MY FAVORITE THING...WINDOWS, DOORS, AND SHADES!!

 Saturday, 19 October 2024

Seriously, my new favorite household thing are the windows/doors in our apartment so I thought I would briefly share about them. 

I'm sure they are available in the US, but I have not built or owned a home for a number of years now and I think these are amazing! So are some photos: 

So, above is a photo of the kitchen door to the little patio area outside. Below is a photo of that same door opened taken from the outside. 

Below, this same kitchen door in the photo below is now in the "venting" position. This allows the air in the apartment to "vent" to the outside, cooling off the inside, decreasing the chance of mold and mildew inside the apartment. These buildings are built so tight, that nothing escapes. We have come home from work to find that the apartment is so hot. 

Also, the bathroom can get very steamy so we just "vent" for about 10 min and all is well. 

The biggest thing is the windows do the same thing!!

Above is the window opened for cleaning! It's so easy! Plus, I can bend over and get the lower window (which does not open) cleaned as well.

Below is the same window in the "vent" position.

The other thing that is so cool for me, is the outside security curtains. I actually don't know if they are called that, but they certainly do keep us secure. These are on the outside of the windows and doors and are electronically lowered and raised by us inside at the push of a button. When they are down at night, it is so dark we have had to purchased night lights to put around the apt.

Anyway, I really love these windows and shades for our apartment.  I am curious if anyone I know has them in their homes. Let me know what you think.

TRAINING AND THE TEMPLE

 Friday, 18 October 2024 

After a few days of training I think our supervisor, David Schauperl, is confident that we will be able to remember everything we need to in order to accomplish this task. 

Above: David Schauperl with Ed and Nora

Above: David training Ed on the new machine which will be his. 

We already love the staff at the archive. (I would show pictures of them but I do not have their permission) We have our own room in the archive and work alone unless we have a question or they need to share information with us.  We have already built a relationship with Sylvia who is so fun. She is responsible to make sure we have trolleys stacked with the books we are to scan and that we don't run out of work. She is always cheery and likes to practice her English on us. She says we should only speak German to her and she will only speak English to us! Ha!  That only works one way! 

During training, David introduced us to two wonderful places to eat good German food. What is interesting is that both of these places seem to be owned by either Iranian or Turkish men who speak very good German and enough English for us to communicate with each other. 

Schnitzel Point in the market square downtown Detmold

Ed eating chicken schnitzel and potatoes with vegetables. Everything is very yummy. 

We also eat at this grill which we know will be open on Mondays. Most of the other restaurants are closed on Mondays so we know we can eat lunch at this place if we want. 

The Seval Grill has good food, chicken and lamb and excellent french fries. We have discovered that the fries are not very greasy here and most places (except the Burger King on our first day) have not disappointed us. 

We trained Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday and Thursday left in the morning for David to drive us to Frankfurt to pick up our vehicle from the FamilySearch pool. It was a beautiful morning and as we walked out of the apartment to get into David's car I saw a full rainbow! It was beautiful! I said something to Ed and he turned to me so I could take a photo.  If you look really close, you can see that the right side of the rainbow ends right on Ed's head.  I told him that he was my treasure, my "pot of gold". (I realized quickly that I needed to make sure I wasn't being wordly about my intended compliment.)

The three and a half hour drive was fun and uneventful except that David did get caught on camera speeding so he will have to deal with the ticket. He travels around so much, he was not the least bit concerned about it, but it was a lesson to me. 

W emade it to the Area office/FamilySearch complex in Frankfurt and met several couples there, some of whom will be doing the audits on our work when we send in the hard drive to them each week. We are not sure how many images we will be doing, but they will look at our first month or so to make sure our work is at the standard needed by the archive and FamilySearch. 

We got our car, although the person in charge of the vehicles was not there. We are driving a Hyundai. Not as nice as our Genesis, but it is a Hyundai so I am familiar with the placement of the instrument panel. That will be helpful so I don't worry about turning on/off lights, window washers, etc. because I will have to focus on the roads, the speed limits, etc.

We will not have trouble identifying our car: F=Frankfurt; FH=Family History.

We were sent on our way witht he address to the temple in our GPS so we could get there. We had already made reservations with patron housing for us to stay one night there which we realized later was a huge blessing for us.

The temple is only about a 10 minute drive from the Area Office. We made it quickly and found the temple, like so many others, in the middle of a residential area. It would be easy to miss if it was not known. The Church has done a great job of constructing housing around the temple for temple missionaries, patrons, and a lovely walking park around the grounds. One sign in German reads "Welcome to Temple Square". 

We parked and saw some missionaries coming out from the temple and greeted them. We ended up eating together at a wonderful place we walked to. (I saw a women in the parking lot and asked her if there was a good pace to eat closeby.  She told me about a little place and recommened Flammkuchen. She said it was her favoirte thing so I tried it!)

It was very good but I haven't found it any other place yet.

Above: Missionaries from the Frankfurt Mission although E/S Burke (next to Nora) are doing Humanitarian work for the entire Area.

Above: Flammkuchen - very large, thin pastry crust with leeks, spinach and salmon and some kind of light sauce. Excellent!!

Above: Patron and missionary housing

Above: The temple

Above: Nora & Ed before returning to Detmold

Above: Patron housing room 

The wonderful thing about this experience for us this time was that the building we were assigned to is the building that has a tunnel to the temple so you can dress in your white clothes and shoes, go through the tunnel and enter at the recommend desk. (Well, you actually enter at the baptistry, but you have to go up the stairs to the desk to get in. 

Today is my birthday and I got to be in the Frankfurt Temple with my sweetheart (who happened to forget that it was my birthday). I received many greetings from family and friends. Thank you so much.  It was a wonderful day. 

Above: Nora and Ed ready to go to the temple in their patron housing room

Above: Early morning sunrise from the temple grounds.

OUR FIRST VISIT TO CHURCH

 Sunday, 13 October 2024

We did not plan on making it to Church this week. But, on Saturday we received a phone call from a woman in the ward who told us that she would be coming to pick us up to take us to Church. This was welcome news because we thought that because we didn't have our car yet, we just would not be able to get to Church. It is a 45 +/-  minute drive from Detmold to Bielefeld and the public transportation is unreliable on Sundays and complicated to manage for newbies like us.

I did not have any idea who the woman was, but Elder Ermler from the Bielefeld Ward had told us that he would try to find people to give us a ride since there were a couple of members of the Ward who actually live in Detmold so we thought it was his doing. 

This morning a man showed up, announced that he was the husband of the woman who called us and he would be providing the ride to church. He turned to Ed and handed him the keys saying, “you will drive so you can learn”. Ed quickly told him that I was the family driver so I got the keys! 

This sweet man trusted me with his car. He climbed into the little back seat and gave me instructions/directions from there. Quite the experience but it was very informative for teaching me about the perils of driving here. Lots of challenges with signage, speed limits, narrow roads, and moveable cameras along the roads to record speeding and sending you a ticket...well actually, the mission office gets the ticket and notifies us but the Church pays the ticket promptly with the expectation that we will reimburse.

Half way to the Church building I realized the man whose car I was driving must be the Bishop of the Bielefeld Ward! 

Bishop Wagnitz and his wife, Doris,  invited us to their home for a meal and games after church. They had also invited three of the young members of the ward. It was delightful! Fortunately, everyone in this group spoke English.

After the delicious meal of German goulash, we played a board game, I think is called Dog. It required a lot of explanation but it ended up that Ed won!

Then I "got to" drive home. 

One of the interesting things that happened on that part of the day, was coming around a corner to see a vista of beautiful trees and I just exclaimed, "How beautiful!" The Bishop was quick to respond,   "Sister Moulder, you live in paradise" 

Yes, Bishop, we certainly do.

 

OUR NEW HOME IN DETMOLD, GERMANY

Sunday, 13 October 2024

On Thursday, 10 October 2024, Elder & Sister Young drove us to our apartment in Detmold. They had collected several boxes of household goods for us to use in our new apartment if we wanted. 

We had an adventuresome 3.5 hour trip south to Detmold. At one point the GPS took us to a blocked road shut down for construction, but it didn't show as a blocked road in Maps. The Young's have made the trip a number of times, so they were able to work around the glitch and got us to our destination, but I made a mental note of that problem since we would be totally relying on Maps to get us places once we have our car.

The apartment is very sparse so I thought I would just record the photos I took. I have shared that we knew there was no kitchen, but that the mission had rented the apartment, bought a kitchen set up from IKEA and have made arrangements with a wonderful member in Bielefeld Ward (30 min. away) to install everything we would need. 

Here are the photos I took when we first arrived: 

Left: View out the living room windows

Left: This is to be the kitchen area

Above: Elder Moulder looking through the boxes E/Sister Young gave us of household goods from other apartments.

 

Above: Elder Ermler (ward member who is a service missionary to help maintain apartments) installing lights so we have lights for tonight. 

This photo shows that Sis. Young supplied us with a few things in the bathroom, including new towel sets and some cleaning supplies. She was tenacious about getting the apartment clean for us to begin with. She and her husband are a force for sure. The are a great team assembling the IKEA kitchen set to help E. Ermler. They would not let us help at all saying that they have done this so often, they have a way that works best and fastest for them.

Nora, Sister & Elder Young (who are from Lindon, Utah), Ed

Kitchen coming together quickly.

So, we just started unpacking... 😉

This apartment is wonderful! There is so much space for storage in the apartment as well as in the downstairs areas. We have a washer and dryer and there are two closets (or Kellers), one outside in front of the covered parking spot and another inside in another room from the laundry room. Both of these lock so we are confident of their security.  E/S Young put together the bedroom closet space for us. It is plenty big for our needs for 18 months, plus two dressers in the bedroom and another in the bathroom.

We are very happy here. There is much to do to make it warm and workable as a home, but it will come together soon. E/S Young have a desk and a couch to bring to us in the next week or so. Beyond that, we will get anything else we need. Probably a TV and a printer. Those are two items we have planned on getting as we have in other missions. We then just leave them for the next senior couple or for the mission or local ward to have.

This is not Eagle Gate Apartment, but, it is NOT on State Street in downtown Salt Lake City! Granted, I don't get to look out the window and see Temple Square, but here is what I do get to see: 

Sunrise

and Sunsets (just up the street walking home from the bus stop)

(from my bedroom window)

We are in a little village (a suburb of Detmold) called Hiddesen which has many lovely homes, is very quiet, and has many winding, narrow streets and walking trails.

It is lovely. We have a bus that comes very close to our apartment and gets us quite close to the archive until we get our car. We are only about 3km, or 15 min. from the archive so we are set. 

Our first Saturday, we decided to walk around a little. The fall foliage was just beginning here so we had a wonderful walk. Who wouldn't want to be here? 😃

All in all.....we are very blessed to be here and to do this important work.

Our mission president told us that in Detmold we would be "in the wilderness". Well, I am happy to be wandering around here while we serve the Lord. 

WELCOME TO GERMANY!

 Saturday, 12 October 2024

We arrived on Tuesday later than expected due to slight airline delays. Our first experience with German culture was trying to get a cart at the baggage claim for our luggage. We watched others walk right up to the carts, insert a coin and free their previously chained cart to use. Someone watching us trying to figure it out said, "You need a coin!" 

We have no eruo coins, and we have too much baggage for us to haul easily...

Ed left me with the chained carts and our baggage to go in search for some way to get coins. Then, a sweet young German dad who had traveled on the same plane from the US came to me with a coin in his hand and said, "Here, we just came from San Francisco and we saw carts all over the place. This is why Germany does this; it's much better. It's this way at stores too." He smiled and extended his hand with the coin as Ed came back with an airport helper. I thanked the still smiling German traveler but said we were all good now. 

The airport helper had a "magic" key that unlocked the chains so we got two carts for our bags. We thanked him profusely and headed out the doors to the relief of the office couple, Elder and Sister Wulfenstein, who had been waiting around for our delayed flight to take us to the mission office. 

At the mission office, we signed a lot of papers required to get us registered in Germany, had other documents copied, learned that our car was in Frankfurt and would be delivered by our supervisor next week, ate a sandwich with the office couples (Elder and Sister Young joined us too), and learned about the miracle of our apartment which I will post later. 

While Elder Wulfenstein was driving us around, he kept constant instructions about driving in Germany, including describing the meaning of every traffic sign we came upon. Everything was coming at me so quickly, I became more and more nervous about driving here! I am the primary driver and I will be responsible to keep us safe and to not get tickets which Elder Wulfenstein has said in no uncertain terms is impossible...we will get tickets!!  

After my experience with one ticket in Belgium last year, I am so nervous about how many I will be responsible for. (With the Church owned cars, the Church receives the ticket in the mail at the mission office, pays it and then the office person sends the bill to the individual missionary to reimburse the Church.)

We then spent our first night in Germany at a hotel often used by the mission. 

The next morning our first priority was to buy a cell phone for use in Germany. The mission provides us with a SIM card and a phone plan, but our US phones don't take SIM cards. Using Google, we found a place withing walking distance and bought matching phones. 

I just thought it was hilarious that we came from the US and bought a cell phone for use in Germany from shop owned by a man from Turkey who spoke English and was very helpful!

We then headed to the mission office via taxi.

                                                Ed & Nora at Mission Office in Hamburg Germany