OGC dinner at Nelsen's - Good bye Thomas's

Janet and Jeff Nelsen (ALC - Area Legal Council) often have our group over for dinner when new missionaries arrive and also when missionaries come to the end of their 18 month missions.  David and Paula Thomas are dear friends and our next door neighbors and will be leaving for America on Monday March 5th.  They share the office right next to Tony and myself and we talk and work together every day.  They will be extremely missed.  They didn't tell us how difficult it would be to say good bye to friends we make over here.  Luckily, the Thomas's live about 25 minutes from our home in Utah and we will see them again.  We will miss them for the remainder 10 months that we have here.  Davids career took him to BYU as a professor of Law at the J. Rueben Clark Law School.  He actually was a first year professor when Tony started his law school career but never took a class from David.  We are excited for them to reunite with their family as they are packing and getting ready for their departure.

 Janet Nelsen, who's home we are visiting......she made David's favorite meal.....Beef Tenderloin, roasted potatoes, salad and pie for dessert.  We have appreciated her efforts in keeping us all a close "community" as we serve for the OGC.  The Fager's are sitting next to Janet.  They arrived just a month ago and are loving it here.  They are getting used to the routine really quickly and we have enjoyed getting to know them.

 The Robert's took a trip to Brugge in Belgium with the Orlowski's this weekend so they are not here for this dinner.....they were missed.  The Robert's will be leaving us in April .... on the 15th.  I don't like this part of our mission.  It doesn't seem like we've been here that long and already our friends that we've made and traveled with and worked with are going home!

 But, even tho' these wonderful friends leave, we have new people coming to serve and as we have found, they will be wonderful people to get to know also!  The Call's from California will be coming soon after the Thomas's leave and we look forward to meeting them and showing them around and having them as our new neighbors.

Birthday Luncheon with OGC

Each time someone has a birthday in the OGC (office of General Counsel) .... they get to choose where they would like to eat and we all go together....David chose to go to Chicago Meatpackers...a little taste of America!  What a great group of people!  We enjoy each of them so much!  The Robert's are the next to leave and we will be so sad once again😂 We have done a lot with them and they were the ones to get us acclimated to our new surroundings here in Germany.

Christian Wolfert, David & Paula Thomas, Sue & Tony Goodall, Don & Jill Roberts, Janet & Jeff Nelsen, Gudren Drummond, Trudena & Greg Fager, and Oliver Tuebner.

Today, February 20th, 2018 we had a luncheon at a restaurant called SunFlower.  It's actually a garden center with a restaurant in it and we all like it a lot.  So, we gathered together for a going away luncheon for Paula Thomas.  We will all miss Paula and David so much, they are a wonderful addition to our mission family.  I'm glad they only live across the lake from us in Utah and we will be able to visit them!

Below is a picture of Janet Nelsen and Jill Roberts.  Janet is Jeff Nelsen's  wife and he is the lead ALC (Area Legal Counsel) for the Europe area and Tony's boss.  Jill's husband Don also works for the OGC (Jill and Don will be leaving us in April)  .....   Janet is from NYC and Jill is from Idaho.

 Below is Anita Canfield and Carol Nelson.  Anita and Steve have become great friends and we are sad because they will be leaving for Rome to finish out their mission (Feb. 2019) and Carol has only been here a few months.  Her husband is one of the Europe Area doctors.

 Dani Garrett on the left is (with her husband) our zone leaders and they are from S. Carolina.  Diane Van Hoff has been here as long as we have been here and she and her husband work in the IT department and they are from North Carolina.

 Theresa Dewey and her husband are from Bountiful Utah and he is one of the Area psychiatrists.

 Karen Orlowski on the left is from Park City Utah, she and her husband work in public affairs.  Sister Trudena Fager works with the genealogy department and her husband works for the OGC.  They just arrived here a month ago, they are from Utah.

 Cute Marlene Lindsay in the red sweater works as the Welfare Humanitarian Specialists and they arrived shortly after we got here.  Linda Carroll is in the front and she and her husband work as Self Reliance Specialists for the Europe Area.  They are from Australia and will be going home April 2019.

  This is Paula Thomas, dear friend and next door neighbor who will be leaving us March 5th.  She is such a dear person and I love her dearly.  Her husband works for the OGC in contracts and Real Estate matters and Paula has been working on keeping personal histories of people coming and going and also of the refugees that will be kept in the history books of the church.

 We had this picture taken today because, as is tradition, here in the mission......we put together a book of remembrance for the leaving couple.  It contains our thoughts, memories and photos of the couple departing.  We took this picture to put in our portion of their book.  We will miss you both so much and look forward to continuing our friendship when we get home next December!  They are from Orem Utah (not far from our home in Saratoga Springs.)

Mission Happenings

Tony continues with the work of the Office of General Counsel which has included helping full time younger missionaries get their visa permits for residency.  Some of the countries are imposing stricter rules for people entering the countries and much stricter rules for getting residency permits which is necessary for a missionary to live in any other country besides there home country longer than 90 days.  This keeps him especially busy.  One situation was interesting where a young man had dual residency.   His home land and the country in which he was called to serve..... The country in which he was called to serve required (all of a sudden) that he register for military duty!  I know that the attorney's worked long hours trying to help this young man with this situation.  My duties have taken me 7 months to bring the finance department up to date on a backlog of 8 months of Priesthood leadership travel requests.  I worked hard to get them caught up so that analysis could be done on these requests.  I will now start January 2018 which will be a lot easier than trying to catch them up on 8 months of backlog work.  We continue to be thankful for our assignments and have enjoyed very much mingling with all the wonderful people serving here.  A regular week might look like this:  Monday morning at 8:30 we attend devotional and prayer meeting in the chapel (150 steps for our apartment), then we head to the office (right next door) to begin our work day.  Tuesday's in the afternoon, Sister Enger comes and teaches a German culture and language class to those who can attend.  Wednesdays at noon we attend a Book of Mormon discussion led by one of the 46 senior missionaries that serve here with us.  We have some great discussions!  Thursdays at 10am the sisters meet in a conference room for CTR (conference talk review) where we take a talk from General conference and read and discuss the council that we receive from our General Authorities.  We also have birthday celebrations and luncheons for senior missionaries that are leaving to go home and for the new ones arriving to take their places.  In between all these activities, we work!  The weekends are free to visit and go on adventures as we please.  We have a 500 kilometer radius that we are aloud to travel within.  That allows us to go to Paris and Prague and Berlin, Switzerland and Austria and the Netherlands and so many other places.  It's a great mission we've been called to and such a wonderful experience for us at this time in our lives.  We will always look back on this adventure with so much fondness.

Below is a picture of Phil and Doreen Lear from Park City and New Port Beach, both places they call home.   We went out to Bad Homburg for dinner with them one evening and had a wonderful time.  They have been called to work in records preservation for the church.

This picture below is one evening when we went to see the movie, "The Greatest Showman" with LeAnna and Jay Steinekert.  Jay is a licensed therapist for the young missionaries and LeAnna is editor of the Wegweiser and also in charge of managing the missionary apartments.  They are from Highland Utah and will be going home in August.

 I snapped this picture of Tony leaving our apartment (the door down the hall with all the hearts on it from the Young Woman in the ward that decorated all the missionaries doors with hearts.....they call it a "heart attach" .......

2018 February Switzerland with the Rich's

We had a wonderful outing with our friends the Rich's, Tom and Ruth.  They both work in the financial department in auditing.  Because I occasionally work in Bad Homburg with them, I have gotten to know them and wanted to go somewhere with them.  They are wonderful people and will be leaving the mission for home (Sandy Utah) in March.  We headed out to Switzerland and stopped at the city of Bern and Basel Switzerland on the way.  Then we headed up the Swiss Alps on a tram to a village where no cars can drive.  It was beautiful.  When the residence grocery shop, they take the tram down the mountain and bring their groceries back up on the tram and then onto sleds to get them to their homes.  So interesting, but I don't think I would like living that way for long!  This is mainly a vacation destination and not many people actually "live" there.  The village is called Murren.

This picture below was when we stopped at Basel Switzerland.  They speak in Alemannic Swiss German dialect.  Very interesting to listen to and Tony could not understand them....ha!

Basel is Switzerland's oldest University city.  There are many small boutiques and antique book stores.  The city sits on the Rhine.  We walked along the Rhine along that wall in the photo.  It was pretty cold but we were bundled warm and enjoyed the walk.

Town Hall market square

 Basel's famous church, Basel Munster

 ...sometimes HE just can't help himself!

 We were able to attend a session in the Swiss Temple on Friday evening.  Good way to start our weekend serving there.

 This is Gimmelwald where we took the tram up to Murren

 Look at the snow on the roofs!  Here are photos of the people bringing their groceries to their hotel rooms on sleds.  This is right in the middle of a ski resort....so lovely!

 Just COLD

 Tom, Ruth and Tony

 Ruth and Tom Rich will be leaving the mission on March 27th.  They have served two years here and not without complications and trials. Tom came down with Bacterial Meningitis and almost died.  It attacked his brain and was ill for 2 months.  Very frightening for their family!

 This is a poem that was hung on the wall of the beautiful chapel in Murren (a ski village)

 Carrying groceries 

 Although we did not stay at this hotel, Ruth and I took a seat because it was such an inviting little porch.....

 I need to come back in the Spring time.....winter is gorgeous in the Swiss Alps!

 Look at the amount of snow on the roof!

 Yes, I know, where are our BOOTS????  We left them in our apartment in Frankfurt!

 This was an old tree trunk that someone carved these faces on each side....there was a plaque explaining the art work but we couldn't understand it.....  Very cleaver tho!

 I have never seen such beautiful, crystal clear water!  This comes right down from the Alps, very cold!

 Almost all of the buildings have stores on the bottom and apartments on the top where people live.

 What can I say??????  It's Tony.....

 This is how they live

 This is a picture of Bern Switzerland.  We went here before with the Roberts in the fall.  I love it here.

 Then we stopped in a small village on the way to Strasbourg France called Colmar.  Colmar is the third largest commune of the Alsace region in north eastern Franc.  There are only 67,000 people that live here.  This historical center is classes as a "protected area" and has benefited from carful restoration and improvements over the past 20 years.

 Tony thinks he's a french man with that hat on!

 More pictures of Colmar

 We just couldn't pass these pastries........

 ah, an AMERICAN FLAG!!!

 I loved window shopping......we are now in Strasbourg France.  I didn't take too many pictures because I have many from an earlier visit with the Roberts in the Fall.  I love Strasbourg.  It is my favorite city so far!

 Strasbourg France sits directly on the border of Germany and France, it was owned at one time from the Germans and now is part of the country of France so when you visit, you see both German and French influences.

 I have pictures in an earlier blog post of this beautiful Gothic edifice of the Catholic church called Our Lady of Strasbourg.  It was built in 1187-1439

 I made him try this hat on......smile?!!!

 Again, the windows are so cool!  I almost bought dolls for Makenna and Paisley, our Grandchildren but it costs a fortune to mail them home.......