November is all about EATING

Anna Weiss and friend

We were invited over to the Merkels home for a sushi evening where we made our own sushi.  They had invited other young couples, the Rupps and Anna Weiss and her boyfriend.  Here in Germany 'friend' usually means live in which is the case here.  Anna does my nails and is a very sweet lady but very German which means no marriage and kids later.  I have talked to her a bit about the church.  Carolin and Chris Rupp are the young couple whose wedding we attended in Butterwiesen last August.  He is not a member.   So this was a missionary opportunity dinner.  It was enjoyable but I still do not like sushi, especially home made!

On Sunday, November 24, we fed the missionaries at our apartment and since it was close to Thanksgiving we cooked a small turkey.  Elders Pollard and Donner will both go home shortly after Christmas.  At our regular district meeting in Plauen on Wednesday we got together for a little T-day dinner which was chicken, carrots, 'barnyard' potatoes, bread,  pumpkin pie and ice cream. On Thanksgiving day we went to Zwickau for our regular Thursday institute class and we fed them pasta, but Dave made a pumpkin pie from scratch for them just to celebrate.  This last Sunday all four of us missionaries were invited to the Hemmann home for dinner and they provided a meal of roast duck and chestnut stuffing with all the trimmings which was very like another Thanksgiving feast.  That included a yummy pumpkin soup and 'Stollen', a German traditional fancy Christmas bread.   Sister Hemmann told that on her mission her mother sent this to her in the US and she told her companion it was stolen.

That Sunday, the first in December, was the beginning of the Christmas season.  The Relief Society got together the Friday before to make advent wreaths.  This is a wreath for the table with four candles.  Traditionally one candle is lit each Sunday for the four Sundays before Christmas to mark the coming of the Christ Child.  I hung the wreath I made on our door.

Kersten Hemmann, Eva Schultze and Angelica Merkel

Damaris Grünbichler and Martha Ernst

And, of course, we had   "kaffee und küchen" afterward.  The kaffee is Pero but they call it coffee.