Changes At Home And Visit To The Home Land

This past week has been whirlwind of information and changes that impact the rest of our mission.  This does not mean changes in our dedication and persistence, but more on our focus.

To start with, we finally got our flight plans to take us home from our mission.  Having those flight plans is helpful for us to plan for our departure from here and our arrival back to North Carolina.  There is so much to do.  It is amazing that there seems to be more involved in returning from a overseas mission than coming out on a mission.

Emotionally it is difficult to even think about departing from here. After all, this IS home. We have made quite a few friends with missionaries and members alike. At the same time, we realize that so much has changed in the lives of those we know back home and we have missed out on those changes.  We anticipate it being a bit awkward to see friends after such a long absence.  It's not like you can pick up where you left off.  Family, on the other hand, we've kept up using Messenger and Facetime.

Along with hearing about our flight plan, we were almost ready to give up on ever meeting our missionary replacements. We never met the two couples we replaced and we thought that was going to happen to us.  However, around mid-week we got an email informing us that our replacement couple will be arriving near the end of March.  It looks like we will have an overlap of about a week.  That's about perfect.

This couple served as Area Technology Specialists (ATS) in Brazil and left their mission close to the time we came on ours.  They were the ones who started up a unique program to support and train technology specialists all over that huge country of Brazil.  They, actually, inspired us to develop the program we are currently rolling out over Europe.  Amazing how the Lord prompts individuals to remarkably be in the right places at the right time so that His work continues to move forward.

One other big thing occurred.  Last week we expected to hear that the new Zone Leaders, we recommended to Elder Sabin, had been asked and accepted their new assignment.  A week went by and nothing.  Finally a few days ago, we found out that it had been done.

Today we were officially released as Zone Leaders during our Zone Conference meeting.  President Paul Johnson, announced it to the rest of the missionaries.  Over the past three days, since we learned the new Zone Leaders accepted, we have been training them to learn their new responsibilities.  We still need to have more meetings.  There is a lot of information.

During our time as Zone Leaders, we accomplished many things which we feel blessed to have been a part of: from setting up ministering between the missionaries, finding "Lost Sheep" in our ward, establishing policies and practices to help those coming into the mission and leaving.  One example is having the Face-To-Face video conference with the new couple coming into the mission.  The organization that Sister van Hoff has done with the responsibilities of Zone Leaders was a tremendous change for the good.

Do we feel relieved of the burden of responsibilities?  Yes, but we both feel a sense sadness and gratitude.  Gratitude that we were intimately involved with wonderful, loving, faithful missionaries and sadness that we will no longer have that same relationship.  We fill confident that the missionaries will be in good, loving hands.

One last piece of information.  Last weekend we took a trip to Diane's ancester's "Home Land".  We traveled down to the area northeast of Stuttgart, Germany.  The entire next day we went from town to town where we knew her ancestors were either born, christened, died, or married.  We took several pictures of the older sections of the towns, possibly existing back in their day.  We took pictures of some of the older churches where they may have gone.  Then we looked for cemeteries and photographed each stone that had her family name on it.

We were told that anyone dying over 30 years ago, probably no longer has a grave site still existing.  Our only hope is to find a connection with someone who recently died.  Maybe their family line can be linked into the information that Diane already has.

I'm so glad we made this trip.  I have felt from the beginning of our mission that this was an important reason we came here.

Here are some of the 97 pictures we took.

This is the first town, Prevosrt.  You can 

tell from Diane's face that it was bitter cold.

This is a church in the 2nd town, Oppelsbohm.

This is an old street in Vorderweißburch.  Notice the snow.

Another older street in the same town.

An old mill turned into a arts business in Schornbach.

This is in Holzhausen, were many of her relatives came from.

Another older place in Holzhausen.

On the way back we drove through Elzach.  A beautiful town.

We also went through a section of the Black Forest.  

Beautiful, don't you think?

Deeper into the Black Forest.

In Recognition Of The U.S. Government Shutdown...

THIS PAGE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK.

Good Start For A New Year.....So Far

We made an effort to start the New Year off with a bang. Our effort consisted of staying up to midnight to watch fireworks in Frankfurt and the surrounding little towns.

The night started with several of the senior missionaries gathering together to play card and board games. At first there was a comfortable crowd, but it soon grew to such an extent that it was hard to get around. Everyone brought some sort of snack. Diane couldn't eat any of them, but I heard the chocolate-filled donuts constantly talking to me until I finally gave in. Note from Diane - there were some peppers and celery I could eat, but they're a far cry from a chocolate-filled donut!

Later that night we took up an offer to watch the fireworks at midnight at Elder and Sister Jensen's 11th floor apartment. Prior to midnight, people in the neighborhood were shooting off fireworks.  It was a great show, but at midnight.... oh my!  The entire skyline lit up from the city of Frankfurt to just down the street.  Unlike America, the display show was everywhere, not just by professionals at one location.  For 45 minutes it went on without slowing down or breaks.  Brilliant colorful displays were exploding right in front of us and just over our heads there on the 11th floor.  The boom of some of them were so loud that the entire building shook.  It was a bit scary, but amazing.  What was interesting is that before the fireworks started at midnight, you could see the distant lights of the Frankfurt skyline.  After 20 minutes, you were lucky to see the end of the street because of the smoke in the air.

The whole thing was so amazing that I decided to share the event with my sister, Jill. She was at home in Virginia eating dinner and watched while fire displays were exploding just feet away from us on the balcony in Frankfurt.  This link shows the fireworks at 12:40 AM.  They were starting to wind down. https://youtu.be/Dpx4SycLWVs

Even when we went to bed about 1:30 AM there were still some fireworks going off in the distance.

Corner next to our apartment building.

Corner down the street shown on the video.  

They swept everything out of the street.

The next morning we took our normal walk. The streets were covered with debris from the fireworks.

The day after New Years, we began preparing for Sunday. We opened the new Church's New Testament study guide called Come Follow Me. We glanced over it and skimmed over it and thought, "Well, this will probably take all of 10 minutes to study. Reading the reference scriptures and answering the related questions from the manual did not turn out to be easy answers, though. It could have been easy had it not been that our minds began to come up with all sorts of ideas for discussion. We spend 1-1/2 hours on just half of the lesson. It was an amazing experience and very informative.

This evening, Friday, we had a second discussion with the missionaries teaching a young man from China. This young man is very mature and smart for his age. He is in his 20s but thinks of things that most older adults don't even concern themselves with. His English is excellent, also. Tonight he told us of some miraculous answers he received from God and that he feels certain that God will answer any prayerHe plans to specifically ask God to reveal to him if this is Jesus Christ's church.

So. That is how our New Year has started. It's been great. Hopefully, it will continue that way for the rest of 2019. We have lots ahead of us! We received our 90-days before departure letter from the assistant zone leaders, so we're starting to prepare to come home.

We love you and miss you all. You are frequently in our thoughts and prayers.