The week at the Temple

This is a copy of the weekly update for my siblings and parents

Let’s see if I can condense this past week. I spent all of Monday getting Jared and I ready for our week with the youth of the stake at the Stake Youth Week. Our room still shows the signs of chaos created by all this. Anne and Alicia stayed with Gma & Gpa Dautel and had a wonderful time.

Saying good-bye to our girls. I hate that part of when we go anywhere with out them.

On Tuesday Jared, Richy, Robby and I started out on our 3 hour drive to the Frankfurt Temple. Well, we hit some major traffic that lasted for miles and miles and miles. So we got off the autobahn and used back road (thanks to the handy-dandy navigation system). Jared wanted to get back on as soon as possible thinking that it would be clear up sooner than the radio said. Well, I said that we should stay off. You have to understand, that when it comes to directions or things like that I am usually more right than Jared (even though he lived in Nürnberg his whole life). They didn’t listen to me, because it all looked clear, but guess what…within 2 minutes we had traffic again. He should learn to listen to me. Jared did decide to get off as soon as possible and we continued on our way.

I have to admit that the room Jared and I stayed in was definitely not what we had expected. I will put a picture with this. It was a sort of bunk bed type thing, with the top one in a sort loft type thing. Well, Jared just put the 2 mattresses together on the top part. I hated the ladder each time I had to use it.

Here you can get a feel for how bid our room was. In front of Jared is the bottom bed, folded up to try to get the mattresses together there. They worked better up top (the wood above Jared), so that is where they ended up.

At the temple we did a baptism session each day with the youth. I hadn’t done a session for 3 years. The adults are just there to help the youth and clean in the end. I realized how much I missed doing the actual baptisms. Perhaps, Beate will find some more ancestors that need to be baptized and then I can do it again.

Jared and I were in charge of a workshop for all the kids not old enough to go to seminary. We had them write down their testimonies and then videoed them for cds Jared is making about the temple week. They sure were a hand full.

These are the things I loved most about the Temple Week:
Having 4 days with just Jared and no kids
Getting a full nights sleep, no matter how late we went to bed and how early we got up
Being with my friends and fellow young mothers, who I don’t get to see very often.
Eating sneaking in Ben & Jerry’s ice cream to eat with our friend at night when everyone else was in bed.
Talking to my girls on the phone and having their vocabulary increased already
Being in the Temple so much
Being a leader and not a youth (I didn’t enjoy much being a youth at things like this; I just wanted to be a leader and help with planning, etc. Plus, I got along better with the leaders than the youth.

Discovering my patch of grey hair is back. Jared had pulled them all out months ago and I had mourned the loss since.

One night we had a variety show, whích Jared was the MC for. He had written a song for the youth to use for this year's theme. Jared, Richy and Robby sang it at the end of the show.

On the Thursday the youth and leaders were going to be gone all day so I took the opportunity to finish off my training as a temple worker. For those of you who don’t know, here in Germany each stake has several temple workers called from each ward. They help at the stake temple weeks and any other time we are there and they need us. Jared was called as one shortly after returning from his mission. Then when we got married they called me too. I got quite a bit of training done when I was pregnant with Anne, but because of the girls I was never able to get there again for a long enough time to finish everything. So I took this chance while I had it. I finished and even reviewed what I had done before. I loved having the opportunity to really concentrate on what happens in the temple, and think. To slow down and really internalize it all. I learned so much.

The girls had fun while we were gone. But they did get sort of sick. Poor Grandma and Grandpa Dautel had to deal with diahhrea and throwing up. I hope the girls are finally getting over it now.