Home, sweet Vienna

Ahhhh man.  Our trip is over.  Today was our last day in Germany!  We got to sleep in a little...the bus left at 9.  

So a little bit about East Germany...it suffered during the war, from about 1930-1950.  Again, it was under Soviet rule, and socialism caused the buildings to get in this horrible condition...every few houses are abandoned and falling apart.  We were driving through most of the time, and so I couldn't really get any pictures.  This next story shows some though:

We drove to this site: the branch of the church out here had their first meetings in this building!  President Monson and Uchtdorf came here way back when...like 1968 I wanna say.  From the pulpit in that room full of garbagey stuff (the pulpit is now in a museum in Salt Lake), President Monson (then he was one of the 12) prophesied that if the saints in East Germany were faithful and kept all the commandments, they would receive all the blessings that the saints in the United States enjoy...for example a better meeting house.  This building is an example of the horrible conditions some places are abandoned.

After we checked that out, we went and got to go into their current meeting house.  We sang some hymns in German, and the branch president told us some stories about when President Monson was there again.

where the sign used to be... "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints"

their meeting house today!

the branch president telling us stories

We got some lunch in there somewhere...lunch at a grocery store!  As always.  I grabbed some baby carrots, a yogurt, a pretzel roll, a chocolate bar, and two pastries of course.  This picture is one of them...I can't remember the name but it was huge and SO FLAKEY and it had crunchy sweet crumb stuff on top.  No fruit.  Any ideas dad? And the other was a bienenstich which I ate too quick to photograph.

The rest of the day was just DRIVING.

We drove right through Prague and didn't stop.  So sad.

One rest stop...this huge beautiful field was in front of us.  Stephanie and Monika just RAN across it so fast.  The rest of us just stood on the edge and watched them get smaller and smaller running up the mountain.  We joked that we were watching two giraffes or gazelles in the wild, and we filmed a "National Geographic" clip with narration of the wild animals.  Hahahah they're weirdos.

We got home to Vienna (yes, this is home) at 8:15 ish.  We were dropped off at the Minert's apartment, where we all got our mail for the past week and a half, including Alicia's MISSION CALL!  She got called to Pocatello, Idaho!!  Weeeeeeeeee!!

HOME!!!! We have lots of laundry for Frau Feest to do.  Hopefully it doesn't kill her hahaha.  A shower was good, and we get to sleep in tomorrow as long as we want because conference doesn's tart till 2pm for us!