November Notables - part 1

 November started out with the holidays of "All Saints Day" on the 1st and "Day of the Dead" the next day. It is like our Memorial Day where they decorate the graves. They spend the month(s) before getting them ready for all to see! This is the beautiful Zentralfriedhof Graz Kirche or Central Cemetery Church in Graz. The cemetery is huge and is located just next to, and behind the church.

                           

We have not been inside the church yet but the outside architecture is amazing.

 We met our good friend Laurel Scofield there for a little tour of the cemetery. She wanted us to experience how pretty it is at this memorial time. Laurel is originally from Utah and is married to an Austrian. They live here in Graz and she is a member of our church. She and Klaus have become like family to us. 

 Not alot of grass around the graves- mainly all stone, with small planting areas within.

This section is the crematorium.

 At the entrance/parking lot of the church, it was like a carnival. Concession stands everywhere to buy treats, flowers, candles, wreaths, and other things. 

 I thought this was an interesting grave.

 Family members pay a ton of money to decorate the graves, and keep them looking good.

 Candles like these are lit and last for the two days of holiday. Every grave has at least two or three candles but most have more as you can see.

 The candles are beautiful at night. This grave had the most of any. It is the grave of the famous  Austiran race car driver Jochen Rindt from Graz. He is a hero to many here- died in 1970, only 28 years old, in a crash while preparing for another Grand Prix race. He had won 5 of the 10 total races, so far, and had enough points to win without racing any more (a bit hard to race after you die). His widow, the daughter of a famous Finnish racer, recieved the trophy for him. 

 After our District Meeting celebrating Elder McKinzie's birthday and eating some of my lemon Jello cheesecake dessert. 

 Some more street scenes of Graz.

 The pink building is where the Mühlberger's apartment is.

 Our dear friend Sister Eva Mühlberger and her brother who was visiting them. She wanted us to meet him, and Elder Tew had a great discussion with him.  He is not a member of  our church , but enjoyed talking about the Gospel so much, that she invited us to stay for lunch, which we made together, so they could talk longer. He was very open and receptive. He has allowed Eva to do the temple work for his wife and 2 children that died in an accident. He is the father of Amrei, who took us on a tour of Vienna with Lindsey & Bryan. We hope to see him again soon. He lives by Vienna.

 I love Autumn so much as you will see in this post.

 Maroni or chestnuts. "CHESTNUTS ROASTING IN A HOT OVEN" oh, I guess that is not the Christmas song. During waffle night Baldur baked a batch of chestnuts and they were warm and delicious for dessert! Normally they are roasted on a grill but this worked just great. The Austrians love them very much and they are a real treat. This is the time of year for them.

To bake or grill the Maroni, you first slice through the shell, so when they are hot you just peel the shell off. They have a different taste, soft and chewy. These were the best I have tasted but I could  only eat 3 or 4. 

 First timers Elders Mitchell and Plumb were not quite sure at first but after a few decided they liked them. They are good sports!

 We don't go out to dinner very often but we went to the Lindenwirt with Bro. Hanselmayer. His wife was in Rome and he needed company. This hotel/resturant is not far from where we both live. The food was delicious. This is my dinner, baked chicken on typical Austrian salad. Yum!

 I love the colors of  Autumn!!  

 Another cemetery we visited after church.

 This is the family grave where Bro. Immo Luschin is buried, who translated the Book of Mormon into German. He could speak 17 languages. We visit his wife regularly. One of their daughters- Astrid Krammer lives a few minutes from us back home!

 Beautiful view overlooking Graz. Too bad it was a hazy day.

 Our neighbor, Eve took this picture of the Tahlersee (Tahl Lake) on my walk with her. She is a fun and interesting person that we are just getting to know. So glad I could spend some girl time with her and her lovely dog that looks just like Lassy.

 Some of our YSAs on the front row, at THE PIANO GUYS concert in Vienna. It was incredible. 

 We were so excited to be there along with some of our peeps. Since we are such good friends of Jon Schmidt's cute parents, he worked magic for us to be there, with several tickets.

 Awesome!

 

The Great Wall of China, over 5,000 miles long, one of the 7 Wonders of the World (their goal is to perform at all 7), as they play Kung Fu Panda, classically, as requested by their kids!

 Breathtaking! 

 

Bringing joy into the lives of  people around the world, with fun music like at this rest home!

 If you get a chance to see them in concert be sure to take the opportunity. The best concert ever!!

All the Piano Guys having fun entertaining us with their final encore number!

 Jon arranged for us to have a "Meet and Greet" with them after the show. They are truly the nicest guys, all Mormon dads from Utah. They are on a concert tour in Europe till Thanksgiving. Then all throughout December till Christmas is their Christmas Tour in the USA.  Every show is sold out.  I don't know how they have such energy every night for such a power packed show but they are absolutely amazing. We love them so much.

 Steven Sharp Nelson, Elder Tew, Jon Schmidt, Sister Tew, Paul Anderson, and Al Van Der Beek.

 All the Peeps with the wonderful Piano Guys!  A memory to cherish. They were so generous and kind to us. They even gave me their brand new CD/DVD "Wonders". We have already used their beautiful music and DVD to show several people who we have visited. The "How Great Thous Art" video is so inspiring.  A huge Thank you!!

 I couldn't resist taking a pic of this fun colorful building just outside of the city limits. This is the back side but we saw people going in and out of it. I think the colors are huge tiles not bricks.

 This is another great neighbor and good friend Val. She lives in the apartment just behind us. I went on a walk/hike with her in the mountains near by. Everyone has a dog and Val has just aquired Solteri a couple months ago. Sweet dog. We gave Val a copy of the Book of Mormon last Easter.

 Beautiful Autumn trail.

 Val, Solteri, and I ended our adventure here by St. Martins Church. This building, next to it, is a convention center of sorts, now.

 The arch to enter the courtyard was a picture to take, since this is the year Rick and I were born. Notice the Styrish Panther.

 All the leaves are raked and ready for winter at our Graz church building at Eckertstrasse 136.

 Autumn at Schloss Eggenberg.

 There is a reason they call this time of year FALL!

Until next posting, I leave you with this pic of our German name tags. As of tomorrow November 16, we have lived in Graz, Austria exactly one year.  What a year this has been!

October's Outings

October began with a late night at Schloss Eggenberg which they open every so often to the public for free admittance to the grounds. You have to pay for a tour inside with candles. Kind of spooky and a good start for the Halloween month.

 October was a month of conferences. We loved being able to see most of the General Conference Sessions. We had a different schedule because of being 8 hours ahead of Salt Lake but we were so grateful for the opportunity to come together to view it at the church. We are in the English room, the German translation was held in the chapel. We had a couple of investigators here with us and they loved conference.

 We had a nice potluck lunch for our YSAs and missionaries in between the sessions.

 

 We took a P-day to drive to Klagenfurt where our friends the Wades are serving. They gave us a little tour of their city. It was great to be with them.

 This interesting sculpture is in the town square. It is the famous Lindworm or dragon. Notice the dragon slayer about to kill him. Such a nice fountain don't you think? Dates back centuries. Live action below!

 We thought this was an interesting fountain also. Here it is in real life:

                                 
                           
                             

 This is their fortress "Burg Hochosterwitz" that could never be conquered. It was impossible for enemies to get inside, due to 14 protected gates, with draw bridges, etc. We loved going there.

 Great pic of Elder Tew manning the cannon to protect us all!

 I wanted to buy one of these metal knights on the top shelf but they were so heavy that I worried about the weight flying home so I took this pic instead.

 Klagenfurt- Wörther See (lake) with live action below with the Wades:

 This statue is in the courtyard of the Albert Schweitzer Klinik. Looks just like him.

 We came to the Klinik to visit our dear friend Bro. Peter Hanselmayer who was having therapy for his Parkinsons disease. He is a faithful 50 year member of our church, who will be 80 soon.

 In front of our apartment building, with those gorgeous red fall leaves on our vine that is on our fence, and climbing! I love this time of year.

 Going to Salzburg to Zone Conference. Austria is the land of tunnels.

  We went The evening before to attend the 3 stake Jubilee Ball in celebration of the 25th Anniversary of the Salzburg Stake. There are five Senor Missionary Couples including President and Sister Kohler at the end of the table. 

 It was a wonderful Friday evening. See the nice decorations and cute face below:

They asked us to do a little floorshow at the break, so we brushed up on our BYU social dance moves, dressed up, and put on our masks to conceal our identity. How do you think we did? (j/k)

Our breakfast (typical Austrian) the next morning at the Hotel. Notice the green colored boiled eggs (they usually color them when they are hard-boiled, so you know they aren't raw- they must not know the spinning the egg test!). At Easter you see many bright, beautiful colored h.-b. eggs in the stores.

 Zone Conference was great! Pres. Kohler now combines 2 Zones so he doesn't have to travel so much in his busy schedule. That means we will no longer go to Vienna but drive the 3 hours to Salzburg. We don't mind, though, because all the scenery is so beautiful.

 President's presentations were so inspiring. 

 We have the best District. We love these missionaries!!

 As we were about to leave, we noticed that one of the missionaries had put this rose on our car. Ahhhhh!

 Graz pic (dead giveaway with the Schlossberg clock tower in the background on right).

 We walked past these street Opera performers. They were fabulous as you will hear:

 Another Conference. This one is our Senior Missionary Conference in Munich, Germany that we have been looking so forward to on Oct 16-18th. Loved it all.

 All attending including the Kohler kids, (Tanner and Erika)  and the two APs for the first day. We had a nice testimony meeting in the evening for a couple hours, and we were able to share also.

 We got to hear Elder and Sister Fox play their Alphorns again.

 A walking tour around the town square was great.

 Climbing up all 300 plus stairs in the tower of the oldest church in Munich was interesting.

 It was a great view though even if the day had some fog and rain showers.

 This guy has an interesting story. Apparently he was a goldsmith who was paid to make a gold chain for the King. When it was finished, he laid it on a the table, locked up the shop, just leaving the window upstairs open, and left for a few minutes for lunch. When he returned, the chain was gone. He told the king what happened, but the king accused him of selling or not making it and had him beheaded. Twelve years later the shop burned down and up in the rafters they found a birds nest with all kinds of sparkling objects in it. There was the gold chain! Magpies are attracted by shiny things, so one flew in and took the King's chain! Since nothing could be done to give the man's life back, the King had this monument built to pay tribute and honor him.

 The tomb of King Ludwig II, builder of many famous castles in Germany.

 President Kohler spoke to us and then Sister Kohler told us about the Mission Home and gave us all a tour. The home was built by the church about 57 years ago, and a journal is kept by all the Mission Presidents, telling of special experiences with visiting authorities, even President Monson!

 We also walked from the Mission Home to the Mission offices where we made our sack lunch to take with us on the drive home.

 Like I said before, I love this time of year.

 Some of our FHE peeps.  Ben (with his coat on his head) is meeting with the Elders and hopefully will be ready for baptism soon.

 Lunch after District Meeting. Sister Threlkeld showed her skills at frying chicken. Yumm.

 We attended a concert of the Haydn group of the Vienna Boys Choir. This is their new concert hall in Vienna. MuTh stands for Music/Theater.

 Our tickets and CD we bought.  It was also our Stake Conference this weekend but I got sick and could not attend so we had to return to Graz.  Bummer!

 Transfers!! Sister Threlkeld was transfered out and we received our new Golden Sister Bishop. She and Sister Pentz will make a great team. We are excited to get to know her better. She is fresh from the MTC. Both sisters are from Colorado Springs, CO and live in the same stake!

 Our four great Graz Missionaries. Elder Mitchell, Sister Pentz, Sister Bishop, and Elder Plumb.

 A few Halloween things adorn the front of the store but it is not celebrated too widely here.  Happy Halloween everyone!!

 I will leave you with this monthly update pic we received of our two newest grandbabies in "the picture chair". Jack David Sauter and Elliott Adam Tew. They are such good buddies already, just one month apart in age and 5 minutes drive in location. Soooo cute.

And two more little faces we see when we skype with Lindsey's two little girls, Myah and Reagan.  Myah is saying good night Gramma and Grampa because it is always our bedtime and their afternoon when we talk.