28 Juli 2010 Spiritual thought and fashion pics

As I said before on my blog, every day we have a spiritual thought before we start work. I don't always remember them but a few stand out in my mind. Here is the thought given today at work. Basically, it was on becoming more Christlike. The story was told about a woman who had heard the lesson in church about how we must go through the refiner's fire in order to be more Christ like. It is found in Isaiah 48:10. After hearing it, she decided she wanted to know why Christ used that analogy and what the process really was. She went to the nearest steel mill where she went in and observed the process of the refiners fire to make it a pure product. She saw the steel burning bright in the fire and she asked, "How do you know when it is the right time to take it out, before it becomes deformed and unusable?" The worker said, "When you can see your reflection in the glow of the iron." The lady pondered this in her mind and immediately knew what Christ had meant. When you see yourself in Christ's reflection you have become refined enough to live with him again. In I Nephi 20:10 and Zachariah 13:9 it says we must all go through the refiners fire. Our life is a continuing refining process. Every experience we have helps us become more Christ like even though they are hard lessons to learn. We learn by our mistakes or we will have to stay in that refiner's fire until we do, the choice is ours. We can learn those lessons early on or drag them out our entire lives, until we feel comfortable in God's presence. The scriptures give us much comfort, to know that God does not leave us alone in our struggles in life. He wants us to be perfect like him, he knows it will take us longer than this life to become perfect ,but he has given us a way to do that, THE PLAN OF SALVATION. I hope everyone is reading their scriptures. It helps give us our directions in life.

Now on a more somber note. I took some pictures at the museum in Marburg that I knew Rachel or anyone else interested in fashion would be interested it. I also took a few pictures of fashions of today in the windows in Mainz while we were looking around the shops, so enjoy a little fashion today. (By the way I think this shop had clothes made entirely of natural fibers, I love that concept.)

24 Juli 2010 On Our Way To Marburg

Up early, a day of rest, but not for us, the weekend means adventure. One of our work friends told us a fun place to go is Marburg, so you know we have to go. Marburg is about 80 mi. north of Frankfurt so it only took us about 1 1/2 hours. We heard it had a great church to see and a schlos (castle). The trip was all open fields and low rolling hills with lots of trees. Very picturesque. We saw a castle from a far off and knew we were getting near. We drove into the town and found a parking place at the St Elizabeth Kirche (church). This church has a history that goes along with it. It was built between 1235-1283 over the site of the grave of St. Elizabeth. It is in the Gothic style which means it has a little German and a little French style combined. The Hungarian Princess Elizabeth was born in 1207 and betrothed as a child to the Count Ludwig IV of Thuringa and grew up with him in the Wartburg Castle. They were married when she was 14 and six years later her husband died in the Crusades and she was banished from Warton and came to live in Marburg. Here she dedicated her life to helping others. She followed the scripture in Matt:25 where Christ says, that anything you do unto the least of these, you have done it unto me. She died in 1231 and was canonized as a saint in 1235. The castle became the religious center of the Teutonic Order of Knights. The church was one of the four most important pilgrimage centers in the country during the Middle Ages. The Teutonic Order of Knights used the church until 1809 and today it is used as a Protestant parish.

One room is completely filled with tombs. St. Elizabeth and the Kings of Prussia are buried here. The walls of the church bear the coat of arms of the nobility of Hesse and of Knights of the Teutonic order. After spending an hour looking at this splended church we started up the long hike to the schlos. This edifice was built in many stages, the first being in 1292 where it was the residence of the Landgrave family who was the Imperial Princes. The Wilheim building was added by Wilheim III in 1490 and was financed from his inheritance from his grandfather Count Phillip of Kalzenlezbogen. After the death of Ludwig IV of Marbury in 1604 the castle was lost to the Landgrave family and it was then used as a granary, a French military hospital in 1806, a reformatory, a town jail and then a prison for dangerous criminals. In 1866 it was used to house Prussian state and provincial archives. From 1946-1977 it housed the State Library. Today it has been taken over by the Marburg University and they are collecting everything pertaining to each time period the castle was in operation.

It is a fabulous collection of everything imaginable. It takes up 5 floors. I had taken many pictures with my flash until someone told me it was not allowed, so thanks to my stupidity you get to see what no one else gets to see unless they visit there themselves. I had 180 pictures and had to condense it down to 60. I hope you don't fall asleep before you finish this blog.

I was personally exhausted by the end of the tour so we walked back to the car. On the way we stopped to have a zitron eis (Lemon ice cream) and watch all the people walking around the town square. There was some sort of procession taking place. There were girls dressed in old German dresses, soldiers in uniforms and a band playing German umpah music. There were two girls who looked like they were princes or something. I thought it might be a sort of coming out party but the two girls looked to be in there 30's, unless girls don't start dating till then in Germany, just kidding. I would like to know what it was all about. Anyone from Germany who could enlighten me? We ate dinner at a fabulous Italian restaurant. Gene and I both had a sort of tortelini casserole. Mine had feta cheese and spinach and Gene's had brocolli and ham. Gene was pretty adventurous on this one, but he loved his too. Got home about 12:00 exhausted again but happy as usual.