Alle Jahre Wieder

Received December 3, 3012 I just want to say how much I love the German Christmas carols. There are many songs that we know in America too: O Tannenbaum (Oh Christmas Tree), Es ist ein Ros entsprungen (Lo how a rose er blooming), Stille Nacht (Silent Night). However, there are so many that I have learned this week. Since I bought a book of songs for the Christmas party (which is on Saturday) I have spent a little bit of time everyday not just learning the songs that I need to sing in the party, but also just exploring the world of song that has opened up to me. O Jesulein zart, Es kommt ein Schiff geladen, Macht hoch die Tür, Es wird scho glei dumpa, Leise rieselt der Schnee, etc. I think that it is amazing how many songs have been written in memory of the birth of Christ. The German people were then and still are (at least partially) a people that know how to celebrate Christmas and it all stems from their love for God and His Son. With the breaking of the dawn of the Christmas season we received more snow....yay. I woke up one morning and looked outside to see a nice thick coat of that white stuff from heaven laying neatly spread across the ground. Looking out at the snow from the inside is wonderful. Then you go out and it's freezing! It will get worse though. It's only been a few degrees (celcius) below zero so far, so we'll just have to wait and see what happens. It's just time to break out the coats, sweaters, long underwear, extra socks, scarves, and anything that gets you warm. It's too bad my ninja-like reflexes are slowed down by all this clothing. This week I really wanted to go to the Christmas market in Ravensburg for some reason. It was really cold already and pretty late and dark and we had planned to just eat dinner, but we went out just to check it out real quickly. I happened that there was a group of German Scouts (Pfadfinder) who had a booth there. As we were walking by a girl in the troop stopped us and we talked to her for a little while. I told her about how I did scouting in America and she recognized us from the bus the other day. I guess she had seen us and wondered what we were doing in Germany. We told her about the church and she seemed genuinely interested in finding out more. She took a card and said that she would look at the website for the church. I'm glad that things like that happen so often in Ravensburg. We can knock on a million doors and we don't find anybody that has interest but random instances like that happen to us all the time. Heavenly Father looks out for us to make sure that we don't get too discouraged. Well, that's all for now folks. We'll have plenty of time to talk about this stuff in a few weeks and I don't want to spend forever on the computer. Have a great week and smile, it does wonders. Tschüüüüüüüüüüüüüßßßßßßßß!!!!!