A Whole New World

What a difference a couple of months make. Our world has changed dramatically. Nothing looks the same; starting from inside of our apartment to life outside.

Part I: Our new world inside

When we first walked into our apartment and looked around we thought, Wow! This place needs some serious attention. The setting is lovely and the location is almost ideal but we knew that we should make some efforts to see that it got deep-cleaned and/or updated. It was crying out for help. Senior Missionary couples that live here do a lot of cooking for large groups. The kitchen had practically no preparation areas or room to store anything. The sink was tiny and water splashed out all over the floor and ran down the walls. There was only one electrical outlet and it was in a very awkward spot. We truly believe that "Cleanliness is next to Godliness" and let's just say it was challenging to feel the spirit in such an environment.  We wanted this apartment to feel welcoming and comfortable and orderly, not only for us but for the hopefully many senior couples that will come here to serve after we leave. Here is the story of our remodeling journey.

The apartment looked like this when we first arrived. What you can't see is how deep-down dirty and worn everything really was.

Our entire prep area

  Five and a half months after we arrived, we were finally able to start the renovation.                                                                           

With the help of President Frenkel, a counselor in the Frankfurt Germany Mission Presidency, and our wonderful young missionaries, we painted the entire apartment. What an amazing difference.

We had a scruffy little cupboard at the end of our hallway just outside the kitchen, the contents of which we had to remove when they put in the new flooring.

Every item of furniture in our apartment had to be moved several times during the course of the remodel. Everything in the living room was moved into our bedroom and storage room for the new flooring install. Then everything in our bedroom and storage room had to be moved into the living room for the install there. That's a whole lot of furniture moving. We can never thank the young elders enough for all the help they gave us.

Crazy times

Would you hire these guys?

Piles of packaging took many trips to the church's dumpster and our apartment trash cans over the course of several weeks. We still have some left.

Catching some ZZZ's wherever I can. I'm kind of OCD when it comes to disorganization and clutter. Sometimes you just gotta shut down.

The new flooring made such a difference. Everything looks clean and fresh:-) Time to de-clutter: We threw away or donated lots of unneeded items. Check it out!:

On to the kitchen. We had to tear out all the old, dilapidated, existing cabinetry, then paint the walls. Last was putting down the new flooring before we put in our new appliances, cabinets, cupboards and shelves. Luckily we have just the man for the job.

Old electrical and plumbing system. Those are vintage 1950's fuses.

We also had to upgrade the entire electrical system...not enough juice for all our new appliances. We used to shut off all the lights in order to run the vacuum. It took a month to get all the bids and approvals we needed. Unfortunately, this is what the electrician left in his wake. So much for German craftsmanship.

Electricians here don't fill in or patch the holes, gouges and channels that they leave behind-for that you need a wall-patch guy. Then you need a texture guy to make it look like the former wall-which we couldn't find. Luckily the new cupboards and cabinets covered up most of these spots. At this point we just painted over everything. Finally, we could start installing the new kitchen:-)

Hee:-)

We were so thankful that President Frenkel drove again down from Frankfurt to help install the new kitchen. He has serious skills!

M getting ready to hang the new cupboards

And finally, the (almost) end result:-) Sehr besser, Ja?

                                                          
Part II: Our new outside world

In previous blogs I outlined our difficulty in trying to obtain visas. After being here for seven months, we're still trying:-(  We were having such a difficult time, that the church hired a German law firm to help. All the needed paperwork has been submitted, and we are waiting for an appointment to be sent to us to come and pick our Visas up at the City Offices. Without visas we cannot get German drivers licenses. Our California drivers licenses were only good for 6 months, which has come and gone, so no more driving for us! We gave turned the car over to the Zone Leaders.

They have been so good about taking us shopping for the food we buy each week for the Institute dinners, also transport us and the dinners we cook to Institute. They also take us on errands that we can't get to on trams, trains, U-bahns or buses. Oh, and lots of walking. Lots.

We are now taking public transportation to just about everywhere we need to go. It's a new world for us. But its better in many ways. The best thing is that we don't need to worry about finding parking places! And we don't have to worry about traffic jams. And the gas bill went from > 250 Euro a month to zero. But we have no air conditioning. Last week there were three days of Hades, weather wise. It was in the high 90s here. With 70+% humidity it's awful! I don't do well in extreme heat and humidity. I sort of melt. In 15 minutes, I look like I just got out of the shower, dripping wet. We are also seeing things that we have never noticed before while driving in our car. Another downside is that we cannot travel to wards that we should be visiting on Sundays. We're hoping that somehow we will figure that out too. We're hoping to find a way to eventually get driver's licenses. We'll see. The Lord takes pretty good care of us, and this will get resolved too.

As missionaries we have P-Days on Monday, but we have rarely done any P-day sight-seeing because we seem to stay so busy. A couple of weeks ago however, we walked a few blocks over to our own Nurnberg Castle to look around. It is an amazing place. Berg means hill in German and this castle was built on a hill. We had a great time walking around and exploring it.

Entrance to Castle Nurnberg

Exiting Castle Nurnberg

Part of beautiful courtyard

Very tall tower just inside the entrance. We see this every day from all over the city. The castle is right across the street from us.

Looking from the bottom of the tower up.

For some reason, I let M talk me into going up to the top. I did a lot of clinging to the bannisters.

Still a long way to go.

The views from the top were breathtaking. Our apartment is just to the left of the pointy red roof on the right.

The city of Nurnberg below.

It is amazing how they built this medieval castle right into and around the rock.

Gotta climb!

Beautiful old castle entrance door.

Here we are at the Frankfurt Temple with M's sister and brother in law, Elder and Sister Lott.They have been serving in the Alpine German speaking mission, the mission just to the south of us. This would be the last time we saw them before they returned home.

It was so good to spend some time with them. We had a good long visit on the way up and back to the temple, as there were lots of traffic delays. Breakfast choices were from the bakery there. There are thousands of these little shops all over Germany. I don't know how I'm going to survive without when we return home! Aufwiedersehen, Lotts. We miss you♥

We were so happy to have some dear friends from home take time out of their whirlwind tour of Europe to spend  a little time with us in Nurnberg. We walked around the Altstadt and had  a great German dinner in the Albrect Durer restaurant right next to Castle Nurnberg.

 Eis for dessert. Eis cafes are everywhere here. 1.20 Euro (about $1.30) for a big scoop.

We walked around the Altstadt and paused on our favorite bridge over the river Pegnitz that runs through the city.

Next morning, Clarkes came along with us to the church to help make and serve breakfast for the missionaries in our district. It's been a tradition that we do this every six weeks on the days of  "Transfer Calls". We had a great breakfast but then found out that we would be losing three of our six ward missionaries to transfers. Our mission had to eliminate 5 companionships, including one in Nurnberg, because there were not enough incoming missionaries to replace them:-(  Our District Leader also was leaving to go home at the end of his mission.

Here are our "leavers". Elders Kitchen, Kelson, and Johnson and Sister Bray. Oh how we will miss them! We come to love each one like our own kids. They are all outstanding, faithful and hardworking missionaries-some of the best people we have ever known.

"The District"-Elders Moore, Arts, Johnson, Kelson, Kitchen, Hart and Ninow and Sisters Bray and Hyatt.

We always enjoy teaching the new member lessons to our dear friends, the Adamus. This evening Precious made us our favorite African meal- Egusi Soup and Fufu. I love how everyone sits around the table and eats with their hands and fingers. It's beyond delicious!

Fufu is steamed potato puree. You pull off pieces and eat it with the Egusi, which contains spicy cooked pieces of fish and beef, covered with some type of dried and ground melon seeds. Pumpkin, maybe.

Mmmmmm....Egusi Soup

June was a great month for getting visitors. The week before the Clarkes came and left, my cousins from Texas stopped in for a quick one day visit at the end of their Great European Adventure. We hadn't seen each other for decades, so it was a treat to be able to get caught up with each other. For family members- Richard is my cousin on my dad's side of the family. Do you see any resemblance to anyone else you know?

Richard and Sally Nicholls.

Amazing street display chalk art painting by Sister Hyatt!

Little kids wanted to try their hand at chalk art, so Sister Hyatt very drew two little boxes in which they could sketch. Isn't she celver?

 Great job, Sister Hyatt!

Next to the street display is a sculpture representing marriage. I find it quite ironic having our vision and this artist's vision of marriage standing so close together. Ours is a vision of eternal happiness with our families juxtaposed with this nightmare from which one only wants to escape.

And speaking of odd sights.......

We saw this character set up his little stool and proceed to perch himself atop it. He didn't move until someone came by to have a picture taken with him. For a donation in the box. Folks would sit on the bar in front of his toes and he would scratch their heads with his long pointy fingernails. Okaaaay........

So why are you?

We aren't really sure what is behind this trapdoor but have decided against investigating.

We just discovered a few weeks ago that Beethoven resides right in our very own 'hood. Elder Hart started getting chummy, as he is a huge fan of the old guy.

Of course, the highlights of our mission are the wonderful people we work with. And especially the baptisms. Last month, we were able to attend the baptism of Joris, pictured here with the sister missionaries who taught him, and his girlfriend, Katya. It is such a joy to see the light that goes on when people learn that they have a Father in Heaven that loves them and a Savior who has made it possible for them to return to Him. The knowledge that they can pray to Him and He will answer brings them such peace and happiness. I love this gospel with all my heart♥

Back in the good old days when we still had our car, we were able to visit other wards in our Stake on various Sundays. Every third Sunday, we attended the ward in Feucht, as Elder Hart was their High Council representative. It was really good timing, because this ward always has a 'Linger-Longer' pot-luck dinner after church on the third Sunday of the month. It's a great time to visit and socialize. We love the members of this wonderful little ward.

The last Sunday we were able to attended, the two Sister missionaries, Sisters Hall and Eden, wore their dirndls. They looked so beautiful in them I just had to get a picture. If I can lose 40 pounds before I go home, I am getting one! And I want Elder Hart to get lederhosen...

Kids just gotta have fun! This activity was quite popular with the younger set.

As missionaries we are finding that we are involved in many different activities. When people ask us what we do, we cannot say that there is just one thing. The great thing about being a Senior Missionary is that it is pretty much up to us what we feel we need to do-and there are so many! Along with our Young Single Adult responsibilities, we pray constantly to find people we can help.

Last Saturday-the 4th of July, our ward held its annual Sommerfest. It was one of those aforementioned unbearably hot days. We had an outdoor Bar-B-Que, with lunch at 12:30 pm- pretty much the hottest part of the day. I have to say, I was not the only one wringing wet. In spite of the heat it was a wonderful party- the first that our ward has had since we've been here. Some inspired soul brought two kiddie pools. One, the kiddies actually played in, and in the second, several of us sat around it with our feet in the water. Wunderlich!

The Bishop was such a good sport for letting his daughter and her friends poor water all over him. If I hadn't been in a dress, I would have loved having it be poured over me!

I only got up and out to take these pictures.

Happy Birthday to our lovely daughter, Erin Kathleen Hart Beaman, on June 9.
Happy 8th Birthday to our wonderful grandson, Wyatt Beaman, on June 20. Also Congratulations on your upcoming baptism on July 11. We so wish we could be there with you!
Happy 6th Birthday to our sweet grandson, Micah Daniel Beaman, on July 13.
Happy 10th Birthday to our adorable granddaughter, Ava Miller, on July 15.
Happy Birthday to my much loved sister, Mimi Monson, on July 19.

If you have to read all the way to this point, you are a hardy soul! I'll try to include only one month's worth of happenings in my next blog.

What a privilege it is to be serving as missionaries in the Germany Frankfurt Mission. We have had so many remarkable experiences and have been able to meet so many wonderful people. We feel that we have been blessed beyond measure. We really do see miracles every single day! It is such a blessing to be able to serve the Lord and his children here on earth. Words cannot express what a joy it has been to see the blessings of the gospel come into the lives of so many. We have truly seen lives change for the better.

We love you all and are so thankful for your love and prayers.

Elder Michael and Sister Renee Hart