Training New Couples in Novi sad, Serbia and Skopje, Macedonia

Dear ones,
We have had a busy two weeks in Serbia, Macedonia and at the office. We have had a wonderful time meeting our new couples and training and learning from them. We left on July 16th and returned on July 23rd. then spent the remainder of this week catching up at the Office. Saturday we took a Senior Sister Missionary to Schweinfurt to see the post her husband (now deceased) had been stationed at as a young GI.. We had a delightful day with her seeing the p0st and walking around the city of Schweinfurt. The pictures that follow are from our recent trip to Serbia and Macedonia.

We traveled to Novi Sad, Serbia on July 16, 2012. We flew into Beograd (Belgrade) rented a car to travel the 1 1/2hours north to the city. We stayed at the Best Western, President Hotel. We had 2 and a half days to train the Maughans. A great couple. We had dinner the first night in downtown Novi Sad at a Doner Kabob restaurant. We spent Tuesday and Wednesday working. With a little break here and there.
Here we are at the open market with the Maughans carrying our treasure of fruits and vegetables for our lunch and dinner. The couples were so good to prepare meals at home. We had wonderful fresh watermelon, raspberries, peaches and tomatoes and cucumbers to name but a few.


Here is the Plate of Raspeberries we ate for a snack as we trained in the afternoon. 2.2 pounds of Raspberries cost about $3.50. Oh, they were yummy!!!!! It has been said that the Balkan countries were the bread basket of eastern Europe. The ground is so fertile and the produce so good and prolific. We left Novi Sad on thursday morning. It took us about seven hours to drive to Macedonia. We enjoyed the beautiful country side. We arrived in Skopje about 5 pm. I had really worried about crossing the borders but all went well. We stayed at the Karpos Hotel. Named for a Macedonian Military leader. We were picked up by Elder and
Sister Anderson for dinner and our training began on Friday. The Andersons are a great couple. We can see that the Lord is directing this church. You can see how these missionaries talents and abilities are just what is needed. On Saturday afternoon we had the time to do a little sight seeing. Here is a little of what we experienced.


Here is the Site where Elder Russell M. Nelson gave dedicator prayer to open the country of Macedonia for Missionary work in 2010. Elder and Sister Wondra attended along with several other Senior Missionaries.
Here are the Andersons and us at the site of the Dedicatory pray for Macedonia. The First missionaries were Humanitarian. Elder and Sister Juncker. There are now two proselyting Elders and Elder and Sister Anderson are the second Humanitarian Missionaries to serve in this country. Elder Adams was sent to Macedonia from Serbia. He had no knowledge of the Macedonian Language. He could not actively proselyte. He walked the streets learning the language which in a 4 month period he could speak quite fluently. This young man has a gift for languages as he also speaks, Russian and Serbian. His companian came from Albania. Two great young men. Just this past two weeks the opportunity to teach an investigator has come and in another week they will be able to proselyte officially. A miracle in itself. The Junckers worked 23 months loving and serving the people, the Anderson,s in their short time in Macedonia have also been instrumental in the process of gaining official recognition for the Church in Macedonia and to obtain a visa from the government.Here is downtown Skopje. The statue is of Alexander the Great who was a Macedonian. The people call this statue "the man on the horse". On the Hill you see The largest Cross in the world. At night it is lite. The orthodox church of Macedonia erected this to let the Muslim poplutation know that the Christians had an important presence. There is a large Albanian presence in Macedonia also.




Here we are in downtown Skopje on Saturday afternoon. We went to the museum of Military History. Learned a lot about Macedonia. The republic of Macedonia was created in 1991 so it is about 20 years old. It has been part of Greece, Albania,Serbia, Romania and Bulgaria. And of course it was part of the old Yugoslavia.
Sunday we attended Church at home of our Humanitarian couple. There were 17 people who attended church and out of these 17 there were 8 different languages represented. We had two investigators and a family of 6 from the Embassy who are leaving to go to Ottawa. Elder Anderson did a great job conducting the meetings as the new branch President. There was a wonderful spirit in the meeting. Beautiful testimonies were expressed.
After eating dinner with the Anderson's , we drove back to Serbia to Beograd this time to Stay the night at the Zira Hotel before flying home to Frankfurt on Monday.
We loved being with these great couples. We are so grateful to see the Hand of the Lord as these countries are being opened up for the gospel to be taught. There are many waiting for the news of the Gospel. What great sacrifices these pioneers are and will make to accept the truth and be baptized. Then to go forth. Many will lose family and friends and even jobs. But the blessings that await them will be worth every sacrifice.
We love you. We want you to know how blessed we are for the great sacrifices that were made by our ancestors so that we can enjoy the great blessings of this gospel. What a privilege it is to be a Missionary. Each one of you are so special to us. Please take care of yourselves and each other.
Love,
Oma and Opa

Heidi and Roberts visit

Dear All,
We have had a very busy few weeks, and the rest of the Summer will be just a busy, but we have really enjoyed the visitors we have had, and the time we have been able to spend with them. We wanted to share in a small way our visit with Robert and Heidi with you.

Here is Susan Robert and Heidi in the beautiful gardens of the Palace or Rezidence in Wurzburg. While in Germany Robert got to be in a place, a fortress, and a castle. The gardens are kept beautiful all year long, even in the winter they are kept beautiful

Robert and Heidi standing by the door to our old meeting house on Domikanergasse. Heidi recognized it right away.

This is the elementary school that Heidi, Holly, and Owen attended in Wurzburg. The whole area of Leighton Barracks has now been given to the Universityof Wurzburg which is slowly converting the housing to student housing and using some of the classrooms for university classes.

This is a picture of Wurzburg from the MarienBerg Fortress showing the city center and the Main river in the foreground

This is the Rathaus (city Hall) of the famous walled city Rothenburg on the Taube. If you look at the lower left hand corner you can see Robert (red shirt) wondering why all these people were sitting on the steps (tired feet is the answer)

We spent part of a day in Rothenburg on the Taube. This is the famous corner house which is the most photographed house in Germany. Easy to understand why. For a time in the med evil period this was a very important trade city and very wealthy. Today it is again becoming very wealthy thanks to tourist, and it is very interesting to visit and to see.

This picture was taken from the inner courtyard of the Hohenzollern castle, one of the most beautifully preserved castle in Germany

This picture of the Hohenzollern castle was taken from about 5KM away and gives you an idea for how large this place was. It was restored to this state in the middle 1800's. The first mention of a fortress on this site was about 1280 AD

At the Hohenzollern castle the day we were there, there was a Porsche tractor display. Owen this picture is for you it would probably plow your field in a 1/3 the time.

The day we visited the Eagles nest it was in the clouds so the kids really couldn't see the spectacular view from there. This picture was taken from down in the valley as the clouds started to dissipate.

This beautiful sunset was taken at Koenigs See at about 10:00 PM. Koenigs See is just 5 KM from Berchtesgaden and about 8KM from the B and B where we stayed. We saw some unbelievable scenery as we drove here in the German Alps

This picture gives you a feel for the size of the Salzburg fortress. This picture was taken just a block or two from the Salzburg meeting house. Salzburg is a beautiful city, that was not damaged in the war.

This is the back of the house used in the musical Sound of Music. However this is not the real Van Trapp home in Salzburg

You can see both the fortress and the house where part of the Sound of Music was filmed

Although the temple was closed for the summer cleaning we still had a lovely tour of the temple grounds. The temple reopened the day after Robert and Heidi left for Spain.

We had a wonderful time with the kids and drove about 2200 Kilometers in 4 days and the saw a lot as you can see.
We hope your week has been a good as ours with the kids was,
Love Oma und Opa

June 24th-Home From Hungary

Dear Ones,

We are driving home from Banska Stiavnica, Slovakia. It is Sunday at 2:30pm and Georg(our GPS) says we have five hours to go before reaching Frankfurt. Dad is driving and I thought this would a be good use of my time to write the blog as I was unable to get it written last week. I hope this finds all of you doing well and have had a good Sunday and Weekend.

Two weeks ago, we were busy in the office preparing for this past week as we knew we would be out of town most of it. A Week ago today we had a lovely Sunday. Because it was Fathers Day, we went downtown Frankfurt after church and spent a couple of hours just walking along the Main. Down one side and up the other. It was a beautiful sunny day. It was just what Dad wanted to do and He needed to just relax. The Saturday before I attended a Stake Sisters conference, Reingard ask me to sing in a four some. It was simple. We sang it’s a small world. It was Ok. What we do for our friends ! After the event we drove to Rodenbach and took Reingard to dinner with us. William was out of town for most of the weekend.

Monday, we completed preparations for our trip to Hungary. Tuesday, we worked until noon, then off to the temple for the 1PM session, then home to change and pick up our bags and off to Pilsen, in the Czech Republic . It is the 4^th largest city in Czech and is the home of the Skoda Car Manufacturer and the world famous Pilsen Beer. We enjoyed our little walk in the old town and dinner. And No, we did not try the beer.

Wednesday , we drove to Budapest, Hungary. There to meet E/S Denise and Donna Smith. They are Wheel Chair specialists who came from Washington State to assess our NGO and help us with the new Wheelchair project we are beginning in Hungary. The church no longer just gives out the wheelchairs. Now, the church wants each wheelchair to be fitted personally to each receipient. It is the way it should be done. So, each organization which distributes these wheelchairs must now have trained individuals that are able to assess the individuals ability to function in a wheelchair effectively and then fit the chair to the individual This training is done by Therapist who come from the US. This will be a lot of work to organize and execute. So On Thursday we meet with MEOSZ, the organization we are working with. We spent the entire morning discussing the details of the new program then the four of us took Julia ( our contact person in the Organization) and our translator out to lunch. It was a good meeting. We also used the time to discuss the on going Food and Nutrition Project with our translator who is involved with this project. Our next step is to purchase fruit trees. We had a productive day. We returned to the hotel to work on emails and other business concer Then we went to see the Cathedral and Old Castle, now museum, on the Buda side of the Danube River. It was a good day.

This was a new site for us in Budapest. Along the Danube river for quite a distance, the bank was lined with these bronze shoes representing the 100,000 plus Jews who died in Nazi Concentration Camps between 1936 and 1945. What a sobering Memorial to these people. Lest we forget.

This was taken standing on the garden area surrounding the old government building on the Buda side of the River. We are looking at the new government building on the Pest side of the Danube

Friday, the four of us drove to Slovakia, Banska Stiavnica where our missionary couple assigned to Slovakia has organized a wheelchair training and distribution for this coming week. E/S Smith will be overseeing this and helping with this training.

This city is on the list of the UNESCO World History Sites. This city dates back to the Roman times. One of the Largest in that era of time. It is a mining community that was rich in Gold and Silver. The city is an intact medevil city with mines that run under the city and surrounding area. The first School of Mining was begun in this city in 1745 or so. This was the first school of Mining in the World.

On Friday we had a little time to explore the Mine Museum and take a tour of one of the Mines. It was fun. We had a great dinner of Goulash that was really good. We stayed in the Cosmopolitan Pension, built for a mine Administrator in the 17 Century. We enjoyed the ambiance. You can see us in our mining gear for the tour

Our visit there coincided with the annual Meeting of the Mine Guilds from all over Slovakia. So the place was packed with miners. Saturday morning, as we sat in the breakfast room being trained by the Smith’s we heard the Band for their annual parade. So we were able to see a little history in action. The Parade began with t

hese cut little children. The first group are the modern day miners. The second group in Black represent the garb of the Russian Miners, The early German miners wore White and the group with the black out fits represent the Slavic and Hu

ngarian miners. Bringing up the Rear are the cut little girls dancing and twirling in there native costumes. The parade continued with groups of miners and family members from Cities all over Europe.

Then, the rest of our missionary crew arrived and we drove to the School where the training is taking place on Monday. The crew consisted of, 4 couple missionaries from the surrounding area. We put together Rough Rider Wheelchairs and a good time was had by all.

On our return to the Hotel we decided to see one of the castles of this city so we just began to drive in the location we could see. One of the gentlemen who works for the NGO who was distributing the wheelchairs could see we were looking for something so we stopped to ask him directions. He not only took us there but made the Hike up to the Top. As It turned out this is a sacred Place to the Catholics. There are stations showing the life of the Savior with statues and Painting in shrine like buildings. It was lovely.

They all left to return to their various locations and 2 couples will return today. We would have liked to stay for the weeks training but we must get home today to prepare all that is needed for the end of the month and prepare for Heidi and Roberts Visit for which we are so excited.