Chinese Spring

  One of the blessings of serving a mission is getting to know other people from other lands.  Wenjie and Dean are from China and have lived in Hof for many years.  They are both teachers and are attending the Elders English class.  We always have a fun time in class.  They offered to come over and make Chinese food for us.  Chinese dumplings are very labor intensive.  Dean says he learned to make them from his father.  The families would get together to celebrate the Spring Festival and make dumplings together.  While they coked and ate they would talk and laugh and visit, so that is what we did.

The dumplings can either be fried, steamed or boiled.  Wenjie cooked while Dean rolled the dough and filled the dumplings.  We had enough for an army so we could enjoy them the next day as well.

The first missionary from Branch Hof

          Sophie Merkel has been called to serve a German speaking mission in Hawaii at the Laea visitors center.  We were privileged to go to the temple in Freiberg with her family.  We also plan to pick her up in Salt Lake and take her to the MTC in Provo so we get to act the "mom and dad" part later as well.

                           
                                 Later we went into Freiberg for lunch and a bit of sightseeing.

April 2014

We decided before we leave we need to play tourist one more time so we signed up for a historic tour of Hof by the "night watchman".   We stayed for about half the tour then walked home.  The problem was neither of us could understand his accent so we were missing more than half the sense of the tour.  The weather that evening was beautiful so we wandered about town for a bit.

The members in our little branch here have been meeting in rented hotel rooms and have been trying for over three years to find an acceptable place in Hof for the church to meet.  We have looked at several possibilities as have some of the members.  They had a contract once while we were here but that had to be recinded as it was too costly to install a fire escape.  Finally they have found another place, one they looked at in the beginning three years ago.  It is in the city center on Sonnenplatz 2 where the yellow banner is on the building.

On April 14th Brother Schiebold from Freiberg, Brother Merkel, the electrician, and the rental agent met to discuss several items about the renovation.  It should be completed by the end of this summer but, unfortunately, we will not see it.

Later that same day, Dave and I drove to Bayreuth so he could have surgery to fix a torn tendon in his right elbow.  He tried to arm wrestle one of the young adults in Institute about 5 weeks ago and they both heard a 'POP'.  It took several weeks to get an appointment for an MRI but the surgeon was quite quick to make a date for surgery.  While I waited for him I had the chance to enjoy the lovely gardens in one of the palaces in this Baroque town well known for its music.  There is an intact opera house dating from 1744 currently undergoing restoration.  Below is the new palace.

We didn't get home from Bayreuth until about 10 and early the next morning we went to see the doctor again.  The special arm sling allows some movement as the injury heals.  He should have it off about the time we get home.  Next week he will begin physical therapy to regain mobility and strength.

Later that day we enjoyed a pleasant visit from Arnika and Hebert Kaulfersch who we had previously visited in Nördlingen.  Sadly, the weather and the surgery made it impossible to do anything outside as we had planned.