John & Leesa Dupree--Alpine German-speaking Mission

         Thanksgiving and Christmas on a mission are very special, indeed. We've made a lot of new Facebook friends, several of which are senior couples who have since been released. One, in fact, Kathey Mackay, is pretty much directly responsible for the fact that I own a pair of lederhosen. I was hesitant, anticipating untold ridicule from our children, but she challenged me openly, posting, "Oh, the worst thing that can happen to you is that somebody will hand you a tuba!" The inevitable result:     A more somber conclusion is the overall impression I get that while the couples are overjoyed to be reunited with their families (as we certainly will be), they also sorely miss the friends and places they experienced on their missions. Leesa and I have been so completely accepted by the members of the Freiburg ward, the young missionaries, the other senior couples in the mission, and both our mission presidents and their wives, that we are led to two in...

      It has been six weeks since our last post, and while in that time we've been trying to do our jobs, there has been time for an outing and fun with the missionaries and members in the Freiburg ward.     After August (universal time for vacations in Europe), we started in again feeding the Young Adults every Wednesday after their Institute class. Now that everybody's back to work, we have a much better turnout, usually about 15 or so. (from L to R, Joshua Winterhalder, brothers Corvin, Lucian, & Victor Voßler, Louise (Corvin's bride of but five weeks), David Merkle, and Anthony Gastañadui-Gutierrez, who is from Peru) (Sister Rachel Weber, Bethan Hoggan, Louise and Corvin Voßler, Sister Makenna Kunz, Anthony, and Elder Chang)     On our way out to a small village east of Freiburg to visit a member having a birthday, we stopped by our favorite fruit stand to pick up a couple of pumpkins for Young Adult carving that night. Leesa and I were amazed ...

      A number of you, including my sister-in-law, JoAnn, have questioned our commitment to actually working here in Freiburg. We post a lot of pictures of places we've been, sights we've seen, and we've been (jokingly) accused of being on vacation out here, and not doing much in the way of real missionary work. All I have to say in our defense is that this post will do nothing to disprove any of those allegations.     August is THE month for vacations here in Germany. There are lots of cars towing trailers and lots of those rented motor homes clogging the roads all through southern Germany and Switzerland. Friends of ours here have taken off to Italy, the Balearic Islands (Mallorca, Menorca, and Ibiza, vacation islands in the Mediterranean belonging to Spain), and even the Maldives. This is an island nation off the southwestern tip of India, and is becoming quite popular.     As far as we're concerned, our prime responsibility is to feed the Young Adu...

      Leesa and I are hitting our stride here in Freiburg. We've found our way around, gotten acquainted with the Church members fairly well, and put on a lot of meals for folks, and Leesa has been getting a lot of knitting done. One of her key projects is the knitting of small washcloths in the shape of hearts, and giving them as small gifts. (Heart in progress)     In addition, she's come up with the idea of making gifts of them, along with chocolate bars, to our friends here on their birthdays. Which brings us to the next subject, going out to the birthday folks where they live. The Freiburg ward takes in a lot of territory (rough estimate: 400-500 square kilometers), and a lot of the members live in pretty rural areas.      Our first foray into presenting the birthday gifts took us out of town a fair piece, and along the way, we were rewarded with some absolutely gorgeous views of the Black Forest. (East of Freiburg in St. Märgen)   ...