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.