A wonderful Week with Vickie and Mark

Dad and I went to Windecken for a guided tour and the opening of their Christmas Market yesterday, Saturday, Dec 1st.  We enjoyed the history of the Little community.  We learned that the founder of the Lindt Chocolate so famous in Switzerland had his roots here in this little town.  The family had a chocolate shop.  The family went to Switzerland and there the story has it that they invented the process of making the chocolate into a form that could be made into solid bars. 

We toured the jewish quarter of the city and learned of the deportation of Jews from this community.  Then We gathered with the crowd and listened to the local brassband play, the mayor spoke and then he turned on all the beautiful lights of the old city.  We had a little kinder punch, a Kebob for dinner and just enjoyed the lovely atmosphere of Christmas in Germany.  What a lovely place

Vickie and Mark came to visit us on Tuesday, November 20th.  They spent their first day looking around downtown Frankfurt and then to Bed.  Wednesday, Vickie, Mark and Susan took the train to Wurzburg.  We toured the Residence, took a local tour of the city and shopped and eat and had a great time.  Then on Thanksgiving morning we headed out to Nuremberg to the Documentation Center Museum.  We enjoyed our time studying Nazi history.  We even stumbled upon a Lebkuchen factory as we travel to Prague.  We stayed at the Alton Hotel conveniently located to the old town of Prague. We had dinner in a traditonal pub like restaurant.  The food was good ,but certainly not the traditional  Thanks giving dinner.

The next day we took a tour of  Prague.  When we arrived at the meeting point we were informed that this was a walking tour but we all decided we did not want to miss it so off we went.  We visited the old town Square, the Jewish quarter and the Castle complex which you see here in the distance.

 

We were taken to a Unique restaurant for lunch.  The atmosphere was really unusual and we really enjoyed the food.  This was once the basement of a Palace where the hired help hung out . 

Here we are in front of the Palace.  We walked through the gates into the inner courts and viewed the church and the city.  We had beautiful views of the city.   Mark Did great with all the walking. 

Here is the old town square at night.  It was beautiful.  We enjoyed the day.  In the evening we went to the old market place and enjoyed the many vendors.  As we were getting ready to go back to the hotel we separated for a brief time and as Vickie and Mark returned to us ,John noticed Vickie's back back was open.  Some one had lifted her Wallet right out of it.  A sad note to finish the day.  Vickie and Mark handled it very well.  The important business was taken care of and we had dinner in a pizza place next to the Hotel.

The Next morning we traveled to Berlin.   We checked into the NH Berlin Mitte, got settled and then off to Check Point Charlie for the Woodard's and the Communication museum for the Leonard's.  We had an Italian dinner  across from Check point Charlie.  The next morning we took the Circle City Bus tour of Berlin.. We went to this Basilica on Museum Island.  A beautiful place.

We took a tour inside the Basilica and was invited to walk up the 215 steps to view the city from the walk way around the middle dome.  It was spectacular.  The next day we went to the KaDeWa  Department store and visited three Christmas markets with the City.  We had Wonderful time together and Put them on the Plane On Wednesday.  Then Back to work to catch up.

This was just one of the plethora of beautiful paintings and Stained Glass that decorated the inside of the Basilica.  How appropriate for this beautiful time of year,  How grateful I am for the Birth of the Savior.  The willingness of our Father in heaven to put forth the beautiful plan to make it possible for each of us to return to Him.  I am so grateful for their love for us.  As we begin this Beautiful Christmas season, I hope that we keep the Savior at the center of Celebrations.  We love you all and miss you so very much.                                                                                      Oma and Opa

3 Extremely busy weeks

Dear all,

This has been an extremely busy 3 weeks.  This week we were again in the office trying to catch up on the work that has piled up since we left for Spain and Switzerland.  In Switzerland we didn't have the internet like we thought we would, it that put us way behind in our work.  We are working with our couples trying to help them finish the projects that they are doing in their respective countries, and to make sure we spend our budget wisely.  I got a call yesterday from a sister in Moldova crying because of the situation she had seen the day before.  This is the worse poverty she has seen, and it is breaking her heart.  I will try and come up with $5-6,000  to see if we can't help this home for abandoned children.  All these kids have a mental or physical handicap and have been just been abandoned by their parents.  In Communism days having a handicapped child was a real social stigma and therefore an embarrassment for the parents.  These kids were hidden away somewhere, and that attitude still persist today.  Anyway we will help these kids get some indoor plumbing hopeful before the winter get too bad.  In the office we have a meeting every week now to review and consider potential projects.  This will last for another 3-4 weeks, then we'll have to stop to close out the books for this year.

2 weeks ago we were in Bern Switzerland to see if its is feasible to hold a humanitarian conference there in April 2013.  I met with the temple president and cleared that we could use temple housing for 4 days.  The scheduled stake for that week is from close by, so few people will stay in the housing which makes it possible for us to reserve 16 rooms.   The next hurdle to overcome is the cost of getting the couples there, so one of the things we did was to investigate different types of public transportation from a distant airport to the city of Zollikofen.  The next hurdle will be the cost of food.  Switzerland is very expensive, so we are looking at a lot of self prepared meals.             

3 weeks ago we were in Spain.  We flew to Barcelona and the drove to Zaragoza.  We were there to see if there was something that the humanitarian services could do to help the branches there.  The city has about 25-30% unemployment, and since the building boom ended there is wide spread unemployment.  This is also affecting the Church there in Zaragoza.  We are trying to get the Church's employment specialists there is set up a program to help the people.  We also looked into helping the people possibly set up there on business.  I'm afraid this is going to be a long term problem because so many of the immigrating saints had no skills when they came. 

Here are a few of the pictures we took on our trips and 1 P-day.

This is the reason we came to Switzerland, to see if we could hold a Humanitarian conference here where are couples could go to the Temple as part of the conference.  We were able to attend 2 consecutive session and thoroughly enjoyed them.  The temple is very beautiful and peaceful inside.  I had a good visit with he temple president who is German, but also born in Switzerland.

This is one of the major streets in old Bern.  You can see one of the old gates into the city with its' magnificent clock.  The Swiss have no equal in clock/watch production and quality.  Einstein at one time lived on this street not far from where this picture was taken.

Bern is built on a penizula create by the Rhine River, and is very old.  You can see how water and waterways have influenced history.  When conquered it became an important Roman city with 30-50,000 inhabitants at one time.  The church in the picture is not the cathedral

This is one of the many bridges in Bern across the Rhine River.  You can see the river is low now and the Fall colors in the foliage.  It was beautiful that day.

We arrived late in the afternoon, and walked to the city square which was only 5-1- minute walk from our hotel.  This is the Cathedral and it is huge.  We walked inside and listen to a mass. we were hoping to hear the pipe organ play, but that was not part of the mass.  This cathedral is a part of the city's identity and all the citizens are attached to it.  It is massive inside and very spectacular, but not designed for reaching the one.

We took these next 3 pictures as we were driving back to our hotel after church.  Church was from 4-7 PM., and on the other side of the river from our hotel.  The branch is aver 40% African. 35% South American, and 25% Spanish.

This beautiful cathedral is huge as you can see, and is very imposing when you see it at night.  It is one of those "have to pull over and take" pictures shots.

We took this picture  of the Cathedral from across the river.  You can see the reflection of the cathedral in the river.

We took a day off to be with Susan's cousin Margaret Miller as she stopped over in Frankfurt on her way home from Baku Azerbaijan where she was visiting a daughter and her family.  We went to the medevil town of Miltenberg for 1/2 day and then took Margaret to Rothenburg the famous walled city.

This fountain has been used by the citizens of Miltenberg for 100's of years, and is not even in the town square, but very lovely nevertheless.  The red building in the back ground is a hotel and restaurant.

This is an example of the beautiful woodwork houses typical of a couple of centuries ago.  This obviously was a very wealthy merchants house with his business below.
Although it may appear that we have spent our time sightseeing that was not the case.  With the exception of Miltenberg pictures we were working and took pictures as we walked back to the hotel or  from the roof of the hotel in Spain.  In Switzerland we were staying in the temple patron housing, and took the picture as we walked to the temple.
We send our love to everyone,
Oma und Opa

To Romania and back to the office

Dear All,
This has been busy like every other week.  We returned Monday afternoon from from Romania where we had spent 4 days training the Francoms.  They are the new country directors for Romania, and arrived  in August in Romania, last week was the first chance we've had to visit them.  They were humanitarian missionaries in the Dominican Republic, a couple of years ago, so they had an idea of how the Church humanitarian system works.  They will be a good couple there in Bucharest, they are busy with several projects initiated by their predecessors.  Elder Francom is a causal type of guy and Sister Francom helps him a lot in being a little more formal.  While in Romania we visited a couple of their projects, one being a orphanage in Polesti.  The picture came from our visit to the orphanage.
In the office we were busy preparing and reviewing 19 projects for throughout eastern Europe.  We allocated over a quarter million dollars for these projects.  The expensive projects were a wheelchair project and a clean water project.  We support 11 couples in 12 different countries, which is a full time job if we just stay in the office.  The traveling we do is nice and we enjoy the interaction with all these couples, but it  means that we stay up late each night in the hotel trying to do our office work as best we can remotely.  Tomorrow morning we leave for Moldova which is about a 3 hr. flight to get there, even with a direct flight.  Our return flight next Saturday was cancelled so now we fly to Moscow, and then to Frankfurt, this will be a long day mostly in airports.  Moldova is sandwiched between Romania and the Ukraine.  We will spend the week with the Pinders training and visiting their projects, both ongoing and ones that they are thinking about doing.  We will also be taking some donated missionary clothing with us to Moldova, it is good when we can help in this manner.  The Pinders are in their mid 70's and they are still going strong, busy and enjoying their mission.  We hope the winter won't be too hard on them, we worry about the snow and the slippy sidewalks and streets. 
We have included a couple pictures we took at the orphanage in this blog

In the orphanage there are 2 groups of children in 3 different buildings.  These are some of the younger normal kids.  They performed a traditional Romanian dance in traditional customs for us, which was very nice.  The children in the orphanage either have no parents or have been brought there by their parents because the parents can't take care of them.  The hope is that with time the parents will be able to take them and return and take them back home.  Unfortunately frequently this proves not to be the case, which is sad.  The good thing is that the children are well taken care of here.  The Administrator of the orphanage was very grateful for the help that the church gave them.  We provided them with a large refrigerator, a food grinder and washing machine.

This is some of the hand crafts that the children in the orphanage make to generate revenue for the orphanage
The picture with the yellow frame is made by rolling different colors and sizes of paper, then gluing them onto the paper.  The other picture is made by gluing different stained grains of rice onto a paper.  The mask is of course ceramic and has been painted.  The star in the corner is made from a bunch of little folded pieces of paper that are then stuck together without any glue to hold it together, it is quite amazing.
We hope that this will be a good week for you.
We love you,
 Oma und Opa

Dear All,

This has been a busy week as are they all.  This first part of the week we were busy preparing the proposed 2013 budget for the Europe Area.  This is a pretty involved process and takes a lot of coordinating time with the missionary couples in the various countries.  Each must be contacted to learn what projects they want to do, and then fitting that information into a master plan for Europe.  Then the plan has to be approved by the European Director for Temporal Affairs, and the Area Presidency.  Once that is done it must be submitted to the Church Welfare Dept. to be incorporated into their master plan, and then it starts moving up the line to the First Presidency and the Counsel on the Dispersion of Funds.  All this must be done while still doing our normal duties, and fulfilling our normal responsibilities.

Last week I taught Priesthood, which is a very interesting experience, because in our HP group is the Area Presidency and the Area President was in the class  ex- mission presidents, a just released temple president, and many highly educated members.  The lesson was on Pres. Uchtdorf''s talk " The Merciful shall obtain Mercy" form the last general conference.  It was a very interesting discussion as we defined mercy and its several meanings.  We discussed how to really apply mercy and the difficult thing this can be to do.  One of the main conclusions was that to be merciful is as essential for the giver as for the receiver, both need the principle of mercy, for growth, and we are all both givers and receivers of mercy.  When mercy is not extended an opportunity is lost for both parties.

The next day on Monday I gave the weekly devotional for the staff of the Area Office.  Surprisingly I was not stressed about this assignment,but knew what I wanted to say and present.  Many people in the world think of God as their creator (if they believe in God), only a few of those think of God as a Father, and only the Church teaches that as Children of God we have divinity within our spiritual genes, and therefore a divine potential if we choose to live for it.  I had several good discussions centered on that subject throughout the week.  In fact I think I will ask one of the mental health missionaries to present that topic in our Nov. fireside.  He has really thought this topic through and developed quite a presentation on good and evil and their influence in our lives.  It all sounds quite simple and concise, but there is much more to this idea than a quick look reveals.  It is amazing just how much the scriptures contain when you really look thoroughly at a subject, or principle.  The same passage you can understand on several levels.

This week I  thought that I would share photos of Frankfurt and some pertaining to our apartment.

As you can see German engineering has now learned how to built gravity defying structures or this is a new design in rockets just taking off - take your pick.

These blue and purple flowers just stay beautiful all the time.  I think they are perennials that just keep flowering.  We certainly have enjoyed them.  In the window behind them you can see our Wetterhauschen.

It is the last day of September and the geraniums on the balcony still look pretty.  I think I'll bring them in and put them in the stairwell for the winter and see how they will do.  We don't have a window sill big enough to hold them in the apt.

Our tomato plant has become domesticated and is now indoor tomato plant.  It has now grown to the ceiling of the living room/dinning room/ironing room/ laundry drying room.  Now will it produce inside like a good little tomato is the next question (maybe they will be red for Christmas).  I can say that so far it has not had 1 accident on the rug (that's better than most puppies I've knew).
We wish you all a good week next week.
Love, Oma und Opa

Herbst im Deutchland

Dear Ones,

The weather is changing.  The temperatures are dropping at night and during the day.  Dad was worried about our beautiful tomato plant so he brought it into the living room this past week.  You can see it is almost to the sealing and the tomatoes are ripening   We are hoping that we can keep it healthy and beautiful until Christmas.  It will be beautiful with a string of lights, a few ornaments and Christmas presents under it. Maybe it will have red tomatoes still ripening on it, how festive it will be. It has grown a good four inches since we brought it in.
This was a special week for our Brittany.  She turned 16 on the 19th.  We had a quick visit with her.  She was out on a date with her Dad.  She was wearing a pretty new dress and high heels(she said that the heels were not to high)  They family was meeting the two of them for lunch.  It was fun to talk with her on her special day.  Happy Birthday again.
This week we have been very busy in the office.  This was the week of the Area Review as well as the end of the quarter for finances.  We had visitors from all over reviewing our operations here in Frankfurt.  We had Martin Gardner from England who is over employment, Mark from SLC in the Welfare department, and Demitri from Moscow who is head of the Welfare department for Eastern Europe Area.  This review is done every three years.  This team is chosen and they visit all the facilities in the area to see how all is operating.  So we spent Thursday morning being interviewed.  It was friendly and a great opportunity to share information that might be helpful for future operations.  We drove people to hotels and to the airport as well.
It was a great feeling to feel that we had learned enough to be able to participate fully in this review.  We know what we are doing now and can really be useful.  This week we filled out the paper work to request our replacements.  It is hard to think about leaving.  We love it here and we are finally feeling confident about our abilities and skills to do this work.  But we were told that this is how the cycle goes.  So with excitement  we look forward to being with our family and friends but sadness to leave this wonderful experience and all of our new friends here
This week has been somewhat of a recovery week.  We have tried to go to bed earlier and get a little more rested.  Our traveling schedule this summer has been very tiring.  We work all day with our couples in the field and then we come back to the hotel and try and keep up with the office work.  We have been working Saturdays and Sundays here to catch up.
Friday we spent the day in Wiesbaden taking care of military business....renewed my ID card, renewal of our pink card so we can use the commissary and Px, picked up an Rx from the Pharmacy, shopped at Mains Kastel, and other places in the area, then we went to the Px and Commissary.  It was a full day.  On our return home we went for a Bike ride.  We rode downtown to the city center.  It was really fun and we did not get lost and it took us about 10minutes .  The weather is beautiful and cool, the leaves are beginning to turn.  I love the fall here.
Saturday, Dad stayed here in Frankfurt and worked a while in the office.  He went on another bike ride downtown.  He had a great time, got a little lost but found his way back home.  I went with Reingard to visit Ruth and Milo in their new home. The drive was beautiful and the conversation just great. They live in a small commuity close to Koblenz.  Tim has finished his schooling and is  now interning at the BAUHAUS.  He is going into management there.  We had a delightful day playing with Milo,looking at all the baby things that Ruth had collected, shopping at several flea markets for baby clothes for the new baby that will come the 29th of November and  a trip to C&A for some maternity clothes.  Milo, who is 2, and I hung out together while the two ladies shopped.  My german is about on his level so we got along just fine.  In fact, he helped me.  He is really a cute little guy.  A lot like my little Evan.  So I enjoyed it very much.  I loved being with Ruth and Reingard.  We got home about 9 pm and John made soup for us.  So we had a little dinner together and Reingard went home and we went to bed.  We were really tired.
Today is Sunday and Dad is preparing for his Priesthood lesson and will be at the office to do a little more work to get ready for the coming week.  We have our meetings at 2pm in the Frankfurt building.  It is so nice to just walk to church.
We love you all and hope this has been a great week for all of you.  We are thinking of you.
Love,
Oma and Opa

A busy 2 weeks in Hungary and the Czech Republic

16 Sept.,2012
Dear All,
This has been a very busy 2 weeks, but very good weeks. The first we spent in Budapest Hungary which is one of the prettiest cities in Europe. We were there to train E/S Wiggins who came to us from Sandy UT. They lived in Sandy and he use to ride his bike up to snowbird all the time. They are a wonderful couple, highly computer literate, and very enthusiastic to serve the Hungarian people and the Lord. The second week we spent with the Pages in the Czech Republic participating in and helping with a wheelchair training program. The Church has worked with Motivation Romania and WHO and now WHO has adopted the wheelchair training developed by Motivation Romania as their standard for distributing wheelchairs. I have included some of the pictures we took in both countries. We spent very little time site seeing, but did enjoy what we saw. I have included some pictures of Prague which may be the prettiest city in Europe.
For the past month I have been working on setting up a fireside with Elder Nelson for when he came to Frankfurt this past Weds. We returned from Prague Thurs. night, and was asked to conduct the Fireside Fri. noon. It was a great fireside with Elder Nelson, very interesting the the stories he told about President Kimbal and Pres. Monson. After the firside as I was sitting on the stand I had the opportunity to visit personally with Elder Nelson. I mentioned that I had some uncles that I thought he might know. He asked who, I told him Owen Reichman, Hyrum Reichman and Wilford Reichmann. Elder Nelson said, yes I know them, then he said "you have some very good blood in you". I thought that was a great tribute to Grandma and her family, and it affects all her descendants.

This is Elder Robert and Sister Janice Wiggins the first Humanitarian Missionary couple assigned by the Church to Hungary. They are highly skilled people and will do a wonderful job. She is a PhD in education and taught at the U of U and wrote grant proposals for the ED. Dept. She taught teachers how to teach blind children. He has a degree in ME and formed his own co with 2 friends. The co. sold calibrating technology throughout the world. You can see that they have special skills that will be very helpful to the work in Hungary. We spent 4 days training them, and helping them get setup in their apt. We also took a bunch of office equipment to them.
This is a garden project that was started in Veszprem Hungary a year ago. The sister in the blue blouse has fed her family the whole summer on the produce she has grown on her garden plot. She only goes to the store for milk, bread and occasionally meat. The Lord has really blessed the ground and it has produced a lot for the members participating in the gardening project.

In the wheelchair training program the people to be trained are put immediately into a wheelchair for the entire first day of training, so they can begin to understand what a poorly fitted wheelchair feels like, and thus better appreciate how important it is to fit the chair to the recipient. A poorly fitting chair can actually cause damage to the person.
Kim Brown a PT volunteer from SLC teaching the group how to properly assess if a person is in the proper position to be tested for a chair. They teach a 90/90/90 principle. Susan is in the blue with the clipboard
Judd Thalman a PT volunteer for the Church (from Richmand UT.) teaching the trainers. Seated is Elder Dennis Smith a wheelchair specialist for the Church and standing next to Judd is Jakob a translator
Susan is learning to test if there is any sensory loss (neuronal damage) in a potential wheelchair recipient. If there is any sensory loss it will affect if the person is a candidate for a wheelchair and will influence the kind of chair they will receive.
Here a couple of trainees are actually fitting a wheelchair recipient into a properly fitting chair and the proper type of chair. This is the final step in the training process.
At the end of day we took a small stroll around the small town where the training was conducted. As this picture was taken it was almost dark, but we used a special setting for low light, and this was the result
In Czech (in almost all towns and villages in Europe) the town is built around a center square. This is the famous Astronomical clock on the square in the daylight. I just want to show a few sights of Prague as the most important part of our visit was the wheelchair training that we did for 3 days
This is the famous clock tower with the Astronomical clock at night.
This is a picture of the Prague (spelt Praha in Czech) castle at night
This is a front view of the castle from the town square. The castle is actually a block behind the square. Rain in Europe is just normal

A side view of the Prague castle
A beautiful house on the town square
This is the oldest known market in Prague. How long it has been there is not exactly known, but it was first mentioned in writing in 1232 (let's see you top that Walmart ?)
Susan with Jakob (one of the interpreters), Sister Smith and Sister Page in a very old wooden church in an open air museum in the Czech Republic. We took an hour and visited the museum after the wheelchair training one day.
We are grateful for this opportunity to serve a mission and the support you all have given us. We love you all,
Oma and Opa

Bosnia, then back in the office

2 September 2012
Dear All,
Two weeks ago we were in Bosnia visiting and training E/S Winters. They arrive in late June, and in early July they were transferred by the mission president from Croatia to Bosnia. This move has been very difficult and fraught with challenges, but they have persevered and made the move. They have one remaining hurdle to overcome before they will feel settled and can progress the humanitarian work. Part of our fast today is focused on them and their needs.
Fortunately they come with a wealth of knowledge and experience which will be extremely valuable as they travel throughout Bosnia. Bosnia is small country and poor like all the former Yugoslavia countries. We flew into the capital Sarajevo, rented a car and drove the 130 kilometers (about 80 miles) to Tuzla. This short distance required 2 1/2 hrs. the entire drive was on a 2 lane road through the mountains. Bosnia has almost no highways.
We felt good about the training and the time we spent with the Winters, the are a good humble couple. Returning to Sarajevo to fly back to Frankfurt was also an experience. We didn't have a GPS with us because only about 3% of the roads in Bosnia are mapped on the GPS, so a GPS really is of very little help.. Therefore we were depending on the airport being marked as we drove into town- it wasn't! But the Lord blessed us, two or three times as I was driving I could feel that we were headed in the wrong direction. We would pull over to the curb and ask if someone could speak German or English. Each time we found someone who could speak English - very rare in Bosnia. Long story short we made it to the airport just before our plane boarded (boarding was late), I turned in the car key while Susan checked us in, walked to the gate and walked on the plane. Without those promptings and English speakers on the street there is no way we would have found the airport. There were no signs until we were almost at the airport.

Back in the office on Tues. we met with a mountain of work in spite of working in the hotel each time until 11:30 or midnight. Thus this has been a very busy week requiring long, long days and working Sat. and 4-5 hours today before and after church. We did take Friday evening off so we could go to the temple, which was very refreshing and relaxing. I guess I should also admit it, we did sleep in until 8:00 on Sat.
Tomorrow we plan to drive off at 8:00 for Budapest Hungary. If we drive straight through stopping only for gas and at the borders to pay the rood tax we should arrive at the hotel between 6 - 6:30. If we hit any road construction, or there is an accident on the Autobahn then it will take longer. We are excited to be going, the new couple in Hungary is a very accomplished couple and will pick up the training quickly, and the work they will do will be wonderful. The next week we will be with the Pages in the Czech Republic working on wheelchair training.

We are standing here with the directory of the old folks home in Tuzla, Bosnia, our interrupter, and the Winters. We were looking at the needs of the old folks and if we could do something to help. An 86 yr. old man with a cane in the home asked us to help him find a wife - alas we were unsuccessful.

Here we have some local volunteers making cookies with some of the residents of the old folks home. You will notice the tags on the volunteers, here everybody is monitored all the time. The affects of communism is still quite ingrained in the people. Anyway it was nice to see the volunteers doing something nice for the older ladies in the home.

At the end of the week we took a P-day and went with E/S Winters to a restaurant for dinner. Bosnia depends on the rain to water everything, and you can see in the background how dry everything is after 2 months with very little rain. We have found the food in these Balkan countries enjoyable and especially the Balkans salad -Shopjeka, a combination of tomatoes, cucumbers, and onions. In Bosnia they eat a lot of meat especially beef, so the salad is light and refreshing especially when the temperature is close to 100 or above.
We hope you all have a good week.
Love, Oma und Opa