Busy weeks and days!

These past 2 weeks have been full of activities and events as we near our 1 month mark.  We have been privileged to attend 2 baptisms, a Zone Conference, Institute and help host an Open House at our ward/stake meetinghouse!  I will let the pictures help tell the story!

 

David (one of our Young Single Adults) was baptized after 4 years of attending and investigating the church.  It was a very happy day for him and all of us!

 

Dragana on the right (from Bosnia) was baptized last Saturday and she just glowed with happiness.  She is with Jenny (also one of our YSA) in this picture.

 

 

Zone Conference for missionaries serving in northern Berlin and surrounding areas.

 

 

Dinner for Institute

Preparing chicken, mushroom sauce for the pasta.

 

 Dinner for 38 hungry Young Single

adults   Pasta, Brötchen, and cake for dessert! 

 

 

Each year the city of Berlin has Lange Nacht der Religionen - The Long Night for Religion.  On this evening, Churches in the city are invited to participate by opening their doors for everyone to visit their church.  Of course we were happy to participate!  For the guests that came (about 20 people) a tour of the building was given and a short program was presented and refreshments were served.

 

Elder Mickelsen and I helped that evening by standing in front of our meetinghouse and inviting people to come in as they walked by.  We did this with the young elders and sisters and we distributed some church literature and enjoyed interacting with some of the people of Berlin! 

 

 

 Cleaning the Meetinghouse in preparation for the Open House

Missionaries enjoying some cake after their hard work!

 

 

 

 

 



Our District of Missionaries

This is our group of missionaries that serve with us in the Berlin - Tiergarten Ward and area.

We love these young elders and sisters and we will be meeting with them at least once a week for District meeting and teaching English classes together.  We had the elders over for lunch on Wednesday and we will have the sisters over for dinner soon.

                                         Sisters Wick & Keller    Elders Scholes, Dospil, Lee & Duncan

Our second week

We enjoyed a barbeque at the Mission Home in honor of a senior couple that had completed their 18 month mission serving in the Mission Office.

 

 

 

                                                        Our Host ad Hostess

This gathering gave us an opportunity to get to know the other senior couples that are serving in Berlin.

 

 Bruder Grüse - our Institute Director

 

Monday evening we had an interesting Family Home Evening with what is supposed to be the Young Single Adults.  As you can see, our group included a dog. 

We also had a newly wed couple and some over 30 guys.  We welcomed all and had a lesson followed by a "make your own sandwich" meal.

(We will have to work on the guidelines for attendance at YSA events.)  

We are learning to love those young people that we are getting acquainted with.

 

 



Our arrival!

                               This post should have come before the previous post BUT

                                                   I just got a copy of the photo!
                                                   (Thanks President Kosak!)
                                                    Our arrival - July 24, 2013
                                             (Pioneer Day and Evan's birthday!)

                                  This is the group of missionaries in our travel and arrival group!

                                               This photo was taken at the airport.

Wir sind in Deutschland! We are in Germany!

Grüße aus Berlin! Greetings from Berlin! We arrived in Berlin last Wednesday and were happy to have made a safe (if tiring) journey.  We were given a warm and enthusiastic welcome by our Mission President - President Kosak and his wife.  We traveled with a group of missionaries going to our mission and the Alpine Mission.

We are doing well!   It is VERY hot and humid here (record highs).  Nothing is air conditioned including our apartment and the church.  Our bishop determined that we would have only Sacrament Meeting and very short Relief Society and Priesthood Meetings due to the heat.  We met many members and young single adults.  Everyone has been very welcoming and friendly.  Our ward members and the Young Single Adults are truly an international mix of people.  They provide English and Spanish translations for the church meetings. We met people from China, Thailand, Angola, Columbia, Norway, the Philippines, Switzerland, Latvia, England and Bulgaria along with many from the USA and Canada.  The investigator from Latvia spoke no German or English so I did my best to welcome her and speak with her in Russian.

 

 The Zone Leaders came to our apartment after church to help us get connected to the Internet (Bless them!).  We have spent the last couple of days getting moved in and cleaning and fixing up our apartment.  Tomorrow we will meet with the CES advisor and learn more about what our assignment will be.  We are in charge of the YSA Home Evening tomorrow night and we need to introduce ourselves and provide some food.  Our group is small now during summer but the numbers will rise to 60-80 when school starts - our YSA Institute program is the largest in Germany.  We will have district meeting with the elders and sisters in our district on Wednesday and a ward potluck social on Friday evening.  I believe that Institute (with the meal afterwards) will be on Thursday evening.  Saturday evening we will be in charge of English classes.  The elders and sisters will also be teaching.  We have been asked to speak in sacrament meeting in 2 weeks so our schedule is filling up.  We look forward to getting to know our ward members the missionaries and of course all of the young single adults 

We are trying our best to learn some German but it is too easy to revert back to Russian when we try to have a conversation with someone and we can't remember or don't know the German word.  While tutoring at the MTC, my tutor told me I spoke German with a Russian accent.  We will keep working and do our best to learn this new language!

 

We took some pictures of our apartment here.  We have spent the past few days cleaning and getting moved in.  I knew it was going to be a good place when I saw the hydrangeas in the courtyard!  I love hydrangeas- they are my favorite flower! 



 

Here is Elder Mickelsen in our living room/study

 

 Our small but efficient kitchen

 Our bathroom/laundry room

 

Our bedroom

 

 Our pantry/storage room

Our apartment is small but it has everything we need and best of all, it is only a 5 minute walk to the church which has the Institute center in it!

Life is good (maybe a little hot) but cooler days are ahead!

 

Auf Wiedersehen!

We finally received our mission call!

After trying to wait patiently for 5 weeks - on Friday, June 7th we received our call to serve in the Germany Berlin Mission!  We are happy and excited to do missionary work in this part of the world!  We know our new mission president from working with him while serving our missions in Russia.  President Kosak was the Church Education Director for the Europe East Area before his call to serve as Mission President.  We look forward to serving under his direction!  Our call is to work with local leaders, members and the young single adults.  We report to the MTC in Provo on July 22nd - so we will need to get ready quickly!  We are scheduled to receive some language training in German before we go.  It would be nice to know and speak a few words and be able to read signs, sing hymns and such!

 

  We are still serving at the MTC and we are not certain when they will release us.  This Tuesday will be the first Devotional (special meeting held each week with a general authority speaker) to be held at the Marriot Center.  This will be a new experience and we are looking forward to it! 

 

Friday evening our Utah children and grandchildren were assembled in our family room and each one made a guess of where they thought we would be called.  Then we phoned Jessica & Adam,  Conrad & Hailey and James and the packet was opened and the call from the prophet was read aloud.   

 I was on the phone with Conrad!

Opening a mission call is a happy experience!

Germany here we come!

 

The cousins played together while the adults talked and we then enjoyed root beer floats.

 

With all the excitememnt, I didn't get many pictures of our group but here are the ones I did take!

Baby Evelyn

 Evan, Kelly and Ruby

 Sam, Evelyn and Jon

Lillian and Ruby

Lillian worked with Ruby and she stood alone for the first time!  She was so proud of herself!

 

 

Conrad graduates law school! And a trip to the Grand Canyon!

 

 

 

May 18th W. Conrad Mickelsen received his Doctor of Jurisprudence from

The Phoenix School of Law!

W. Conrad Mickelsen JD

 

We are so proud of all of his hard work and long hours of study and research papers and more study and more papers...

 

Hailey deserves congratulations and credit also for supporting him in this quest!

She spent many long, lonely evenings while Conrad studied at the library.

 

Here he is receiving his hood.

 



Happy to receive his diploma - but - the study isn't over yet.  He now begins his long preparations to take the BAR exam in July.

 

Hal and I traveled to Phoenix to celebrate this event (we wouldn't have missed it for anything!).  We enjoyed going to dinner and spending time with Hailey and Conrad.  To celebrate the event we took them to Ruth's Chris Steakhouse for a most delicious meal.  Conrad enjoyed a well deserved filet mignon and lobster tail.  We all ate way too much but the food was delicious!  Of course I forgot to take a picture - I think I was too busy eating to think about it!

 

We went to church with them on Sunday (a very welcoming and friendly ward) and then Monday morning we went together to the Grand Canyon.  Hal and Hailey and Conrad had never been there and I visited it as a child - so it was time to go and enjoy the beauty and splendor.  We were blessed with an absolutely perfect day - not too hot and not too cold.  The crowds of visitors were not too great and we loved seeing this natural wonder.

I'm afraid that pictures don't do justice to the beauty and colors we saw in the canyon.

We finished our tour of the canyon and viewed an IMAX presentation.

We then drove to Flagstaff and had a delicious dinner together at a local restaurant and then spent the night in Flagstaff.

The next morning Hal and I left for home and Hailey and Conrad returned to Phoenix.  We loved this opportunity to spend time with them!