Dear families and friends,
Hello from the tropics where it is so warm that we can't feel excitement about the coming of Christmas yet! Our computer weather report shows very cold weather in the Utah area.
We have had two big happenings: Germany for a week, and a tour group yesterday.
Germany was wonderful, and all of our flights were on time (unheard of!, but prayers are answered!) It was COOL so we borrowed winter coats and scarves from the directors of the conference. All the other countries represented were in their winter season already: Romania, Serbia, Croatia, Albania, Moldova, and Slovakia. There were colored leaves on the ground! We miss autumn.
Our lodgings were right on the temple grounds: the church, the temple, distribution center, and a large building made up of bedrooms/bathrooms like in a hotel, with a tunnel entry from our housing to the temple. We also spent a day in the city of Frankfurt, touring beautiful cathedrals and city buildings, shopping in big stores that have everything (we found some cranberries for our Thanksgiving dinner). We ate in very tasty restaurants every night in the little town of Friedrichsdorf, the town where the temple is located, like a suburb of Frankfurt. For church we went to the International ward which has an English session, and we met an elder who is a good friend of one of the sister missionaries here in CV, so he sent a letter to her with us. It was so refreshing to sing English hymns and understand all of the speakers and lessons.
One night at dinner someone at our table mentioned gardening, and we said that CV does not have good soil. The elder and his wife sitting across from us said that where they came from in MINNESOTA, the dirt was very rich. I asked them where they were from, and it was ANOKA. My hometown. They had been there for 20 years, so they knew all the people that I remember. How fun!!
Our return flights were pretty much on time, except for the Lisbon airport where we got lost and it was very huge. We also only had a short time between flights. We walked as fast as possible down innumerable aisles to get where we thought we should be, but ended up in a long line at Passport Control. I couldn't stand it, was almost frantic with worry about missing the flight, so Larry talked to a worker who helped us go right to the head passport man and get us through with no lines. We just barely made the flight, but we did make it. It was like one of those dreams where you are moving fast but not getting anywhere you want to be and time is running out. We got to one of the islands here at 2 a.m. and went to a hotel until 6:30 a.m.. then flew home to here, and spent most of that Monday sleeping!
Yesterday we hosted a tour group of Larry's former Brazilian missionaries who were on a cruise ship from Rome to Brazil, with a stopover of 6 hours in Mindelo. So we set up buses and tour guides, and even attended a beautiful baptism of a young man from our Outreach group. We went to the beach, and some went shopping, and at the close of the tour, we took them back to the ship (there were 60 in the group) and got to see how big it was. It would dwarf the Titanic. Space for 4000 passengers and at least 10 layers of upper decks. We had 1/2 hour till they would sail, so we hurried to our house and went up on the roof and watched it go. A beautiful and inspiring sight.
This coming weekend we are travelling to one of the southern islands called Fogo, meaning "fire", since it is a volcano (it actually had a eruption in the mid 1990s--no disasters.) We are going to train a new missionary couple from Chile in the work of Outreach, and also will get to tour the island. Then we will fly to Praia on the main island for a day and get to tour the wilderness areas and the mountains. So we are keeping busy.
Better close for this letter now. We love each one of you so much and pray for you all every day.
Love always, Mom and Dad, Grandma and Grandpa, Elder and Sister
More pictures of the Frankfurt Temple below...
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