A Day/Week in Germany

We haven't had time to go sight seeing of late, and nothing out of the ordinary has occurred, so I thought I would give you some insights to day to day life in Germany.  Our weeks are pretty routine.  we get up in the morning, exercise, study, and get dressed to go out by 10:00am.

  Mondays we have a meeting in the morning and FHE in the evening.  We usually ride our bikes to the store to get any last minute things for FHE.  We  have between 10 and 15 YSA's coming to FHE.  It makes for a cozy evening.

Tuesdays would normally be our "P" Day.  We usually end up making a list of groceries needed for Thursday, get on our bikes and off to the grocery store we go. The stores here are small and each store carries different things.  The store with the better prices, Lidl's, doesn't have all the things I need, and the store with the better selection, Kaiser's, is more expensive, but the workers in the store are much friendlier.  We usually end up going to both and making several trips.  We lode up the bike baskets as full as we can and ride slowly to the church to deposit stuff for the week.  There is not much storage at the church or our apartment, so you can't buy a lot of stuff ahead of time.  Some weeks are easier than others depending on what I am cooking.

Wednesdays, we have a meeting with the other missionaries in our district in the morning, go home and study awhile and go back to teach English classes in the evening. 

Thursday is our busiest day.  We make last minute trips to the store in the morning (rain or shine), and then go to the church to start preparing for the evening meal.  I generally cook dessert in the morning and Dan, my sou chef, chops everything I will need for making dinner so that when I come back to the church to cook, it doesn't take quite as long.  I have made more bread rolls here in the last 6 months then I have made in the last 10 years at home.   We usually serve 50 people for dinner and of late there has been no leftovers. Then it is clean up and hopefully home by 10:30 pm.  We usually fall into bed and to sleep right away. 

Fridays, we don't always have YSA activities.  On the Fridays we are free, we have the 4 missionaries to dinner in the evening.  Fridays are spent shopping for us, doing laundry(which takes 1 3/4 hours per wash load and 2 hours for dryer loads), so it takes all day.  Sometimes we will also clean our apartment, it depends on how tired we are.  Thursdays wear us out. 

Saturdays are quiet unless we have an activity.  Sometimes we make the trek to the Metro Store(Cost Co for Germans).  We go by bus and Sban( train).  It will take us 3 hours to complete a shopping trip to Metro.  Sometimes there is building clean up, or a relief society activity.  Each week is different.  This week is a Metro week.

Sundays, we have church meetings, the occasional lunch invite, and occasional misc meetings.  We try to take a walk in Tiergarten Park for a couple of hours, weather permitting. 

Sometime during the week, we try to find a couple of hours to do home visits.  We take a map, get on our bikes and hope we don't get lost.  We try to study German and do scripture study every day.  While things are different here, it feels like home for now and there is comfort in routine. 

Today while walking in the park, we discovered a houseboat community on the canal.  While we didn't see anyone on the houseboats, there were signs that people were indeed living there. 

Does anyone know what type of flowers these are?  I have never seen them before.  Also, congratulations to Bobby Johnson on his baptism Saturday, April 14, 2012.   Wish we could have been there.

Miracles Do Happen

This week is a holiday week for German's.  Most of the young people are out of school for Spring Break.  A lot of our YSA's are traveling.  We had only 6 young adults at FHE on Montag night.  Bro. Gruse asked us to fix a extra nice dinner for Institute on Donnerstag.  We talked about how so many YSA's were gone and he thought if we fixed dinner for 30ish, we would have plenty.  We set up tables for 36.  We decorated the tables with flowers and balloons.  It looked very nice.  We planned turkey breast, "funeral potatoes", green bean casserole, rolls, and strawberry cheesecake bars for dessert.   We were almost ready when YSA's started coming in.  They kept coming and coming.  (Which is good, right?)  Suddenly, they were setting up more tables and chairs, getting more dishes and moving every thing around to make room.  In the mean time, the oven had gone off, (I forgot to push the button to keep it on, it has to be pushed every couple of hours) so the food wasn't cooking.  I started to panic.  I got the oven going and food was again cooking, but what were we going to do about the extra people.  Instead of the 35 I had prepared for, we now had 50!  I told Dan to slice the meat real thin and to pray.  I stood in the kitchen wanting to go home and cry, but couldn't.  So I did something better.  I prayed to Heavenly Father.  I asked him to think of this like the 2 fished and 7 loaves of bread and to please not let anyone go without food tonight.  We started to serve (small portions) and suddenly every one was easting and there was plenty of food left.  We announced for anyone that wanted to, they could come back for seconds, which a lot of kids did, and still we had some potatoes and beans left.  I am thankful for a Heavenly Father that hears and answers prayers.  I know we did not have enough food for that many people, yet everyone ate and had enough.  It turned out to be a lovely evening.

There are signs of Fruhling (spring) everywhere.  As we walk to church, or through the part, everything is turning green and flowers are popping up.  I just wish the sun would stay longer and be a little warmer.

The Weather warmed up...and the Clothes came off!

Today is a beautiful day.  It is warm and sunny.  Just right for a bike ride through the park.  Unfortunatly, a lot of other people thought it was a good sun bathing day.  In Berlin, it is not against the law to sunbath nude.  There were several men laying on the grass in the park taking in the sun and letting it all out!(sorry, no pictures).

After leaving the park, we rode to the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Euorpe.  The memorial consists of a"Field of Stelae" covering an area of 19000 square meters and containing 2711 concrete blocks of all different sizes, plus an information center.  It is an exhibition about the persecution and extermination of the Euorpean Jews.  As you walk amoung the concrete blocks, you get a sense of being trapped with no where to go.  The walk ways between them are narrow and many of the blocks are much taller then you are.  The information center is full of individual stories about people that were murdered or just "disappeared", never to be heard from again.  It included letters they wrote, diary intries that spoke of the terror they felt and of the hopelessness they experienced.  One room showed pictures of families and then told what happened to esch of the members.  Most were murdered.  Only a few escaped and they didn't have anything to go back to.  The life they knew before the Holocoust did not exist anymore. 

We then left the memorial and made our way to the Brandonburg Gate and then up past the Russian Memorial.  It honors the many Russians that were murdered in the war.  One thing I hadn't realized was that Hitler's influence reached out all over Euorpe all the way to Grease, Macedonia, and beyond. It wasn't just German Jews he wanted to eradicate, but the enire Jewish race on earth.

Super Hero's are All Around Us

Last night was our YSA"s Super Hero Dance.  What a hoot!  The cultural hall was decorated to the max.  The kids spent 2 weeks making decorations and then 3 days putting them up.  Most of the kids came dressed up in their favorite super hero costume.  They looked amazing.  Dan and I kept the kitchen running and took pictures of the kids.  When the kids would get tired or hot, they would come into the kitchen and talk with us and then out to dance again.  The Germans love to dance.  The dance ran from 1900-0100.  We had about 100 YSA's attend.  When the dance was over, they cleaned up and the building looked better then when they started.  We are very impressed with our young adults.  Today, they are meeting up at Potsdamer Platz and doing "Super Hero"  things.  I am not sure what that means, I guess I'll find out tomorrow at church when I see them.

Check Point Charlie

Today we went to Check Point Charlie.  As I stood at the place where freedom was taken away from the people, I couldn't help but think how amazing it was that the church was able to build a Temple behind the Berlin Wall.  There is much construction around Check Point Charlie.  They are building a museum on the corner across from the check point.  I hope it is finished before we leave Berlin, I would like to see it.  There are big poster board storied along the road telling about the different things that happened to create East and West Berlin.  The actual wall went up in 1961.  It virtually went up over night.  So many families separated because of the wall.  The people had no warning, up until that time, they could go back and forth from east to west. 

After gong to Check Point Charlie, we went to the Topography of Terror Museum. It is a somber looking gray building with no plants around it, just cement. There is a large portion of the Berlin Wall standing there.  The museum itself tells the story of the Gestapo, and the SS.  It also tells the story of the  Reich Security Main Office.  The pictures are all black and white.  They tell a bleak story of desperation, hopelessness, and courage.  They also depict a people who were ruthless, and evil.  You could feel the presence of evil in a lot of the pictures of the Hitler Regime.  You could also feel the hopelessness and fear in the pictures of the Jewish people as they were gathered up and forced into labor camps.  I also learned about how Hitler was cleaning up his own race, eliminating old, sick, mentally ill, and children that were considered "unable to work".  So many people were murdered.  It is hard to comprehend.  Satan's influence was all around, in every picture you looked at and in every story you read. 

Believe It or Not!

Believe it or not, I got too warm in my pink coat today.  The sun was out, the temp about 13*C and there was no wind.  I never put on my gloves today.  It sure was nice. 

Our Friday started out with us having to go Ammeld.  That means that we have to register where we are living because we are auslanders..  We found the place easy enough, but it turned out we had to prove that we were living in our apartment.  I called the Mission Home and they will send me a signed letter that says we live here, then we have to go back again next week and Ammeld.  When it is time to go home, we have to do the same thing in reverse, telling them we are leaving the country. 

We then went to the Post to pick up a package, but the date wasn't clear on the card the postman left.  We have to go back tomorrow to get it.  It hadn't been filled to be picked up yet.

We decided to go to the Berliner Dom Church.  It is a big Protestant Cathedral by Museum Island.  It was built in the late 1800's during the reign of Kaiser Wilhelm ll.  The church has been in existence since 1608.  The smaller buildings were torn down and a large Cathedral was built.  In May of 1944, a fire bomb hit it and it burned down.  They started rebuilding in 1975.  In 1993, after 18 years, it was rededicated.  It is still used for worship services today.  There is a outside walkway around the top of the dome that you can walk on and look out over the city.  The city is very flat.  We could not see a hill any where.  There are 270 steps up to the walk way.  We then went down into a crypt room.  There were 94  crypts in the room.  Some of them are very ornate and some were very plain.  I guess it depended on your wealth and who you were if you got a ornate crypt.   We walked into the main chapel.  It was very large and very ornate.  It had a pipe organ that was just a bit smaller then the one in the Tabernacle in Salt Lake City.  The domed ceiling was beautiful.  It depicted the beatitudes of the Sermon on the Mount.  There were beautiful sculptures all around the ledges above the columns.  The windows were of beautiful stained glass depicting scenes of Christ and his life and death.

The Elders came to dinner tonight.  We enjoy spending time with them and the Sisters.  Next week, transfers come out and 2  of them will probably be transferred.  We don't like this time, it feels like we are losing our "children" every time one of them is transferred.