4/22/14 Elder Standring's Family in Frankfurt, Germany after a Choir trip--& HAPPY EASTER!

My Family was in Germany [after a high school choir Europe trip]! Haha, that's been a weird thought these past couple days. I won't be seeing them, but I'll be skyping on Mother's Day anyway.

This week my companion and I got kinda sick so we didn't reach nearly as many of our goals as we wanted to, but we're really trying to make some changes to this area that will also stay when other missionaries come, and that way it will end up being more helpful in the long run. We do quite a few street displays in Germany and the one we used a couple weeks ago looked a bit old, so we want to get those fixed up and up to date, and then we want to start a hometeaching-evening where the men in the ward come together on one night and do splits with the missionaries in the district so we can get a whole bunch of hometeaching visits done in one night, and then we also want to find how we can get young people more involved in researching their family history, because the family is super important in God's plan for us and that also leads to strengthening and connecting families in this life and the next one too. The idea with the Hometeaching night is also that the men start doing it on their own, too, and that will improve the the unity and strength of the ward here.

Here's the message sent from Standring family to Elder Standring on Easter Sunday from elsewhere in Germany!:

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: L Standring <lstndrng@gmail.com>Date: Sun, Apr 20, 2014 at 5:48 PM
Subject: Happy Easter from Frankfurt 2nd ward today!!
To: mark.standring@myldsmail.net
    Hey!! We love you and send Happy Easter love and wishes to you today from Frankfurt 2nd ward here in Germany!! (They meet at 2:00 in the afternoon....we tried to make it for Darmstadt meetings this morning as you recommended but our plane and other transportation issues were delayed...but we saw all these missionaries and send our love to you through them!--They all say they know you, and think you are great!    Dad also met up with another man here that also served at the same time as Dad in the Dusseldorf mission! Dad hadn't met him before but they were actually there in the same mission for a year! This other man was here today to start a tour of visiting his mission areas with his wife.  He had even brought pictures from his mission and found Dad's face in one of them! They are from South Jordan, Utah.
    We can get wifi in the church building here, but probably won't have it the rest of the day after we leave here, or tomorrow, so luckily we can send this to you from here, so you can have this for your P-day!
    By the way, the Ireland choir tour went great...and just finished up yesterday...and so we went to the London, England area and visited Warwick Castle and Stratford-upon-Avon (Shakespeare's birthplace and town), so that was great, too.
    Hopefully after this, we wanted to drive by the Mission Office to see where it is, and then the Frankfurt temple, and then we were planning to drive 4 hours and stay in Paris, then tomorrow afternoon or early evening we would be back in the Frankfurt area and staying overnight here Monday night. Tuesday will be London city sites, then Weds. to Utah for David's wedding and Garrett's graduation...hopefully we won't be overly exhausted for those momentous events! :)  

    Love you so much as we are sharing the same country for a short time and breathing the German air along with you! Love you, and Happy Easter!  Love you, Mom, Dad, Kira & Daniel :)

    P.S.--Here's another photo--of your siblings with Elders Bratsman and Olson! They are great! (In the other photo were also Elders Young and Arts)...

 

[Elder Standring's reply:  "I called Elder Bratsman the night before you guys flew in to tell him to look for you. He's a really, really good missionary. I first met him at a Zone Conference he came to because he was Assistant to the President."]