78-07

78-07

Elder and Sister Mason with a mime on Mairan Platz – the center of the old city and location of the two hall or Rathaus.

It has been a busy week with nurse calls and at the single adult center. We have had several young single adults travel to Munchen staying with friends and they come to the center. The sister Missionaries have a baptism a week from Sunday, a 24 year old woman. We hope she will regularly come to institute and the activities that we have at the center. She came to the center and we showed her the baptism font. The font is tiled and it is very pretty. I think she was a little disappointed it was not on the back of 12 oxen as it is in the temples. She visited the Salt Lake temple grounds last year and the large font was her expectation. 

When it snows parents with small children put them in a toboggan type sled with a sheep skin to sit on and pull them around town and take them on public transportation. In our apartment complex the parking garage is not very full and every time we go down to the parking garage to empty the trash it looks like no one ever takes their car out of the garage. They must use their cars for weekend travel only. 

We had Zone Leaders over for lunch on Sunday. After the lunch with the Elders we went straight to the center and Sister Mason prepared the night meal for the JAEs. Again we had about 19 at the dinner. We had the Sisters over for lunch on Monday. Then again we went to the center to prepare the evening. 

Tuesday evening no one came for the scheduled English class but a number of the young adults came and played games and just relaxed. It was a successful evening because Tuesday is a night that YSA usually do not come and they are now feeling comfortable enough to just show up.
 

Wednesday we finished preparing Sister Mason's presentation for the new missionaries and then went to the mission office. Six Elders and a sister arrived. President Miles asked me what I remember tell the new missionaries my memories of the first day I arrived in Germany in 1967. Truthfully I do not remember that day. But I did tell the new missionaries a few things about my first days on my mission. Sister Mason did a good job on her presentation. Sister Miles presented her family for the first hour then president Miles began the interviews while Sister Mason gave her message on missionary health. Note Sister Miles mentioned that she is the daughter of Elder Russell Nelson.
 

Sister Mason and I went to the ADAC travel agency and got our drivers licenses translated so that we can apply for driver licenses for Germany. They did it much quicker than I suspected, in about an hour and it cost 49€ each so it was a bit expensive to have our driver licenses translated.
 

Sister Mason cooked fried rise Wednesday evening and I thought it was very good. It was a real rush to get back from the mission office and then to get the meal ready. Only 13 signed the roll for the institute class but I think there were more there than 13.
 

I gave a Brother from another region in Germany a blessing. He came to Münchin to get closer to one of our young women and she hasn’t wanted anything to do with improving the relationship. He is a good young man and has a good spirit and works for the church but the things of the heart do not always go as you plan. He has prayed about this relationship and feels he has received an answer but she obviously hasn’t received the same revelation. I counseled him that in these kinds of relationships the inspiration has to be received by both and when that does not happened then the relationship may not go forward.
 

Thursday, Valentine’s Day, and I didn’t get a flower for my wife. We just got too busy and could not get to the store. We went to the center and two JAEs came over. One left the other and took his sweetheart to dinner and the movie leaving the other with us. We were to meet with the sisters and waited for the sister missionaries until 19:30 and the three of us went to dinner. It turns out that the sisters came at 7:45 so we just missed them. The meal was good and we enjoyed young man's stories. He had a lot of great missionary stories to tell us.  After the meal we went back to the center and talked.
 

We had about 10 Friday evening for a movie night. Sister Mason popped popcorn and they brought pizza and we ate some of the fried rice. This was the first evening that they watched a movie. They used Sister Mason’s computer to watch the movie. We had to change the area on her computer. The USA is area 1 and Germany is area 2. We only allowed to change the area 4 times and we just used up one. Anyway, we watched “The Last Samurai.” After the movie we talked about the Holy Ghost. Again we got to bed about 1.