Busy June

This month is flying by with busy and interesting things.  It was our turn to clean the church last week so we spent a few hours there on Sat. morning.  We have a beautiful meetinghouse that is about 2 years old.  It is quite large with 2 wards; our international ward and a German-speaking ward.  We love our diverse and fun ward where everyone is"away from home."  I spoke on Father's day on fathers in the scriptures.  That was interesting as they really don't celebrate Father's day here.
Our days at the "office" continue to be long but productive.  They are installing a new air conditioning system so the entire building is pretty noisy and torn up.  I think they will be finished in time for winter.  We are on the 4th floor-west side-so it is often quite warm.  Once a month we have an interview with Elder Teixiera who is a counselor in the Area Presidency, since we are not under a Mission Pres.  That interview is always a bit stressful - although he is a very kind and wonderful man, he knows how to hold your feet to the fire!  His latest assignment is for us to help produce a training DVD for Centers for Young Adults.  No small task writing a script, setting up filming in Centers in Portugal, Spain, Germany, England and France.  We have a great video production dept. here but they are extremely busy so to get schedules-theirs, ours and those country Centers-on the same page is a challenge.  We have developed the script and storyboard of filming we need and will begin shooting next week.  We will do Germany and then go to Portugal and others are doing the remaining Centers.  We have a August deadline.
So this on top of our "normal" work is pretty daunting.  But we know the Lord provides a way for this important work to be done so we move forward with that trust.
We have had huge changes this month as 8 couples are leaving and 6 new have/are arriving.  A new couple on the medical team was on the same cruise we took last fall.  It is sad to see our relatively new   friends leaving but good to embrace more new ones.
Saturday we went to a very historical city along the Rhine River.  Lunch was at a quite authentic mexican restaurant run by a guy from Texas and then we wandered the town .  Many of these small towns have a "festival" during the summer which is like our state fairs only located throughout the city.  So the festival and St. Martins church were quite fun to experience.  The train around town was also fun.

These are some of the sights along the streets--gingerbread cookie necklaces, interesting food stands, strawberry delights (we were forwarned that these tasty treats were actually beer laced).

We are never at a loss for fun things to experience here.  It is a beautiful and interesting country, as is our mission experience.