Fall in Germany

30 October 2011 Happy Halloween Tomorrow!!!!!!!!!

Dear Ones,

This week has been busy at the Office. There is always so much to do which is good. Our days and weeks go by so fast. We have been out now over 5 months. We have some great people we work with in the office. We are on the 4^th floor of the Office building. Our office is next to William Blacoe’s office. So it is fun for us to visit with him each day. He often comes into our office and visits with us about the recent world events or what he has recently researched. We quite enjoy him. One recent visit was about the bail out for Greece. The banks are being forced to write off half of Greece’s debt. Therefore there will be repercussions in the German bond market. The world’s economy is surely fragile.

These are the Asplunds

We have a couple that works across the hall from us who are from Pleasant Valley California. They supervise the Centers for young adults(CFYA) in Europe. He was a School Superintendent and she a 1^st grade teacher. They are a great couple and lots of fun to work around. Then down the hall we have the Wells who are in the Addiction Recovery/Family Services department. He is a former psychologist and department chair for the Department of Psychology at BYU. They are from Utah and we enjoy them a lot. They are fun and we do a lot of things with them. Then we have the Paxton’s who are from Cedar City. Sister Paxton works on finances for Seminaries and Institutes and Elder Paxton does the finances for CFYA. Elder Paxton was an Air traffic Controller in Cedar City and Sister Paxton was paid for what she now does as a missionary.

Elder Paxton

Down the hall we have Brother Simonet from France . He makes the beautiful video clips used for training and between conference News Reports. Then there is John Mulligan the Director of Welfare Services. He is from England and he is married to a lovely Pilipino Lady. They have 7 children all out of the nest. We really enjoy working for him. He is a great boss with a great sense of Humor. Down the other end of the Hall is Human Resources with a great group of people there.

This week we have enjoyed cold crisp days with off and on Sunshine and Rain. Here is a picture from our balcony. It is very beautiful with the leaves turning orange, yellow and red. We have tried to go for walks or bike rides frequently after work. We fed the Sister Missionaries on Thursday. We had Taco Salad. They really thought it was a treat to have Mexican Food. Sister Kreth is from Portola, California, very close to Susanville. Holly, you may know her family.

We attended the temple on Friday with all the couples in the area. We had a full session. It was so special to feel the great spirit of these wonderful people we enjoy. They are all such special people. Afterwards we all had dinner at a Chinese Restaurant in Friedricksdorf. Dad checked out the area Van for the weekend so we(the bummer group-defined as those without an assigned vehicle) could all attend the various meetings, this is Stake Conference Weekend. We had a lovely week. We feel we have a better handle on our job, we are ever Learning and that is fun as well. The Lord has truly blessed us and continues to bless us as we strive to do our jobs. We love the couples we work with in the various countries and we feel so blessed to have such good support from wonderful couples who work around us. We feel so blessed to have such wonderful support from family and friends at home. We love and miss all of you very much.

Love, Oma und Opa

Back in the Office

This week we have been very busy in the office. We returned Sunday evening to Frankfurt from Romania, went to a fireside, and came home and unpacked. We like to be home before Monday morning because when we travel somewhere the work in the office just piles up. It usually requires 2-3 days of long hours to work our way through everything and get issues addressed or better (if we can) resolved. The Lord has blessed us, and we are learning and able to deal with issues quicker and better now. Many problems we can now fix on our own (That’s a good feeling). The picture below if of the Schoenbrunn Palace in Vienna Austria.

This is the Schoenbrunn Palace which was a summer palace for the Hapsburg family. Marie Antoinette ( queen of France when the revolution began) was part of this family. As a child growing up she spent a lot of time in this palace in Vienna. Vienna is a beautiful and interesting city. A great place to celebrate your anniversary.
The above picture is the Parliment building which is on the Pest side of the Danube River. The picture was taken from the Buda side of the river. The picture below shows the Pest side from the Castle on the top of a mountain on the Buda side of the riber. The hilly part of the city is in Buda and the flat part of the city is in Pest. The river divides the two parts of the city. The two cities became one in about 1850-70, hence the name Budapest.

As I was reviewing past blogs I noticed that the blog we sent from Hungary is not on the blog but somewhere out in cyberspace. I won’t go back and rewrite it, but I thought I would quickly include pictures of the Schoenbrunn palace in Vienna, and a picture or 2 of the Hungarian parliamentary building on the Danube River in Budapest. I’m certain you have seen pictures of both so they are familiar to you. However to see them in person is just awesome (how do you like the contemporary lingo?).

Back to the office, we have had several requests from mission presidents or Area Authorities for a copy of our project books pertaining to their area or country. These books are pictorial and written record of what the church has done in humanitarian services in their country. Although the church has been doing humanitarian projects in these various countries for years the books were first started about 18-20 years ago. The book we sent to Romania will be given to the American Embassy in Budapest. The embassy staff would like to show visiting dignitaries what some of the American organizations have done to serve the Romanian people. The first book I did took over an hour to do; now I’ve got the process done to about 30 min. or less and I’ve improved the quality. How to do this has also been part of the learning curve. We notice that as we go through the day we constantly have little thoughts or ideas that help us accomplish what we are trying to do better and quicker . To us these are tender mercies of the Lord and we are grateful for them, we are trying to become more sensitive to these little flashes of inspiration and respond quicker and more often. In the past we responded slower, and I’m afraid many we didn’t even recognize at all.

Yesterday afternoon we took some personal time and went to the city Of Mainz to the Gutenberg Museum. Johannes Gutenberg is credited with discovering movable type and the printing press, which permitted the bible to then be reproduced in mass. Prior to his press (in about 1474) the Bible was only reproduced by monks writing everything by hand. It was fascinating (incidentally the Koreans and the Chinese started using movable type around 800 and 1300 respectively). They had 3 of the estimated 180 original Bibles in a display case, and other books that were printed about the same time. I found it interesting that the basic printing press was quite similar to the press used to print the Book of Mormon in 1829. The museum then exhibited the progression of printing up until about the 1960 – 70”s. The museum had so much material that it covered a good 3 floors (no kids I did not read everything, but I tried). Here are some facts that I bet you did not know: The 1^st weekly newspaper was started in 1620 in Frankfurt, the 1^st daily newspaper was started in Leipzig in 1650 We were in the museum until about closing. As we left the museum we wondered around through the city of Mainz which was built where the Main and the Rhein rivers converge into 1 great river. Mainz is a very old city and was occupied by the Romans and there are several Roman ruins in the town. The city is beautiful and survived the war quite well.

This building was built in 1420. The original Catholic cathedral was begun about 1000 years ago while Mainz was a very important city of commerce. The cathedral is a beautiful building, and like the Koln cathedral is now constantly under restoration in one area or another.

We have begun preparations for an Area Humanitarian Conference in the spring for our 10 couples in Eastern Europe. In January a new couple will open up the country of Montenegro for humanitarian work, which will be the 2^nd country open up for humanitarian work within the last 6 months. But we’ll write about that another time. We love you all and prayer for you continually.

Thought for the day garnered from somebody’s wall, “ Aspire to inspire before you expire.”

Love,

Oma und Opa