A STRESSFUL WEEK

Today in church, a young man came and sat down next to me. The meeting was well attended, so there were not a lot of empty seats. I couldn’t help but notice his copy of the Book of Mormon, it had what appeared to me to be an Arabic script lettering on the front. After sacrament meeting Eileen and I started to chat with him. We didn’t get very far because both his English and our German are quite limited. With the help of others, we learned that he is a migrant from Iran and his Book of Morman was in Farsi (aka Persian). The missionaries told us he is progressing well with the lessons. The missionary work in Europe is going very well, primarily because of all the immigrants who have come from all over the world. Many seem eager to learn about the Gospel of Jesus Christ and share it with their family members. It appears if our missionaries cannot proselyte within the Muslim countries, that they, and many others (Africa, China, India, Russia), are just coming to where the missionaries are.

This past week was taken up with writing/processing emergency projects dealing with the events of the prior week. With our couple in Western Europe tied up with the fires in France, we worked on three projects in Spain. And because another couple was out of town with family business, I (Russell) had two additional wildfire emergency projects in Greece. It is a good thing that everything else is slow in Europe right now, it being vacation season, otherwise the five emergency projects we dealt with this week would have been completely overwhelming. Four of the five emergency projects were completed by weekend, but the largest is still in process and should consume most of our time next week.

                             

The Muellecks will be going home in a week. They hare workhorses in the humanitarian department.   We took them out to our favorite Italian restaurant as a goodbye gift.  We will miss them.  Although we didn't know them when we lived at home, it turns out they live about a mile away from us in the US.  I am sure we will see them when we return home. 

                                                          
                                          

                       We had an area devotional about the progress of the work going forth in the                  Central Europe Area.  

   

We share a car with the Richards who are also serving in the Area Office doing Humanitarian Work. It had been an extremely busy week for us and they asked if we would help them figure out the train in Germany and go down to downtown.  We spent a few hours wandering downtown.                                

              There is an entire store devoted to cheese.  We had some taste tests and then both couples purchased some.
 

There are thousands of love locks put on this bridge. Supposedly the key is supposed to be thrown into the river symbolizing an unbroken and lasting commitment.