Stake Conference in Leipzig

Since Leipzig is about a two hour drive and we have meetings on Saturday and Sunday, we arranged a place to stay overnight with some members named the Bauerfiends.  They are one of the stalwart families in this area.  Their daughter is now the Stake RS president and had visited our ward and arranged for her parents to host us.  The parents were the ones who arranged a place for us to live when we first came to Germany in 2004 and stayed in Leipzig for three weeks to be trained for the outreach program but the Dahls, who were the institute couple in Leipzig at the time. 

Conference was very good.  On Saturday Dave had priesthood meeting.  During that time I went into the Young Women meeting they were having and heard one of our Zwickau young adults talk about her decision to go on a mission.  I understood most all she said and enjoyed her testimony very much.  The meeting in the evening for the adults of the Stake was all about home and visiting teaching, which has really low numbers here.  Dave and I have determined to help the ward improve their efforts here in Hof.  They only have had ONE active member doing visiting teaching and no home teaching at all from what I understand.

On Sunday they met in a rented hall to accommodate the crowd.   We knew so many people from before that it was really enjoyable to renew acquaintances.  They had an orchestra play the prelude made up of stake members who had only practiced together on Saturday for an hour but they were quite good.  I haven't seen that done in the States.  They also invited all the primary children and parents up to sing "I am a Child of God" for a musical number and half the audience came forward, not just the 30 or so kids I saw practicing before the meeting. Several of the speakers were young adults we knew from institute who had either just returned from their mission or who were getting ready to go so you can tell the theme for the Sunday meeting was missionary work.  Some members from Plauen rented a bus to bring their members to conference since so many have no car.

General Conference

On Saturday, April 6, I went with our branches' Young Women to Plauen to see the Young Women's conference.  There were 5 of us from Hof and 5 from Plauen in attendance.  Sebastion Dierzon, the branch president and one of our former JAE from Chemnitz, had prepared a MP3 player with conference so I could hear it in English.  Later that evening Dave and I watched the Saturday morning session on the computer at our apartment.  In Utah it began at 10 a.m. but here it was 6 in the evening.

Sister Montgomery and Rosa and Sophie Merkel on the way to Zwickau.

The next day Elder Montgomery and several men from the branch went to Zwickau to see the Priesthood session.  I came later with several women to meet them for the Saturday evening session which was presented about 3 then we all drove home.  Again we watched the Sunday morning session here at the apartment but this time Sister Ernst was here watching it in English with us although she speaks little English.  she said she understood about 1/2 of it.  Then on Monday for home evening we and the Elders, and Sister Ernst watched the Sunday Evening session on the computer in German but with English subtitles.

The Chapel in Zwickau.

Some of the Elders and members upstairs in the building listening to conference in English

A portion of those attending the session in the chapel listening in German.

 Last month we drove to Dresden for a multi Zone conference with President Kosak and this week we went to Chemnitz for a zone conference.  The picture is our zone taken at the Dresden meeting with President and Sister Kosak seated next to us.

Then this is what we did on preparation day. On Mondays most tourist things in Germany are closed.  This is Burgk and it has a museum so we will have to go back.

Moedlareuth

As you may know, Hof is very near the Check border and in former days it was very near the East Germany border as well.  Not too far away is a tiny town called Moedlareuth that was right on this border and the East German government decided to put the infamous wall right through the middle of the village.  People who had relatives on the other side of town could not visit nor even wave to them.  Border guards, guard dogs (German shepherds of course) and mine fields guarded the border.  Today, being P Day, we took the two Hof Elders with us to this town which now houses an interesting museum about the border. See www.museum-moedlareuth.de  for some pictures if you can't read German.  We met a group of high school students on a week long tour from Orem Utah there.  Small world!

Elder Holbein in one of the watch towers

A portion of the wall still standing

A view of the tiny town.  This part was on the East.

Elders Holbein, Anderson and Montgomery coming from the museum.

After that visit we went to the former Branch Presidents house to retrieve the extra key for the Elders who had locked themselves out of their apartment (see Key adventures) and then we took them out to eat at a German Gastatte built in the 1700's.  There are a lot of these old restaurants about usually offering schnitzel and Klosse (sticky potato balls).  I guess I have now been here long enough that I actually enjoy these occasionally.