Happy 4th Advent!

Happy 4th Advent!  It has been a very unique week as we have approached the big holiday as most of our usual visitors have obviously been getting ready for their family functions and the temple was significantly less busy. Nonetheless, we continued to run all of our offerings and it kept us hopping to accommodate those who were there. Toward the end of the week we really started to wind down in a big way. Our temple president and his wife left on Saturday to return to their home in Vienna and the first counselor also left for their home in Berlin. Our new German couple, the Fiedlers, also were given permission to spend the holidays with their family and left leaving only two couples in our hallway of six apartments. During the week we found ourselves moving from the baptistry to initiatories to working on the veil and back again. Even though most of the sessions were small, they all took place and we found ourselves able to meet all the necessities of serving our patrons as they requested.

Sunday was a very busy day but only Sacrament Meeting was held, and I had the opportunity of singing in a combined ward/branch choir as both units met together for a special Christmas program. That afternoon, as you can see, we were invited to spend the next few days with Markus and Cathleen Wiese and their family at their home in Leipzig. We packed a few things and drove up where we have visited a few times before. They had a special dinner prepared for us and we are looking forward to the Christmas activities of the next few days. We will report on all of that next week.

There were a lot of other celebratory events in this past week. On Monday we returned with the Lindsays to Chemnitz, the old Karl Marx Stadt to visit Brother Preissler and enjoy his personal tour through their city’s Weihnachtsmarkt. We got a few cute pictures of their offerings as well as enjoyed a good Christmas lunch. They had beautiful decoration we thoroughly appreciated. Then on Tuesday, a Sister Teubner invited all of the temple missionaries and the temple presidency to a wonderful evening offering of German cookies, cakes and drinks. That amounted to 16 people all of whom she served graciously and with a wonderful spirit. Her husband has been hospitalized in a rest home for the past five years, but she has graciously continues to show her gratitude through her service to all of us. That’s her in the fifth photo with the Lindsays.

On Wednesday the special event was offered by the temple presidency to all of the assigned temple workers including not only the missionary couples, but two other full-time temple workers who live in our apartment house, Sister Brosch and Brother Kux. So again, there were 14 of us and we met in a room dedicated to special events in our building known simply as the missionary room. Again, a wonderful offering of evening snacks was provided, and they asked several of us to report on our special Christmas traditions. We were among those who were asked, and Grammy reported on our usual Christmas Eve festivities including acting out the Christmas story (and trying to capture videos for posterity).

Saturday, the Dresden Stake had a special Christmas offering consisting of a choir, orchestra and three soloists in a program that is apparently well known to the Germans but which we had never witnessed.  The orchestra had several interesting instruments we had never seen before, especially the “Zinken” which look a bit like oboes or clarinets, but which sound like trumpets. It was unique and added to our celebration. You may notice in our first photo above how many additional little gifts we have received.  Almost every day there are little presents that appear on our doorstep. I especially enjoyed the little chimney sweep man up front on the left holding his ladder and made out of dried prunes.

So we are looking forward to a lovely Christmas Eve at Markus', Christmas Day at his brother Stefan’s, and then we will again go back to Chemnitz on the 2nd day of Christmas with Cathleen and Christiana’s (Stefan’s wife) parents, the Jentzsches.  Again, Brother Jentzsch has been our temple engineer and he is officially retiring at the end of the year. So I guess he’ll get home just a little bit before we do. Mom is still contemplating buying a few special souvenirs which I guess we’ll just have to ship home because they won’t fit in our luggage. The plans for January are already proposed and we notice they haven’t given us an assignment for the 8th of January. So I guess we’ll have one full day to finish our packing.

I have been asked to speak in Sacrament Meeting next week on the spiritual highlights of my life. I guess it will be my farewell talk, but we’ll still have the opportunity to bear our testimonies on our last Sunday for Fast Day. I have already written it in English but am now working on translating it into German. Maybe I can get Markus to listen to and correct my translation where it needs it.

Mom:  Christmas has been an exciting time with all the festive activities, concerts and sweet little gifts left at our door. It seems like most of our concerts and programs have centered on the Savior as well as the Christ child. It has also been interesting to see who has still scheduled time to come to the temple. Somehow we always seem blessed to have our temple activities work out even where we are running with very few people. The spirit is sweet and a great place to be just a few days before Christmas.

 My mind keeps thinking of how things will be back home, and seeing all the family. We enjoy seeing the Christmas programs of the kids when they are posted. We’ll miss sharing Christmas Eve and Day with you but hope that everyone will have some kind of happy celebration. We’ll try to FaceTime if we can find the right times of day.

 Have a Bright and Merry Christmas!
Sending all our love, hugs and prayers to be with you,
Grammy, Grampa, Mom, Dad, Elder, and Sister Parker