Our new mission

We are doing it again.  After two years since our Baltic Mission, we are Missionaries in Frankfurt Germany.  This mission will be entirely different ... we are Mental Health Advisers in the Europe Area. 

Our MTC stay started on Aug. 12 for a week.  We stayed at the Provo Marriott for the week because there were too many younger missionaries serving.  We had the same training as we did last time, but it was held at the Stake Center next to the MTC.  We had some great young returned missionaries to teach us and we had 3 other great couples in our District.  Elder and Sister Kendall, Elder and Sister Voorhees, and Elder and Sister Bruns.  

At the MTC we saw Amanda Wrigley, she was a sister missionary in the Baltic Mission with us.  She also stayed at our home for a few days in Riga because she was so ill.

On Friday afternoon, we drove home for the weekend, then had training the next week in Salt Lake City.  We stayed at the Marriott Residence Inn and had meetings there and at the Church Office Building in the Missionary Department.  There was one other senior missionary couple going to Peru as Mental Health Advisers, Elder and Sister Hoem from Elko, Nevada.  There were three nurses going to Samoa, San Fernando California, Gautamala, and Dr. Dahl serving as an AMA in is home area of Mesa, Arizona.

On Friday, we went home for our last weekend to pack and get ready to fly to Germany on Tuesday morning.  We were met at the Frankfurt Airport by Elder and Sister Eyre who are serving here and are our zone leaders.  They brought us to our apartment, showed us around the area office and gave us training on the area.

We are on American Airlines fly from Salt Lake City

to Frankfurt, Germany,

 We sit in an office and Elder Jacques makes phone calls to help missionaries that are struggling to stay on a mission.  Our office is on the 3rd floor of the Europe Area Office.  There is another Mental Health Adviser couple serving with us, Elder and Sister Peery from SLC and also two Medical Doctors, Elder and Sister Swensen and Elder and Sister Wing. We go to work around 8:30 am until about 5:00 pm Monday thru Friday.  Our apartment is right next to the Area Office so it will be nice in the winter.  No more waiting 20 minutes for a bus or walking long distances in the snow to get to work.

We are assigned eight missions and two missionary training centers to help.  They are Belgium Netherlands, Cape Verde, France Lyon, France Paris, Portugal Lisbon, Spain Barcelona, Spain Madrid, Spain Malaga, and the England MTC and Spain MTC.  Elder J has had seven missionaries he has been working with.  They do phone calls every week with him.  He has two missionaries that will be returning home early the next week.  That is always hard because we are here to help them, however, the going home call is up to the missionary and Mission President. 

Every Monday morning at 9:00 am is a devotional with the Senior Missionaries and Area Office employees.  We sing, pray and have a special thought together. 

Our First Friday night here, we went with the Senior couples to the Frankfurt Temple.  We did Sealings with five other couples and afterward we went to a restaurant to eat dinner.

The Frankfurt Temple



Elder Jacques in the window eating his lunch

On Saturday after we cleaned the apartment we went for a walk.  We walked about one mile and found a wonderful little corner restaurant to each lunch.  It was Thai and we loved it. 

We have also had dinner the first two Sundays here with other senior missionary couples.  The first week was with Elder and Sister Stay.  They are Humanitarian Mission Supervisors for the area.  Today we had dinner with Elder and Sister Craven, who are Public Affairs supervisors for the area.

Our Apartment is very nice.  We are on the seventh floor, flat #4.  We have a living room with a couch, large chair TV and DVD player, and a small table and chairs.  Our kitchen is very small, but has a dish washer and clothes washer in it.  Our master bedroom is very nice and our bathroom has a tub-shower combo.  We also have a den with a desk and bunk beds.  It has a wood floors but a large rug in the living room. The best part is that there are two elevators, so I don't have to do stairs.

There is also a small grocery store right next to our flat, so we don't have to walk miles carrying groceries.  There are other larger grocery stores near by.  We also share a car with Elder and Sister Peery.

On Friday, Sept. 6, we walked up to the Ni Hao  Restaurant for dinner.  It was another great place to eat.  There are some beautiful churches nearby.

There are some of the missionaries in our District getting ready

for their transfers.  They had 40 new missionaries arrive this week.

We took the car to Ikea last night ... it was only a ten minute drive from home, but it was the first time driving on the autobahn for us.  We got there just great because we had our GPS turned on.  We loved shopping, only spent 9 Euros, but it was fun.  Coming home we did make one wrong turn and it ended up taking an extra ten minutes to get home, but we made it OK.