a talent show in Plauen and Dave made several small paintings of "Windows and Doors".  The photo was taken on a drive to Schwarzenbach an der Salle, a little town near Hof.

The main street in town is Ludwig Strasse and it has a very nice pub called Gastätte Ludwig We have not been in it but we liked the decor and the color.

There are several very small streets around the oldest part of town where there used to be a city wall.  This picture is from Fischer Gasse.  Most of the houses there are well maintained but this one was especially interesting.

This last one is just about two blocks from our house and is very well restored.  It is near the train station in an area of buildings from about 1910 which were damaged during the war but have been restored.