Mespelbrunn

Hi to all - The last few weeks have been busy but we have had some saturdays when we've gotten out to see some of the countryside. I hope some pictures of some of the places we've gone will show up here. Oops, the picture you see is the skyline of Frankfurt from our balcony. We will be living on the 11th floor of our apartment building for the rest of our mission so we have a great view looking out over the city. They like to think of Frankfurt as the "Chicago" of Germany. There is a lot of banking and financial happenings that go on here, hence the buildings you see on the skyline. Many of them are connected with the banking industry but others are office buildings and condos which are going up in the downtown area. Fall is in late bloom at this point but the colors are still gorgeous as compared to the shades of brown we are used to and like to call "fall colors". The folks in the picture below are ones we went to a beautiful castle called Mespelbrunn a few Saturdays ago. They are serving in the area office and a couple are full time church employees here. It is fun to get out after the busy weeks we have going on with transfers, new arrivals and those who are going home.

The picture below is of Mespelbrunn. The family still lives in part of this castle and it is located on one of the main "roads" from Wuerzburg to Frankfurt. When this place was started, back in the 1200's, roads were for horses and this never became a major road for cars and trucks. The family has a lot of stuff that has been part of the family belongings on display in the place along with some really fantastic stained glass windows. They have their history of family crests and their evolution as marriages have occurred in their stained glass windows. One of the group had 22 children. No polygamy here, though!!If we're lucky a picture of a stain glass window will appear here. Interesting way to do your genealogy work.Just in case you get the opinion that all we do is play and go see stuff here. We work pretty hard here and we're always on call as all calls to the mission office are forwarded to us when we're not in the office. Some nights get interrupted and we have a lot of fun and spend a lot of time getting things done that go on in any office. It is a lot of fun to see and deal with the missionaries as they come in and out of the office and as they arrive and leave the mission field.

There are lots of wonderful stories about conversions and how the Lord prepares people to find and receive the gospel. We just finished a great Stake Conference here and it is exciting to see the numbers of the membership grow, especially when compared to the numbers we saw 45 years ago. There are three stakes here in the mission and we cover about one-fourth of Germany.

The sunday morning session of conference was held in the Friedberg City Hall because no building in the stake is large enough to hold the members attending. Just over 1,200 attended this meeting and many of them came in Saturday night because they have some distance to travel. The stake area is large but slowly the church is growing. Hopefully, the second and third generation members which are just getting to leadership levels will accelerate the growth of the church here.