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.