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.

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. 

More Adventures

Maybe you will realize that my use of the word Adventure indicates experiencing a problem.  I like to try to keep a good attitude and look on problems as only another experience to learn from.  A addendum to the last problem.  We learned that since our key is a 'general' key and opens the outside doors to the building, if we had lost it all of the keys in the whole building would have needed replacement and could have cost over $2000.  We were so blessed!

Yesterday when we tried to get some more money our card would not work at the ATM.  We tried several different banks with the same result.  Our debit card from our home credit union is our only access to money since we have not opened an account here. We wondered is there might be some problem at home since we knew we had money in the account because we check it online everyday.  Today our card still did not work so we sent an email to our credit union at about 3 our time (which was 6 a.m. in Idaho).  We heard back from Melissa Cook at KCCU about 7 p..m. (10 at home) which means as soon as she got to work she addressed our problem and it sounds like this took a while. As soon as we heard we took another walk in the snow and the dark into town to see if perhaps we could find an accessible ATM.  Luckily the banks have their machines in the lobby so people can access them outside of banking hours and it worked!  She solved our dilemma. Thank you KCCU and Melissa. I love being from a small town where people care.

Key adventures

Every single time we leave the apartment one of us asks the other, "Do you have the key?".  This is because European doors LOCK and do not open without a key.   I guess that is a good thing for a heavily populated area.  It certainly isn't like Idaho where no one locks doors - at least we don't often.  Here we always leave the key in the door when we are home so that it is visible.

Thursday, when we went shopping, Dave had the key.  When we got home with all our packages he didn't.  We checked all our pockets and bags and car and could not find it.  Finally we had to go over the Merkels' home to get the extra key.  Since 'key adventures' are a common thing here with missionaries the mission policy is to have a second key with someone in the ward.  We took the extra key and returned home.  I proceeded to prepare the meal for the institute students at Zwickau and Dave returned to the place we had been to check if they had found our key.  As he was leaving the second store he felt something in his coat but not in the pocket.  The key had fallen through a hole in his pocket and was in the lining.  We felt prayers were answered and I fixed the hole.  Now we have two keys in our possession to lose.  We will leave one with the hausmeister (maintenance man) who has a secure storage place on site.

The outside of the door has no knob that turns, only a keyhole.

We keep the key in the door and it is on a long strap so we can't lose it, yeah.... right!

  We finally have winter here.  We drove to Zwickau in the snow and saw a truck overturned which closed the autobahn on the other side.  We were glad the roadway was cleared for traffic coming home.  Today it has been snowing all day so we finally have about 6 inches of soft powder.  I am glad we don't have to go door to door.

Looking at our car in the apartment lot.  It is the middle one on the right.