WELCOME TO DARMSTADT!

Our First Day in the Frankfurt Mission with President and Sister Stoddard

We miss being in the temple every day and the spirit that resides there, but changes have a way of  keeping you on your toes. We are grateful for the opportunity to work with the Young Single Adult program. We loved the Freiberg Ward and miss our dear friends there.  Thankfully, the youth here in this area are also great and the members of the ward are very friendly and accepting, too. 

Something different about Darmstadt is that we understand the language a little better. In Freiberg we had several friends who spoke English and we were grateful we could communicate with them and they could translate for us.  Also, because Eastern Germany was under Russian rule for all those years, the schools were forced to teach Russian instead of English as a second language. Here in this part of Germany, the parents and children were taught English in school. As a result, more people here in the West speak some English and some very well. 

We've noticed that it is a very prestigious thing to be able to speak English well. We see a lot of English words on tee shirts, businesses, bill boards and newspapers. The Germans also contract a lot of business with America.The members have been encouraged to learn English because they say, "It is the language of the church". Job opportunities greatly increase here if you know English. It's quite entertaining to watch us speaking with the members. We speak German to them because we want to learn German, and they speak English to us because they want to learn English. Go figure.......

We are responsible for feeding the youth two nights a week.  We are learning to prepare big meals on a tight budget. So far no one has complained and the food seems to disappear.

The area is beautiful and Spring is just around the corner. We have a forest across the street from our apartment that invites us to take a walk almost every day.  Our apartment is nice and we are learning to live in a building with three other apartments very close to us. We are very comfortable here and glad we live outside of the city in a smaller area called Mühltal-Trautheim.

Our Apartment is on the second floor

 We've also been given the assignment of Car Fleet Managers for the whole Frankfurt Mission. That requires us to travel to Frankfurt quite often to the mission office. That is a real challenge to make sure all new missionaries obtain their driver's licenses, keep track of fleet finances, handle accidents and tickets and inspect the cars on a regular basis. We also inspect the missionary apartments from time to time to make sure their needs are taken care of and no mold is growing on their socks. 

As you can see, all of these assignments keep us very busy and time is flying by. We are now half-way through our mission and we wonder where the time went.

We were able to travel a little bit more before we left Freiberg and also just yesterday here in this area.  We love those Castles, Museums, Churches and Palaces.

Morritzburg Palace by Dresden - Beautiful but cold day!

We walked from Germany to Poland over this Bridge in Görlitz

A Beautiful and Unique Church in Luban, Poland

Frankenstein Restaurant - Dinner Theater held here around Halloween

Frankenstein Castle Ruins which may have inspired Mary Shelley's Novel
This is only about 20 minutes from where we live now

Visited the Robert Schumann Home Museum in Zwickau, Germany
He was a famous composer as was his wife Clara