We spend long days in the office juggling tasks to keep all of our projects moving forward. We need divine help to keep all the balls in the air. Sometimes it feels like we are playing Whack-a Mole. We solve one issue only to have another arise. For instance, the tea bag machine arrived in Italy only for the NGO to realize that they needed a compressor to run it and they had orders to fill by Sept 15. So, into high gear to add a supplementary budget, get it approved, create a new vendor and request a payment, all the while sending approval letters for the projects approved last week, creating the legal documents, calls with infield couples, and preparing documents for our trip to Greece next week. That involves researching each NGO and looking at past projects and current requests. To paint a picture, at 6:00pm on Friday all three humanitarian couples were still busily working at our desks.
Our office members participated in a 4-lenses training session this week. Any guesses which one of us thrives on challenge, independence, spontaneity, and optimism and which one of us has preferences for organization, structure, and values hard-work and dependability? No surprises there. It was interesting to see where all our co-workers saw themselves.
We had the opportunity to go with Elder & Sister Burke (our Frankfurt Welfare Self-Relaince field couple) to visit one of our local projects to do a follow-up evaluation. This Caritas facility in Hanau reaches out to the homeless in their community in a variety of ways. They do social work in the streets. They provide a day room, hot meals, and a place to shower and receive mail. They have apartments for those who want to get off the street and move towards self-reliance. The donation here last January was winter shoes and coats.
Elder and Sister Muehlmann (Austria, Switzerland & Alpine, Germany Welfare Self-Relaince field couple) were in Frankfurt for training. We enjoyed an evening at the temple and dinner with them on Wednesday. We were able to attend the temple again on Saturday with Elder and Sister Muelleck and our Offenbach branch members. We feel so blessed that on both missions we have lived so close to temples! Temples are places where heaven and earth meet and our worship there fills us with peace.
We attended an organ concert on Saturday in the Frankfurt Dom Cathedral. Kaiserdom St Bartholomaus has a history dating back to the 7th century. Though never a bishop’s seat, its name Kaiserdom derives from its historical significance as the site to the coronation of Holy Roman Emperors between 1562-1792.
We had the sweet experience of being invited into the home of a family we minister to. In each of our church congregations’ members are assigned to families to be friends, to serve and care for each other. The Rocha-Villar family is from Argentina and Honduras so we enjoy practicing our Spanish when we are together. It was Joaquin’s birthday, so we celebrated with empanadas and alfajores. What a sweet, humble spirit they have in their home! We felt honored to be their guests. We hope our home has the same peaceful, welcoming spirit. That has always been our quest- to have our home be a refuge from the storms of the world, as the temple is.
Isaiah 4:6 “And there shall be a tabernacle for a shadow in the daytime from the heat, and for a place of refuge and for a covert from storm and from rain.”
With love, Elder & Sister Lamb (aka Ed & Debbie, Mom & Dad, Pop Pop & Tu Tu)
Lambs in Central Europe 