The longest castle in Germany Burghausen

Visiting Scwester Elfrieda Thibaut, we would go to Burghausen Germany through Austria.  We crossed the Salzach River from one country to the next, passing a Grenze in the middle of the bridge indicating the boundary change.  This is the second time, as this stupid computer bounces around if one touches anywhere but the keys, and I really don't want to purchase a german keyboard as it is different from ours and rather difficult to use.  Wish, I had brought mine.

Before one crosses the river we have a view of the longest castle in Europe.  It was built to protect the salt mined south of Salzburg and shipped up river.  It was the gold of the day.  So here are pictures of the castle.
One can drive around the end turret and then follow the wall for quite a way.  But even across the river, the modern buildings hide some of the wall.

You can actually see some of the city wall as we were driving further south before crossing the river again.  It is amazing how many of these towns have parts of ancient city walls still standing.  They aren't actually maintained either.

Tschus until the next blog

We ask the members to pray for---

That the Lord will bless them with the missionary spirit.

That the Lord will bless them with open eyes and hearts that we will recognize the opportunities

That the Lord will soften the hearts of those we help that they will recognize his Spirit and desire to know about his church.

That the Lord will bless us with the courage to open our mouths.

That we will be blessed with a portion of Christ’s love so that we serve not out of duty but for the pure love of our fellowman.

See January 2012 Ensign or Liahona for the article called, "Daddy's Shoes." 

Mission blog    April 22, 2012

Last night Elder Storrer and I were searching for the vision of L. Tom Perry.  Though we never found reference to it we found two wonderful talks from him about showing love.  It was on my mind as I knelt in my evening prayer.  I asked my Father in Heaven to help us touch the hearts and soften the member’s hearts toward missionary work.  It is disturbing to me when I see even members of our stake presidency tell us that the JAE only have two goals.  They are to serve missions and get married in temples.  They are to build the kingdom of God from within.  They have stressed over and over again that the missionaries are responsible to do all the finding.  Now I know that we only have a few missionaries to search throughout all of Germany and the millions of people.  They could work day and night and could never begin to touch very many lives.  It is demographically impossible.  It takes every member having the missionary spirit, “When we have been warned we are to warn our neighbor.”  (See D & C  1:4, 38:41, 63:58,and  88:81}

We have been talking a lot about how we can get our members to have the spirit of missionary work.  Our Ward Mission meetings have become spiritually intense, as we have been struggling to try to accomplish this with this ward.    They resist with the idea that they are Austrians and not Americans.  Just because it works in America don’t expect it to work in Austria and Germany.

Elder Storrer had a dream the day we were asked to serve a mission.  It was not my dream.  Only as we get more deeply involved in the missionary work and the problems in this mission, the meaning of that dream has deeper significance.

The key is Love.  The greatest commandment Christ gave us is in Matthew 22:25-27.  He tells us that the greatest commandment is to love the Lord with all our heart.  The second is like unto it.  We are to love our neighbor as ourselves.  Then he adds.  On these two principles hang all the laws of the prophets.  This tells me that this is the pure love of God.  This is the pure love of Christ that he was talking about.  If we can keep this commandment to its fullness, we will abide by every other commandment.  It can only be done through constant prayer.

I awakened this morning with the desire to write out my testimony to this knowledge.  About 4:30 am I got out of bed and turned on my computer to put it into word.  I typed it out and then went back to bed.  But sleep still did not come.

The following were my thoughts.

Elder Storrer always says, “Satan has an arsenal of tools, but the one tool he lacks is love.”  It is the most powerful tool on earth.  Satan will use all of his tools he has to to stop it.  He is clever and knows exactly what he wants to accomplish.  His whole goal is to stop our Father in Heaven’s children from progressing.

When the young boy Joseph Smith went into the woods to pray Satan knew exactly why.  He was desperate to stop him.  The greatest tool he had was to bind Joseph’s tongue. 

The only way that Joseph Smith could defeat him was to continue praying silently.

I realized that the greatest tool Satan has to keep the saints from sharing the gospel is to bind our tongues.

And just like Joseph Smith, the only way we can defeat him and open our mouths is through constant prayer and communication with our Father in Heaven.

I am sure this message has been shared by Prophets in the past, but to me it was a testimony of their words.

We can only share the gospel if we love one another, serve one another and loosen our tongues.  None of this can happen unless we pray “unceasingly” for the desire and ability to love our neighbor and the desire to share the gospel.  As all good things it takes work on our part to show our Father in Heaven that we believe him and have faith in him.    Faith always precedes the miracle.

When we refuse to go to the Lord in prayer, he calls us “stiff necked.”  It is with humility that we bow our heads and sincerely entreat our Father in Heaven’s help in the name of his son Jesus Christ.

April 30, 2012

Elder Storrer was asked to speak in church.  He worked hard to prepare that talk.  It was more so than any other talk he has ever prepared.  Our mission district goal, (and he is the District Leader, a unique position for a senior missionary to be in) is to help the wards with 5 goals.  But to help them from being frightened from it we will spoon feed them.  (Don’t know what I am talking about.  I struggle to just tell them that I should not eat sugar. I can pray and I can bear testimony in German, and I can smile.)  So it pretty much falls on his shoulders.  I can usually understand the gist, if I know what they are talking about.  After he had it pretty much in his mind, he let the spirit dictate what he was to say, in German.  He felt like he was searching for words.  It was cute, At one point several members in the congregation helped him.  They are so very good that way.  He used as his example the love they have shown us.  And they really are a loving people, as they get to know you.  Anyway, so the five points are:

1.      Pray, unceasingly to love our neighbor

2.     Pray to find an opportunity to help them.

3.     Pray that we will recognize the opportunity.

4.     Pray that it will touch their hearts and they will ask us, why we are the way we are.

5.     Pray that our tongues will be loosened and we will tell them what the Lord wants us to tell them

So he presented the first three in his talk.  He asked Elder Rosenvall to come and tell of their recent experience using those tools, and how it has born fruit.  There are people being prepared all the time and we stumble on to them as we ride the city buses.  We know that on the days we are more prayerful and full of the spirit, we love those people, and they do often question us.  We even had a Catholic Sister, from Ireland sit down by me.  When the seat across became available, Elder Storrer joined us.  She had never heard of the church before and gave me one sentence, in English to tell who we are.  Yes, the spirit gave me those words to tell her that we are the same church that Christ organized upon the earth, but we are the Saints of the Latter-days.  She was quite intrigued by it.  She rode as far as we were going, into the old city.  She was a delightful traveling companion and after Elder Storrer had his turn was more enlightened.  We also have been helping our neighbor Rosie collect clothing, bedding,  ect., to take to Serbia.  We finally got the Restoration in Serbian that her neighbor is suppose to pick up, along with a Serbian Book of Mormon, that she wants to share with her neighbors.  We found a gold mine of clothing in the Elder’s apartment.  Clothing that was left by Elder’s as they were transferred.  It included two winter jackets, two wearable suits.  About a dozen white shirts.  Dozen’s of winter scarves, hats, gloves, some blankets and sheets, and etc.  We ended up with three big bags.

Saturday we ran to Lidals, a local grocery store for a few items.  Suddenly this woman from Serbia stopped Elder Storrer and expressed, “You are good people.”  During his conversation he asked if she knew Rosie.  She did not.  She is a refugee from Serbia, who lives with a group of people.  So Elder Storrer, gave her a pass along card with our phone number and invited her to visit with us in our home.  Because we have the miles we took the Sister’s last week to St Micheal in Pongau, about 1 ½ hours away to visit with a couple who were ready for baptism when they moved there.  The Mission President gave them permission to visit with them one last time.  They are so far away from the church.  We will be visiting with them once a month, to help strengthen their testimonies.  They also are from Serbia.  It seems that the ones interested in the gospel are from other countries including Africa.  The people in this ward desire that they just teach the Austrians.  The gospel is for all.  And the foreigners tend to be a bit more humble.

If we continue to pray to love this people and the five points, it lets them know who we are. 

Mission Blog.   April 21, 2012

We have had some interesting spiritual experiences this week.  We taught our first lesson for Institute.  We worked quite hard for that presentation, which included a lot of prayer.  It would give us a chance to bond with the students.  We did a power point presentation.  It was about finding a mate, and the steps one goes through.  It turned out quite successful.  We felt very good about it.  I was in the kitchen heating up the burritos for the imbiss meal.  Norm said that the young adults immediately went to the computer to review some of our family pictures.  I put a picture of “Finding the one,” with Norm in his uniform and me as a senior in high school about the time we started writing.  Then a couple of the temple and us in front of it.  Then we moved on to  10 tausen mal 10 tausend or ten thousand times ten thousand to show how many people through the generations would be affected by our choice in choosing a mate.  Put up the picture taken at our fairwell and then a collage of our children’s families.  

Norm was his usual funny charming self, except when he used his sister as an example of the destruction of an unhappy choice.  He told how she found her mate in a dance hall like the locals here.

But the interesting answer to our prayers was the “Miracle of the disappearing newspaper.”  As we were putting the finishing touches on preparing it, we found a local weekly newspaper, “The Salzburger Fenster.” Or The Salzburg Window.  They had a little card attached  saying, “Eternal Love,”  In German.  It came to us how we could use it.  Well Norm opened the page and translated about 95% of the world’s view on love, you know the usual passion, emotion, tragedy, greed, jealousy, etc, etc. including older couples who were happy with their relationship.  Just enough Satanic, truth to entice.  They were advertising their paper.  If you purchased a months prescription you would get all these four articles.  Across the bottom was a picture representing the four articles.  One was pornographic.  About 1x 2 ½ inch pictures.  Stupid us, we thought well if we only held up the front page.  Then Norm set it on the couch. In plain view.  As we went down the lift later we realized we had forgotten the newspaper.  When we returned to the apartment we could not find the paper.  It was gone.  When we prayed about it we had a very warm feeling that it was not to be found.  As we left to set up at the church we talked about how the Lord did not want us to use it.  We used the little 4x6 advertisement card with the same picture as was on the newspaper.  Later as we observed how they were like squirrels at the computer we realized, that one of them could have just as easily opened that paper.

Then we also knew that the Lord did not want that trash in his house.  We also knew that they would have lost their confidence in us. And Thirdly what if one of them had viewed it and it destroyed our life.  The Lord had really protected us from our own stupidity.  He knew we were only trying to do good.  We also realized how satan really tried to cleverly get his tentacles in there.  We see daily how we must be on our guard.  We and our two elders have had a lot of experiences.  One day we were returning to visit Victor and investigator.  His outside door to the street was locked.  It would not open when he pushed the buzzer.  He finally came down and tried to open it with a key, to no avail.  We have not been able to catch him at home since.

We went to Berghausen today, to Sister Thibaut.  She was sent there for a cure.  I think they are trying to rebuild her strength so she can go home.  She is a tiny thin little thing at 80 years of age, with poor health.  I am not sure, but with President Miles’ permission to leave our area and go visit her we did.  It is just across the border from Austria.  The Google map took us the longer way up through Germany.  We crossed the bridge that separates the town as well as Germany for Austria to see the longest castle in Europe and found we saved about 10-12 km.  Both ways the country was magnificent and the buildings, with all the art on them were unique.  We were in a hurry to get there so didn’t stop for pictures.  But we got some cool ones coming home.  I intend to piece together what we have ove the longest castle.  It must have been at least a mile long.

April 7,  2012  Mission Blog

We spent Thursday and Friday in Munich at a Distrikt leader’s conference.

This was something I never expected to do—ever.  Norm was called to be the District Leader as our district includes the Zone Leader’s and two sisters.  He puts it well when he says, “They just didn’t have anyone else.  So since there is no one they can really put me on splits with, I go where Norm goes.  Interesting experience, since they conducted a lot of the meeting in German.  But then about 30% of our missionaries are from Germany.  Probably 80-90% speak great English, but it needs to be comfortable for those who don’t.  The ones who do translate very well.  One sweet Elder even translated for me.   Sister Miles, our mission president’s wife says that it is great to not be the only sister in those meetings.

The last part was role play.  We were divided into four areas, separating your dad from me.  So I made notes of what I could understand, and it was great tools.  Then two elders were assigned to use me as an investigator.  Fortunately I understood what role I was to play.  The second time I got to be the missionary.  It was helping an investigator to keep their commitments.  I learned a lot.  Only I forgot to ask him at the end to recommit.  But it was a great exercise, as we  read the scripture and then discussed what it meant, its importance and how he felt about it.

Anyway, the train ride was also interesting.

Oh, and the funny part was when we were forgotten.  We were put up on a hotel the mission always uses.  The Zone Leaders were in the mission home and the district leaders were put up in local wohnung with the local elders.  Well it decided to downpour the next morning.  Sister Miles had encouraged me to eat the breakfast at the hotel, rather than all the sweet cereals they had provided for the Elders.  Greatfully I did.  They were suppose to pick us up at 7:45.  Well when it didn’t happen we decided they were busy shuttling all those missionaries in the downpour.  When 8:45 rolled around, we were certain of it.  Norm says, laughingly, “I think we were forgotten.”  So he tries to call.  His Austrian phone would not work in Austria.  My phone had died, I had forgotten to take the charger with me, and used it for scriptures the day before.  Finally he tried to text the office.

About an hour later Sister Miles shows up full of embarrassed apology.  We understood, as she was also involved in fixing breakfast.  When we took our seats, in the only spot available, by the President and his wife, he came over put his arms around us with a wonderful, humble apology for having forgotten us.  I just laughed and said, “Don’t worry about it we knew you had a lot to take care of this morning.  Besides, I can forget when my head is empty.”  He chuckled over that one.

The Miles are really down to earth.  They are easy to love.  And what wonderful missionaries we have been allowed to meet.  Elder Slovbabo (I think that is how it is spelled.) one of our AP’s when we arrived is now training his younger brother in Wien (Vienna)  As we were walking from the Banhopf to the chapel he walked with me, carrying on a wonderful English conversation.  I found out his parents are only about 100 kilometers from them.  None of the German elders are very far from home.  Just thought this is a unique situation.  Several other elders have been AP’s and are nearing the end of their missions.  Boy are they sharp.  I can’t remember all those german names.  The one who translated for me certainly knows his white book and Preach My Gospel inside and out.  If a question came up he was always ready with the answer.

We really miss Elder Graff who completed his mission.  We were sad to learn that he is facing heart surgery and are praying that all goes well with him.

We are loving our mission.  We are also facing some interesting challenges as we try to rebuild this JAE program.  It really is just one arm of missionary work.  It’s purpose is to help these young adults in serving missions, and finding a good member of the church, be married in the temple and help the gospel grow by building up the church.  Too many young men go inactive, and too many of our young women are finding those outside of the church, who really introduce the world to them.  And then as we were told, since the early days of the church, Europe bleeds a little because many will go to BYU marry and never return home.  So Europe has it’s struggles.  We also have to help these stubborn saints be converted to Missionary Work.  Yes we have had our experiences and shut downs.  We were sent here not to be like everyone else and not to fail.  It means converting one by one, beginning with ourselves, our Ward missionary council, and each member, even if it means beginning with the inactives.  We just have to convince them that we are not like everyone else and we will not do the missionary work or be put off easily.

View of City of Salzburg from trail up to castle

First gateway and door to Castle

I am still working on the knee.  Having climbed the hill to the Festoon last Monday took it’s toll, but I am better for having done it.  Next time though, if there is a next time, we will be taking the tram. 

Second door.

Third door to enter castle.  If they got up the hill with their heavy armour, they had a moat to cross, three long climbs behind three large doors and bridge.

One of many crests found on the walls.  Have taken others that are religious.  This was definitely Catholic country.

One of the Cannons guarding the River.  I still am not sure what it is named.

Another Crest on a tall outside wall.  There are a lot more pictures of the inside, showing the Prince's room, also showing their torture tools.  Maybe some other time I will post or save them until I get home.  There are about 6 hundred years of history in this fortress.  It was added on over the centuries, and even remodeled.  One famous story is about the Turks trying to invade.  When they got over the wall protecting the city, everyone fled into the castle. 

  because it was impossible to take they put a siege on the castle.  Suddenly a cow appeared on the hill.  The next day another cow appeared.  And each day after.  The Turks gave up and left because they knew that it would be impossible to starve them out.  Someone carved a cow and they painted it a different color each day.  Today you  will see carved painted cows throughout the city. 

Sontag March 25, 2012

We had great intentions of arriving early today.  But we missed the day light's saving.  So we actually arrived an hour late.  This mission is very interesting.  We have been laughing about the "Book of Instruction."  We even had it posted on a wall for the ward's spring cleaning. It was just delightful.  Nothing wrong with it, it is just the German/Austrian way.
Today we had barely returned from church.  We came around the corner off of the main street, drove about 2 block south, one block west and then about 1/2 block  north.  As we were parking the car guns went off.  Then we heard a wave of shouting like a chant.  It sounded almost like a sporting event, except when the guns and loud fire crackers went off, it would create the chanting.  We are on the fifth floor and Norm stepped out on the balcony.  Then we recognized "Alla" repeated in the chant.  Norm saw women down there with Berkas, and we realized it was about 2000-3000 Muslims filling the street where we had just turned off of the main street and a little over a block away.  They started to block the main street, until the police sirens sounded and they ran them off.  Kind of scary.
The Austrians and Germans started looking for workers, because their own people stopped producing children.  Now their are probably more muslims than Austrians, and it will get worse because they are having their children.  We can see the handwriting on the walll.
Missionary work is going fine, but would be better if we could get the Austrian members to start caring about their neighbors.  Love to you all. 

March 24, 2012 Samtag

The missionary work continues.  We had 7 out to institute.  It was decided that they would eat after institute, and institute would be one hour earlier.  What a wise decision.  Always before they had to hurry and eat.  This time, it was relaxed.  I set the tables up in a square table for better conversation.  They visited for an hour after institute.  Norm and I had to leave, which was not a good thing, for it broke it up.  We can never find parking for our Wohnung (apartment) if we stay later.  Well the lot was full, and so we literally got the red light.  I went in and Elder Storrer sat in the car hoping someone would come out.  Finally he drove around until he found a spot behind this huge pile of lumber, in a construction area just about 1/2 block from our Wohnung.  He parked it out of site and came in.  Then after midnight he was able to find a parking space.  He was parked directly under a sign which read, "Parking here is forbidden and you will be towed. 
Well Brother Erlacher, the teacher suggested he pick us up.  Actually we can drive the food over earlier.  Drive back home and catch the bus (2) to be exact.  Then we can catch three buses back home (and einbahn) messes us up.  Or Brother Erlacher has volunteered to drive us home.  I like that idea.
We feel strongly that if those young adults will start communicating and getting to know each other it will bring them back into a comraderie that we understand they use to have.
Here is another picture of Geegi

This is Clara who is coming to Utah for General Conference.  She worked and saved her money and bought a ticket months ago.  She is excited to do baptisms in the Salt Lake Temple.  She has worked and saved to make her dream come true.  Oh, yes and she is prepared to do some shopping.  She is taking light suitcases to fill and bring home to Salzburg.  She says that she doesn't speak German very well, because she speaks Oestereichish.  And no truer words have ever been spoken.  No Austrian speaks German, only a semblence of it.

this is Bruder Erlacher, the institute teacher and he is good.

We bid Elder Graff a good by has this was his last day in the mission.  This was part of the Ward Missionaries.  Josef is the one with glasses in the middle, and Hans Malzl is on the right side in the back.
He headed to Munich and then flew out Friday.  We are going to miss Elder Graff, with his beautiful smile and very charming ways.  He was oblivious, but I think every girl had a crush on him, including the Sister Missionaries,  especially Sister Hoffman.  Everytime she looked at him, we could tell.  Of course the missionaries were all clueless, and that is good. 

This was the mongolian meal that Geegi prepared for us.  It was meat, and seasonings in a pocket, and a wonderful and interesting Potato salad.

This is a typical church in Freilassing.  We hear the vesper bells, morning, come to mass bells, and again at noon from a church.  The next picture is me in front of the doors.  Heidi, I love the big purse as I can hide part of me behind it.  Actually I am losing weight.  I had lost a lot of weight the first week.  Then the members started feeding us.  I have finally told them, not even a little bit of sugar.  It is killing my joints, especially my feet.  We eat very healthy in the apartment, but they want to feed us until we are stuffed turkeys.  Even our two over 6 foot elders were complaining of double chins and skin they could pinch an inch at the waist line.  So we have decided that we only eat what we want, and no deserts.

That went by the wayside last Wednesday with Uwe Zerwekski, who is a marvelous cook.  He actually took a cooking course for 2 years.  He really is not that old, but has traveled, and done a lot of cool jobs.  But he really needs to marry, and there are some wonderful girls in our ward and stake who are not too young for him.   It was a 4 course meal.  But afterward, with all the sugars for desert, I felt that I had been poisoned.  I finally had to take some aspirn the next night as every joint in my body ached.  My arthritis just cannot take it and neither can my blood sugars.  They have been excellent the last two days.

We have placed books of Mormon.  We have taught several discussions.  They asked if we would visit Sister Thibaut in the krankenhaus in Freilassing.  Poor lady.  She is a tiny 80 year old woman with the bluest eyes.  She is so discouraged.  She is bleeding internally and they don't even do tests.  So much for socialized medicine.  There are three women in that room.  One has lung problems and they don't seem to be doing much for her either.  The younger swear by it, as it makes hospitalization and doctors cheaper, but we think as they age they suffer for it with less dignity and more suffering in old age.
Elder Heinrich brought his Uke and we sang I am a Child of God.  She and the two other ladies in the room loved it.  It brought a moment of Joy.  Today Norm read from the B of M.  The sister in the bed next to her was listening to every word.  Norm left her a B of M and she seemed really happy.
Love to you all it is late.  Love Mom and Dad