Visit to Eisenach Castle

The couple in the center wanted to come to this castle and so we brought them and the Wells. The middle couple (VorWallers) are here on a special 4 month assignment. She is 80 and he is in his late 70's. They stared the Family Services program and wrote the manual for the church years ago when they were in Germany on a mission.
Elder Wells and I standing at the entrance to the castle. He just retired as the dept.chairman of psychology at BYU. We are associating with some amazingly accomplished people.
This is looking out a window at another section of the castle. It is in this section that the Martin Luther room is located. As you can see the day we were there it was cloudy and cold with some snow.

This is the room and the desk where Martin Luther translated much of the Old Testament. At this time the Catholic church was trying to find him and execute him for translating the original Greek text into German for the common man to read (those that could read). The ceramic green thing is the heater that was stoked in the back from another room. Common form of heating in those days.
This is the Great Hall of the castle, here great balls and concerts were held. The famed pianist Franz Josef Liszt designed the the shape of the ceiling which has excellent acoustics. The flag you see was one of the first flags of Germany. In the early 1800's a group of university students met her to try and form a country form the more that 3000 little kingdoms that comprised Germany and that time. The flag had the German colors of Red Yellow and black (still used today). The colors represented: royalty,the protestants and the catholics.
This is a picture of the woman's hall. The upper walls and the ceiling portray the life of St. Elizabeth who lived here until her husband died in Italy on his way to the Holy Land. This whole room is done in mosaic tiles.
This mosaic shows St. Elizabeth engaged at age 4, her espoused was 6. Marriage in those days among the nobility were political or economically based. St. Elizabeth was married at 14, had 3 children, and widow at 21. After she was widowed she took her children to a convent to be raised and when to serve the poor. She died at age 24 of exhaustion and was cannonized shortly thereafter.
This picture shows her husband (the king) going off to fight in the crusades at the age of 23. He died in Italy of Typhoid on the march to the Holy Land. Again this picture is done all in small mosaic tiles
In the castle were displayed many precious items to include this ornate, festive suit of armor. Such a fancy suit would never be worn into battle. However it gives you an idea of the armor that was worn and how cumbersome it must have been. This suit would weigh about 150 lbs.

This week has been busy as usual, but we are learning and feeling like we know our duty much better, so although we are still very busy we are not as stressed. Tomorrow we will be dealing with an emergency project to aid the people of Bosnia. The national head of the Red Cross contacted our couple who oversees projects in southern Bosnia today with an emergency request for food and water. They called us for help, we talked with our boss, and authorized the missionary couple to proceed an immediate expenditure of $15,000 with more to follow once we see that the food and water acutally get to the intended stranded villagers. You will probably never hear about any of this, and if you do it will be a very scaled down version. The church goes about doing good all over the world in a very quiet way
We love you all,
Oma and Opa