Temple Trip

This week is our Temple week for our mission. Temple trips in Europe are a really great time for the members, they look forward to this trip all year long, because this is the only way that they get to go.  Our Temple is the Frankfurt Germany Temple, so our members all met here in Zagreb and got on a bus at 8:00am Monday morning and arrive in Germany 9:00pm that evening.  Our Serbian members rode the train up to Zagreb the night before, so they got on the bus Sunday night at 10:00pm and got into Zagreb at 5:00am, so their trip to the Temple was a very long trip.  The family we picked up at the train station from Serbia had not been to the temple since 2001, they were so sweet, I just fell in love with them.  None of the Serbians had every seen a church building before and just walked through our building in awe the whole morning as we waited for the bus to come.  We feed them some breakfast and two of the girls played the piano for us and sang, it was very nice.
 This is a picture of one of our young single adults, I just love her, she is the only member in her family, so she adopts the missionaries as her family.   And she is one of my best institute students.

These are our young people from Osijek and they are such great missionaries.  The girl to my left has been in a wheel chair, but has been in the hospital getting some physical therapy so she can stand in the baptism font, this will be all of their first times to see a temple.

Here is a picture of the members who rode the bus, they are from Croatia, Bosnia, and Serbia, there are 48 of them that rode the bus.  Our total count of members going to the temple from our mission was 120, which is great because we only have 187 active members in our whole mission!

This is a picture of all the youth that went, aren't they great!  It is so hard for many of them because they are the only members in their families, the mission and the gospel blesses their lives and gives them opportunities they would never ever have without the Church in their lives.  We really love the people here and are so thankful for each of them and the wonderful examples of commitment and devotion they are to all of us that have it so easy and so good in America.

We finally got everyone on the bus and they are almost ready to go, I was to happy for them because I know how much the Temple blesses lives and strengthens you. When they enter the House of the Lord they will feel the Spirit so strong and the Spirit will let them know that they are children of a loving Heavenly Father and this will bring peace into their hearts.  This trip to the Temple sustains them and helps them to live the gospel and stay true to their baptismal covenants.
We also had 21 members going to receive their Patriarchal Blessings!  I am excited for them, but feel sorry for the Patriarch, that's a lot of blessings to do in one week!

from carrie with love