MEAL CONFERENCE

Our quarterly MEAL conference was held this week in Frankfurt. (MEAL standing for measure, evaluate, assess, and learn) Area couples joined us from Paris, Moldova, Uzbekistan, Montenegro, and Türkiye to review what we have learned from our evaluation visits during the last 3 months. We discussed the area strategy for 2026, focusing on sustainability, self-reliance, and member volunteering. We led discussions on beneficiary involvement, medical equipment, refugees, and emergency response. Other couples presented learnings from construction projects, food security, government relations, education & employment. We reviewed scalability, community outreach, local solutions, and local leader support. It was a great think tank and the spirit was present to teach us what we each needed to learn.

One night we had a lovely dinner in the park next to Bad Homburg Castle.

One evening we attended the temple together. We call these lovely ladies the C’s. (Celia from Spain and Coraline from France are church employees in the humanitarian department) They are so patient with us. We ask them dozens of questions every day. We counsel together, we laugh together, we work through frustrations together, and sometimes we cry together. We love them!

On another evening, we did a service project at one of our local projects. This is the immigrant women’s center that the church donated computers to. They had us come and create social media posts for an upcoming intercultural week in Frankfurt. They patiently taught us how to do so.

On Friday evening we showed Elder and Sister Ford downtown Frankfurt. They serve in Moldova. They own Beehive Cheese back home in Ogden. We have loved their cheese for years- it has been a joy to get to know them.