To Our Beloved Family,
Another wonderful week has passed with many exciting events to report. Monday's Home Evening was down a little in numbers as people are very involved in the Advent season here but overall we still had a good group out with Mom making Sloppy Joe's which everyone always loves. Our language courses were definitely less well attended with our Iranian family not coming for the first time in several months. We're thinking they are also involved in other things but because we announced that the center would be closing for a couple of weeks, we also think perhaps they just got the dates wrong. At any rate, the Institute schedule promoted a Christmas party instead of the routine classes and we had the usual good 40-50 people out for that. We set all of our chairs up in a big circle in our main classroom and following the main announcements received a fun visitor:
His German was pretty good and we were having trouble figuring out who he really was but it eventually became obvious that it was our Seminary and Institute Director, Brother Achim Erlacher.
Here he is pictured afterwards with Sister Wadosch, also a great support on our Institute Council. She and her husband, an ex-stake president have been called to serve in the Freiberg Temple Presidency. More on that later. Santa passed around special presents to everyone present that had been prepared by our special sister, Eva, who always cooks the meal for Wednesday nights and had prepared schnitzel, potatoes and wonderful Christmas cakes for everyone. He had special presents for us, a wonderful souvenir shopping bag emblazoned with lots of the sight seeing spots from Vienna for Sister Parker and a similar souvenir type Viennese mug for Elder Parker. I was asked what I was going to drink in the mug and replied, naturally only fruit tea! He gave other special presents to the Youth Council leaders, Sister Wadosch and asked if anyone had been missed. One of the young adults replied "Brother Erlacher....but he isn't here!:) Enough food had been prepared that there was quite a bit left over. Eva not only cooks but also serves as her ward's Primary president. Her husband apparently doesn't like the missionaries to come by the house and so she always wants to make sure that she can feed them and took special pains to make sure we invited everyone over on Thursday for the leftovers. This we did and had a wonderful get-to-gether after the language courses with eight of the elders. The Zone Leaders had sent a message that they planned on coming but didn't show and the sisters replied that they had an assignment in Wiener Neustadt, an hour away but were on their way home. How long would we be there? Everyone else showed up between 5 and 6 o'clock but we decided to wait for the sisters and had enough still for four extra plates of food. We set them all up and while waiting for the sisters who finally got there about 7:15, the Zone Leaders also appeared after they'd had an appointment so it was a nice tender mercy for them that the sisters provided the excuse to wait around as otherwise we would have been long gone.
Friday was our departure on a flight to Leipzig to stay the holidays with the Wiese family. Our plane flight to Leipzig gave us only two options, 6:25 in the morning or 8 PM in the evening. We decided we would opt for the 6:25 in the morning but that meant we had to be there by at least 5:30. There is a special train that makes the trip from the center of Vienna, very close to our apartment and the airport in only 15 minutes but the first train in the morning doesn't leave until 5:35 and we decided that would be cutting it too close. Our only other options would be a taxi which we thought was probably too expensive or take a night bus which came at 4:30 to the train station for the regular trains that run all night. That got us to the airport in good time and it took a good thirty minutes from the train to get through security and to the boarding gate. But the real challenge to do all that meant that we had to get up at 3 AM to get ready for that 4:30 night bus! Having waited for the sisters longer than we had anticipated meant that we hadn't gotten home when we planned and we had finally gotten to bed around 11:00 after completing all of our packing and other preparations. We snoozed a bit on the plane but the flight was only about an hour and a half and so we were still pretty drowsy by the time we arrived. But the Wiese's were there to meet us and the plan for Friday was to travel to Freiberg and do a temple session, stay one night at the temple apartments and then see some of the local sights there that afternoon.
The Freiberg Temple was really very pretty. We put our luggage in our room in the temple apartment and met Cathleen Wiese's father who works there in charge of all the technical workings of the temple. They had us set up for a 10:30 session and we really wondered how we were going to stay awake on our four hours of sleep the night before. But yet another tender mercy, they asked us to be the witness couple so we had the opportunity to be a little more active than we would normally have been and it was a very enjoyable event. A small side-light, the same thing happened last year when we went to the Madrid Temple, still in the middle of jet lag, so the Lord has a way of taking care of us! We even went through the session in German, without earphones which kept us extra alert.
That afternoon, Markus, Cathleen and their son Heinrich picked us up to take us to Albrechtsburg, a small village we'd never really heard of but was the birthplace of Karl Maeser, the founder of BYU. There we ate lunch at a wonderful restaurant near the old Albrechtsburg cathedral and then went through the old castle built by the local prince.
The area is located in a region known as Meissen which is famous for wonderful porcelain and the museum demonstrates much of what they are famous for. In the first picture above you can see a church just to the right of the umbrella. Below that is a little yellow house immediately to the right of the umbrella, then a small white building and the building next to that was Karl Maeser's birthplace. Next, Heinrich is showing us on a model of the castle and church exactly where we ate lunch.
That evening we went to the Freiberg Christmas market where we ate some yummy pizza-type sandwiches but it was actually raining pretty hard so we all stood under umbrellas as we ate. By the time we got back to the temple apartment we were good and exhausted and slept like logs until the next morning. While we had been visiting Albrechtsburg, Leonie Wiese who visited us with her brother Ferdinand last summer, had left us special fixings for a wonderful breakfast the next morning. She left it all in a refrigerator in the eating room with mango fruit juice, chocolate milk and yogurt, hard boiled eggs along with a basketful of bread, muffins and other yummies. We cleaned our apartment and were finished with breakfast in time for Markus and Cathleen to pick us up the next day for a trip to a little village known as Seiffen.
Seiffen is a little town that exists for only one reason. It makes wooden toys and special decorations for Christmas. Admittedly their nutcrackers and other wooden figures probably have appeal at other times of the year but they work all year and make virtually all of their income in the last month of the year. We drove into town and were immediately directed by uniformed personnel to a parking place right near a large work shop. Here we were allowed to watch the employees as they made and assembled nutcrackers of all sizes and lots of cute big and little creations all to make the Christmas season special. For instance we saw this craftsman making these cute little wooden trees as pictured below.
We spent the next few hours wandering through toy stores, manufacturing work places, museums and even the village church which is quite famous.
We took over one hundred photos so in this little report we can't even give you as much as a glimpse of everything we were able to see.
Here you see a cute little street scene and a woman putting whiskers and beards on nutcrackers. Mom was just overwhelmed with everything there was to see and sometime we'll have to send a bigger sampling of all the wonderful sights in this delightful little Christmas village.
For many decades it was behind the Iron Curtain in East Germany and everything they made was shipped to the west as one of the products of the system. Now they've really come into their own as they have the chance to be their own businessmen. Though it was commercial, it was still very much a delightful enterprise. Following a tour through a couple of workshops and multiple little stores selling their various wares we ended up in a museum for toys of the kind the city had made for more than a century. Included were wonderful matchbox toys, numerous big and little whirligig things some of you may remember from our Christmas decorations which consists of little merry go round devices powered by candles whose heat provide some power to little wooden propellers and cause them to spin around. We went into several stores selling these little things looking for the most expensive one that finally topped out at 9,999 euros!
Here they're called "pyramids' and the examples, as here, they included in the museum ran from the ground floor to the top of a two story hall. They even had cute little make it yourself creations you could buy and assemble on the spot as shown here where Heinrich is putting together a little house and putting on the shingles.
The last picture shows an action scene where the two figures begin apart and then gradually come together with a big smooching sound as they meet and kiss!
Sister Parker got so enthralled with everything there was to see that she bought a couple of items that still bewilder her husband as to how we'll ever get them home.
Sunday morning started off with a delicious breakfast, very typically German provided by Cathleen Wiese. They have been just wonderful hosts providing us with every amenity we could desire and really bending over backwards to show us their beloved Leipzig and the Saxony region of Germany which surrounds Leipzig. We had agreed to go with them to the Lutheran service which started at 10 AM and they would accompany us to the LDS service which started at 1 PM. Actually the Lutheran service was really pretty cute and comparable to a Primary special sacrament meeting. All of the children in the church had prepared a special Christmas Nativity preparation and were decked out as angels, shepherds, a variety of stable animals including a cow and a sheep as well as numerous other sheep and of course, Joseph and Mary. They knew their parts really well and had some songs they sang as well. The congregation sang pretty much Christmas carols for their hymns, most of which we already knew and the priest gave quite a good talk on the importance of extending the Christmas spirit to the less fortunate.
When we made it to the LDS ward that afternoon, they'd already had their Primary presentation the week before but they had their ward choir sing along with special talks from the elder's quorum president and a high council speaker. Everyone remembered Markus quite well and we even met the family of one of our elders who had recently been transferred into our district in Vienna. We showed them several pictures we had of him and took a picture of us with them to send to his email.
That evening we were invited over to Markus' brother's house who lives right next door. They had a total of four brothers there with their wives and even Markus' father came. It was a special 4th Advent Sunday and we had wonderful food, sang everyone's favorite Christmas carols, and even played some fun games that the family enjoyed. We must admit that because we had already celebrated the first three Advent Sundays prior to leaving for Germany, we decided to light the fourth candle in our apartment and display our Christmas decorations one last time. So here is our 4th Advent celebration before we left for Leipzig.
Note the bag Mom received on the left and the stein on the right that Dad received.
And this was the real 4th Advent celebration at the home of Stephan Wiese. Pictured are just a few of the many family members who were there. Stephan serves in the local ward bishopric and plays the piano, Markus played his cello, his Dad played the flute, a niece played the harp and Heinrich, one of his sons, played the trumpet so it was a beautiful musical evening. They have kept us so busy since we arrived that it has taken us this long to get the news together and get it off. More about Christmas next week. Love to you all and we will hope to have Skyped with many if not all of you on Christmas if we can figure out a way to get around all of the other missionaries who are checking in. We wish you all a happy holiday and hope you all enjoy the special Spirit of Christmas that prevails.
(Sister Parker) Being here in beautiful Saxony, Germany is like being in a Christmas dream, even without snow. Every little town is festive with decorations and Christmas Markets. Many have music playing and it helps create a very festive spirit among all the people wandering around even when it is very cold, rainy and windy. I love that life just goes on with plans, no matter the weather. Markus and Cathleen have taken us to the temple, showed us beautiful countrysides, taken us to fine restaurants and shared their extended family with us. This is a wonderful place to be if we can't be at home with all of you. What's more, they try to remember the Savior and his birth.
You will all be in our hearts this Christmas Eve and Day.
Love,
Mom, Dad,
Grammy, Grampa,
Elder and Sister Parker
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