Saturday, December 11, 2010

04 Dec 2010 Trip with Arial to Frankfurt




































Today was a special day for us because we were able to take Arial, our investigator, to the Frankfurt Christmas Market. She lives with Rebecca the women who's house we are fixing. She is from San Diego, CA but she is an ampere here for 6 months. She is our adopted daughter while we are here. Such a wonderful girl but alas she has no transportation and no friends to go any where with. We picked her up and took her to Frankfurt so she could see a little of Germany while she is here. She graduated from a college in Italy majoring in History. She has the wanderlust and wants to visit every country so this is her way of doing it, taking jobs as an ampere for 6 months each time. It was the first day for a big snow and it was very cold but we stopped and had a Kinderpunch and a Indian fry bread with puderzuker and zimt (powder sugar and cinnamon) very tasty. We walked around until we were frozen but I'm sure she had a great time. The missionaries are working with her and she said she would like to go to the young adult Christmas dinner and activity. Maybe she'll find some girlfriends to go places with while she is here. Well enjoy the pictures. It is so much fun to be here during the Christmas season.

03 Dec 2010 Christmas Devotional in Frankfurt

Bad Vilbel our home city





















Today we only worked a half day and then everyone went over to the Frankfurt Stake Center for the annual Christmas devotional. Elder Teixeira and Elder Kopischke, who are both 70's, spoke to us about the Christmas traditions in their homes. On Christmas Eve Elder Kopischke's famly invite friends over and they sing songs and have a dinner. They have special song books that contain Christmas carols they sing together. Each person selects their own personal favorite. Then they open their presents, the little ones go first. Elder Teixeria remembers staying up late on Christmas Eve putting all the toys together for the kids and they always put on the Christmas play with everyone dressing in their outfits to make it more authentic. It was a wonderful program and afterwards we had a sit down dinner of homemade soups, breads and lots of German goodies.

All around the hall were pictures of various church employees during their Christmas years. We were suppose to guess who was who. I had to take pictures of some of these as they were very nostalgic. I have included a few pictures of Bad Homburg and Bad Vilbel as they will show the place we live in and how cute it at Christmas time.