Rookie....

A week ago it snowed for about 4 hours in the morning.  The snowflakes were big and fluffy, beautiful.  It was a wet snow.  The storm dropped about 2-3 inches in the morning and then was gone.  Elder Johnson being the good missionary and person he is, decided to go to the church and shovel the front and back walkways.  He spent about 2 hours shoveling snow.  The walk ways looked good.  That evening, it started to rain.  It didn't rain hard, just a slow drizzle and the temp was warming.  We went to bed that night with snow still on the ground, but awoke to no snow!  No snow anywhere!  It had all melted during the night.  When Elder Johnson looked outside in the morning and saw there was no snow to be found, he laughed and said "Rookie Mistake."  The California boy will know for next time it snows if the temp isn't colder and there is rain in the forecast to wait a little while before running out to shovel the snow.

A visit to the Museum

Yesterday we went to the Pergamon Museum with Elder Liegty and Elder Angerhofer.  We entered the museum and went to the panoramic view of Asisi of Greece.  It was magnificient.  It was a circular view , 5 stories high of life in ancient Greece.  It started with mornings first light.  You could hear the birds begin to waken as the sun came up.  The noise of the city increasing with the progression of the day.  You felt like you were there.  As the day drew to a close, the noise  became less, and the lights started coming on in the houses.  The night sky became dark and crickets began chirping. This continued through the night until the dawn began again.  You could stand and watch from 3 different levels.  Each level gave you a different feeling and you saw different things.  Unfortuneately, no pictures were allowed in this exhibit.  After leaving the panorama, we went through the rest of the museum.  It had many ruins from ancient Greece to look at.  It is incredible that the people of that time could build those kind of structures with the intricate detail they had.  They were very skilled at their jobs.  We spent about 3 1/2 hours walking around, looking at the many ruins and recreations of that time.   

Someone has some explaining to do...

We live next door to the Syrian Embassy.  The Syrian's that live in Germany are not happy with the Syrian Government and they protest outside the Embassy once in a while.  There is a blockade fence around the embassy and police guards 24 hour a day, 7 days a week.  It was a bit surprising when last Sunday as we walked by the embassy building on our way to church that we noticed the building had been graffitied with red spray paint.  Since that time, the police presence has increased but I wonder where they were the night of the spray painting.  I imagine someone has some explaining to do.  I found out that it has been spray painted before and had to be sandblasted to get the paint off.  As of 1 week later, it is still not cleaned up and there are usually 2 vans full of police just sitting outside the embassy waiting.  It is kind of like shutting the gate after the cows escape.

Last Sunday we went to the Mattias home for dinner.  They are an English family who moved to Germany almost 20 years ago because of employment.  What a lovely, talented family they are.  Sister Mattias and her 4 daughters are all musically gifted.  The oldest plays the harp like I've never heard beore.  The other girls play the piano, organ, and violin, viola, and flute.  They quite often play for us in Sacrament meeting.  They do not have a car, so we all went on the bus to their home.  It was snowing and it was cold.  Sister Mattias got dinner in the oven and we had hot chocolate and visited for awhile.  When Sister Mattias went to check on dinner she found that her oven was not working.  Dinner was not cooked.  She had to call the neighbors and use their oven to cook dinner.  When we finally ate, it was very good, chicken and broccoli pie, potatoes, rote kohl, and corn.  We then had to wait for dessert, rubarb cobbler, to cook.  It was all worth the wait.  We sat around the table chatting.  The girls wanted to know how Elder Johnson and I met.  We also heard how the Mattias' met.  We were at their home fo 5 hours.  We took the bus home, it was still lightly snowing.

Today, Sunday, Brother Celnap invited us for lunch.  He cooked in the church kitchen.  He is a single middle aged man, very nice, but a little different.  He invited some others to help cook and eat.  I sat watching Hines, Sebastian, Kurt, Hardy, and Leno all run around the kitchen getting lunch ready.  They cooked rice with a bunch of veggtables(canned), and hamburger in a sauce.  I was a little bit worried, but it was very good.  Hines said it was his mother's recipe.  She calls it chinese food, but there was nothing about it that was Chinese. 

I have also posted a couple of pictures that show the canal by our house frozen, and a public toilet thatI couldn't believe.  Look closely at the top and read it's title.  Also,  one picture shows ice forming a mound where the water drips and freezes because it is so cold.  The temp hasn't been abouve 0*c in 3 weeks, staying mostly-5*C or lower.  This weeks forecast shows the temp rising to 4*C by Friday with snow showers on and off.  We will see if it holds true.  It isn't much fun riding our bikes to the store in minus degree weather.

We also had the opportunity to meet Elder Texeira this week.  He was here in Berlin doing a Zone Council with the Zone leaders in our mission.  We helped Elder and Sister Monson cook lunch for the Elder Texeira and the Elders.  Sister Monson went all out; she had Portugal flags on the cake, chicken enchiladas, rice and salad.  She had fresh tulips on the tables.  It looked very nice.  The Monson's work in the mission office and will be going home at the end of March.