TWO MISSIONS IN ONE

We have been assigned to serve in Darmstadt, Germany with the Young Single Adult Outreach Program.  We will leave Freiberg for our new calling on February 19.  We are excited to get another opportunity to work with Young Adults again.

We will be about 30 minutes south of Frankfurt and about 45 minutes from the Temple in Friedrichsdorf.  We are happy and look forward to serving in a different capacity.  Not everyone gets "two missions in one".  We feel blessed.

We have a few more reasons to be happy to go to Frankfurt.  One reason is because we will be close to these people - My cousin's son and his family.  They were able to come to Freiberg to go to the Temple and we were able to spend a couple of evenings with them.  It was really fun and it gave us a first opportunity to eat at the McDonalds here in the area. We really enjoyed getting to know them better and their cute girls.

Another reason we are excited to serve in the Frankfurt area is because Clog America is coming to participate in the 50th Anniversary of the Folklore-Festival Bitburg here in Germany this coming July.  The group will have a few days in Frankfurt before heading to the Festival and we hope to see everyone and possibly schedule some kind of performance for them through the YSA program.  Dale, Shauna, and David have all participated with Clog America in this Festival when they toured with Clog America.  Fun times!  We hope we will be able to arrange our schedule to include some time with them.

Clog America 2011

TEMPLE CLOSING FOR RENOVATION

What a beautiful, busy, spiritual, and awesome experience it has been working in this pioneer Temple in Freiberg.  Yes, it is definitely a "pioneer" Temple because these people were the pioneers during those hard times after WWII.  We have been blessed to meet many of the leaders here who are still living and were instrumental in the Temple coming to East Germany.  What a blessing it has been to this area and all of the other countries in the temple district.  We have learned to love and admire these people for their dedication.  We will miss them all so much.  Here are pictures of just a few of them...  there are many more!

WEATHER

It has come to our attention that the weather in Utah has been really warm for this time of year.  So we thought we would share a few pictures of what the weather has been like here.

View over the Valley from Augustusburg

Here on the Temple Grounds

Entrance to the Augustusburg Castle

It is still winter!  From what we have been told, it is quite a bit colder and definitely more snow than usual.  We are not surprised because we know "snow" follows ReNae where ever she goes.  What is different here is that it is so humid that there is more "ice" every where and it is difficult to even walk sometimes.  If the wind is blowing at all, it is pretty much frigid.  It is suppose to warm up a little bit next week and we are looking forward to that for sure!

So because of the bad weather we have not been able to travel much, but here is a picture of the slippers we got to wear over our shoes on this beautiful old wood floor in the Great Hall of the Albrechtsburg Castle in Meissen.  This was our third visit to Meissen because we really love this castle and the church.  This room is huge and the statues are probably 7-8 feet tall.