Happy New Year 2010

We are celebrating the new year in Germany for the first time. Yesterday the missionaries were told to be home in the early afternoon. Everything closed down by 2 pm and won't open again until Monday. There are no banks, no grocery stores, no shopping areas. It is really closed down. Last night at midnight the fireworks began. It sounded as though we were being bombed. They were going on for about 35 minutes and they were goregous. They have been selling fireworks in the stores in large packages and it seemed that everyone in our area had bought fireworks. We watched most of it from our bedroom window and then sleep came. We talked with Justin, Gary, Lindsy and then Becki and then Lauren and Julie. I love Skype. Today we are in for the day. Our instructions are to deep clean the apartment and we were given a specific list at zone conference. If we get everything done soon we will go out for a while and do some visiting. The center is not open until tomorrow afternoon for English and German classes. Thursday morning Elder and Sister Shumway came from the Area Office in Frankfurt to give us our formal training. They are wonderful people and we spent about 3 hours with them and got all the latest information. We learned more about responsibilities here and specific ways in which to find young single adults in the area. On Wednesday night Elder Meyer and Elder McCurdy brought a young woman to the center. They had met her on the bus and brought her to tell about what the center was. We met her and she speaks Engish, Germany and Cambodian. Mike Kinney would be happy to see her. They spent over an hour telling her about the Book of Mormon even though she had no knowledge of the Bible. She is planning to be there for Family Home Evening on Monday. We have challenged the missionaries to increase their finding for young single adults as many of ours will be going on missions, turning 30 or leaving for school. We need more JAE. We haven't taken many pictures lately because we have only being doing survival stuff and it has been raining like crazy. We did go to Metro--like Costco only I can't read the labels and we don't know where anything is. It was raining so hard and we were so wet we just came home. We love hearing from home and you seem to know when to e-mail or Skype. We are beginning to love more our life here in Darmstadt. We certainly love the JAE we are just working on the language, finding, trying to figure out our personal ministry and how to approach the less active JAE. We love being able to feel the spirit of the gospel and to see the changes it makes in people's lives. We are so blessed.