A fun week with many changed plans and directions, but as always it all turns out well in the end. The learning opportunities and surprises make up for the temporary frustration. One of our surprises was this view of the Statue of Liberty as we entered into the city of Colmar, France.
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| View on Roundabout as you enter into Colmar, France |
The beginning of our week included our senior missionary family home evening. This evening we were treated with a presentation from Elder Done, a senior missionary medical advisor. Elder Done has lived for over 7 years in Saudi Arabia and while there was able to help discover Lehi's trail to the red sea. His presentation was fascinating as he described the terrain and landmarks along the way that coincide with the writings in the Book of Mormon. Of course, none of this could have been known to Joseph Smith in 1830, and it isn't the basis for our testimony, but it is truly fascinating. This was part 1, as he only got us to the Valley of Lemuel with the River Laman. The rest will come at a future opportunity.
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| Elder Done presenting about the River of Laman |
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| Actual photos of the River in Saudi Arabia that flows continuously, a miracle all by itself |
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| Some desserts that were typical of that time, including dates, which are one of my favorites |
On Tuesday, Sister Rueckert made Strawberry jam in her German class. We believe that we probably now have enough jam to last us the rest of our mission.
We continued meeting with our senior missionaries by Zoom on Monday and Tuesday, talking to missionaries from Croatia, Manchester England, Italy, Birmingham England, France and from Scotland. We were also able to get in our German classes on Tuesday afternoon, Tuesday evening and Wednesday morning. We also finished the Education for Better Work self-reliance group on Wednesday morning.
On Tuesday morning I received a phone call asking that I help the Brazilian family that recently moved back to Germany. They were moving into a new government living accommodation, at least for the two individuals who now have German passports. I was asked to extend the hotel stay for the remaining individuals and help the others get to their new location. We were able to fit this into our schedule, although in the end, Sister Rueckert did the video conference with our couple in France without me. I ended up being the moving company for this wonderful family. All of their luggage barely fit into our car, but in the end it all worked out. The photos below are of Veronica and her daughter Annalice. They have achieved German citizenship due to Veronica's father being German.
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| At the door of their new building |
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| Finally inside their new apartment |
This week was our last German holiday for several months and we wanted to take the opportunity to go to the Swiss Temple before our scheduled self-reliance visit in Strasbourg, France. The holiday was on Thursday and many employees and missionaries chose to extend the holiday to Friday on this week. We had made a commitment to feed the sister missionaries on Thursday night, so we made plans to feed them early and then drive nearly to the Swiss temple so that we could spend Friday in the temple.
We would need to return to Strasbourg, France on Saturday to participate in a scheduled self-reliance activity. Since Strasbourg was half way to the Swiss temple, it seemed to make good sense. We made plans accordingly and reserved a hotel room for Thursday and Friday evenings. When we went home teaching on Wednesday evening to Elder and Sister Bateson, we shared our plans and Elder Bateson told us that he thought that the temple was closed for maintenance. He was right, fortunately there was still time to cancel the hotel reservation and make other plans.
We had originally thought it would be good to do some family history work near Strasbourg, since some of the ancestors on my mother's side came from this region. However, in the past two weeks, I have been able to find additional information about several of my ancestors, which has been a great blessing. In fact on Wednesday night, while checking out the Juassi line that came from France, I found that the wife of Joseph Juassi who had immigrated to Canada, Barbara Burkhardt, had her birthplace in the same region. I was able to find her birth records and the marriage records of her parents. This was a great find, that was an unexpected blessing in the research that I was doing.
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| Birth record of Barbe Bourghard in Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines in 1808 |
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| Marriage record of Barbe Bourghard's parents in 1804 |
This brought a second line that I have been able to extend through on-line records from the Alsace Lorraine region of France. However, the on-line records for the most part are missing prior to 1792, so there is still work to be done. I had just received an email from the Bas-Rhin district that all available records are on-line and others are not available. However, I felt that my Jaussi ancestors, Jean Jaussi and Anna Gasser were from the Haut-Rhin region, which had their archives in Colmar, France. So with our temple plans cancelled, we chose to wait until Friday morning to leave home and then to drive straight to Colmar and spend the day seeing what we could see in the archive. By the way, the Sister missionaries ended up cancelling on us, due to a sister going home the next day. We ended up sending food home with the Elders from the mission office.
When we arrived in Colmar, we were surprised to see this statue as we entered the city. The statue of liberty was designed by Auguste Bartholdi who was native to Colmar, France
All of the cities in the region have pretty impressive displays in the centers of their roundabouts. The following was from the next roundabout, identifying Colmar as the Wine capital of the Alsace region.
When we finally arrived at the archive, we found that they did have many microfilms of parishes in the vicinity from the early 1700s and before, so it turned out to be a good choice to visit. However, we were looking for a needle in a haystack. We began looking through several rolls of microfilm for births of Jaussi or Gasser in that region or for a marriage with their name in the mid 1700s. This is tedious work and I would have to say that we were unsuccessful in finding anything new. Towards the end of the day, I asked for an additional microfilm and was asked why I wanted that parish and if I had verified which parish I was looking for. Of course we had not but had simply looked through as many microfilms as we could. I was then shown a microfilm of alphabetical listings of all of the names in each of the parishes.
I started reviewing these listings and started finding a few Jaussis and Gassers in some of the death records. Before we could act on any of these, the archive closed. Even though we did not have family history research success this day, we did learn a lot more about how to research names in a more efficient way. I had searched for alphabetical listings but for the most part they were hard to find. I was unaware of the master alphabetical listing that was discovered at the end of the day. Not all family history efforts result in miracles, as so may of ours have. However, the learning that we get along the way will hopefully help us in future efforts.
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| Sister Rueckert in front of the Haut-Rhin Archives |
The archives closed for a lunch hour, so we were able to have lunch downtown in a delightful area. The photos below show some of that beauty.
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| Notice the green design on the roof |
Since we were in the Haut-Rhin (High Rhine) region, we decided to drive to some of the towns where my ancestors had lived. These were in a mountainous region that was just beautiful. The following photos show the city signs and some of the beautiful scenery that we experienced.
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| The city where the marriage record of Isaac Jaussi attributes the home land of his parents, Jean and Anna |
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| View of some of the homes in Liepvre, nestled in the mountains |
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| The neighboring town of Sante-Marie-aus-Mines, supposed location of Jean Jaussi's birth |
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| A view in the city of Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines |
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| View of the mountains above Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines |
While traveling to Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines we experienced one of many GPS errors. This one led us into a tunnel going through the mountain by mistake. This tunnel went on and on. About 5 kilometers into the tunnel, we found a turn off point and managed to do a u turn in a tunnel. This was another of our changed directions this week. We found out that this tunnel, the Tunnel Maurice-Lemaire is 6.9 kilometers (over 4 miles) long. Until 2011, it was the longest tunnel in France.
We finally arrived in Strasbourg and checked into our hotel. It was decorated in a musical note design.
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| Note the musical notes on the drapes and bedding |
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| Even the garbage can and the stool shared the same design |
Finally we decided to go and have a French dinner, a ham and cheese crepe and then a dessert crepe. Our GPS took us downtown and we had a wonderful dinner. Our day was much different than our planned day at the temple, but it was very memorable.
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| Add the Galettes Crêperie |
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| Dinner crepe which we shared |
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| Dessert crepe which we shared |
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| Next to the crepe maker sign |
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| One of the beautiful buildings near to where we ate |
The next morning we slept in and allowed Sister Rueckert to recover a little from a cold which had been coming on. We then went to visit additional villages where my ancestors were from in the Bas-
Rhin district (Lower Rhine). Photos and descriptions follow:
We first drove to Vexaincourt, where my 4th great grandfather, Isaac Jaussi married and his son was born. This was over a mountain range, about one hour from Strasbourg by car. The town is very small, my guess is that Isaac may have been a homesteader in this area.
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| Outside the small town of Vexaincourt, Vosges District |
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| In front of the Church |
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| In the cemetery behind the Church |
We looked throughout the cemetery for graves with the Jaussi name with no success. We know that Isaac and his wife died in 1845 and 1851. We found that the Church was only built in 1860, so likely their graves would have been somewhere else. We searched in the neighboring village, also without success.
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| Inscribed in the stone of the Church the date of 1860 |
We went from there to the town of Uberhaslach, where Isaac's father passed away. We suspect that might be where Isaac lived before he moved to Vexaincourt. This was 40 minutes by car, so it must have been quite an adventure for him to move that far and be married in Vexaincourt.
We found Oberhaslach to be a beautiful little town, full of flowers. We have seen incredible flower displays in all of the villages, but this was the best of them all.
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| Outside of Oberhaslach, with beautiful flower arrangement under the sign. |
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| Flowers on every window |
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| Flowers on each section of fence |
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| More flower arrangements on the fences |
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| More flowers, photos don't describe fairly the beauty everywhere |
We then went to the nearby village of Molsheim, where Isaac's wife Elisabeth had been born and her parents before her (per recent family history discoveries). Another showcase city, known for being a wine center also.
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| Entering Molsheim, home of Eliabeth Beyer, who married Isaac Jaussi |
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| Large barrel of wine to symbolize the many vineyards in this region |
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| A beautiful building in the center of the town |
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| Many lumber yards in the region, from the heavy forested areas around |
This finished my tour of family history villages of my ancestors. We loved the beauty of the forested mountains and surroundings. We could only imagine the difficulties of transportation 200 years ago and the isolation from any conveniences. These were all religious people, who stayed in some of these locations with others who were seeking religious freedoms. They were Mennonites and Anabaptists. These are our heritage. Even though we did not uncover more names on these days, we certainly learned the lay of the land and understand in a small way the life that they led. For this I am very grateful.
During our travels we see many unique things. The photo below is representative of the signs we have seen for the past few days. On each freeway entrance, they
show signs telling those on the freeway that they are not to make left or right turns into the oncoming traffic. It seems pretty obvious to us, but we did want to take a photo to remind us of these unique signs.
In our travels we were unable to find a place to eat lunch. When we started looking at 3:00 pm, all restaurants had closed. We settled for a croissant and an ice cream cone. From there we returned to the hotel to change and be ready for our meetings wit the stake self-reliance committee and the ward council that evening. As we were driving to the hotel, I suddenly remembered that I had not brought a tie to wear.
We changed at the hotel and arrived at the church one hour before the meeting. After insuring that we knew where the Church was, we went to find a tie to buy. It would also become my Fathers Day present. Our GPS sent us to a mall that was closed, a children's clothes store, a lingerie store and two stores that didn't exist. Finally we went to another mall and while Sister Rueckert waited in the parking area, I ran through an unknown mall. Not finding anything that I really liked in three different stores, I finally settled on the following Father's Day present. A little thin for my liking, but it is my French tie. We arrived a few minutes late and began to participate in the Ward Council training meeting.
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| Father's Day gift and replacement for the missing tie |
This stake committee is very engaged and did a great job, with our manager Momo, in training the Ward Council.
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| Stake Specialist on the left |
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| More of the ward council |
They were each to come with names of individuals to invite to the My Path Devotional the next day. All together they had identified 36 people to invite. The next step was to specifically invite them before the day was over. Some had been previously invited, others still needed that contact. We teamed up with the full-time missionaries and went to visit with an investigator and a less active that they had been visiting. We always love working with the young missionaries. Their spirit is strong and they are so obedient.
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| Inviting a less active |
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| One missionary is originally from Madagascar, more recently from Belgium. The other is from Houston, Texas. Great missionaries. They were so grateful to just have a ride in a car to facilitate the visits |
After dropping the missionaries off at their apartment by 9:30 pm, we decided to go and get dinner. Again, we had trouble with the GPS directing us to any identified restaurant. Finally we found a Vietnamese restaurant in France for our well deserved dinner. We then returned home to call our daughter Kari and wish her a happy birthday. By midnight we were in bed pondering the talks that we had just been assigned to give in sacrament meeting the next morning.
We were each assigned a 7 minute talk. Actually it is easy for us to talk about Self-Reliance, but it is tougher to make our message concise and to the point. We spoke with translators, although Sister Rueckert began her talk in French and then switched to English.
After the Sunday meetings the ward had a ward meal. Each member had brought a pot luck item. The knack sausages below are a native meal from theAlsace Lorraine region. They call them knack because that is the sound that they make when you eat them. Very descriptive and accurate.
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| Knack sausages |
After the meal, we had a final meeting with the stake committee and the ward council in preparation for the devotional.
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| Instructions given by the stake specialist |
The devotional had over 60 participants and went very well. We always would do some things different and we jumped in to make suggestions as we went along. In the end there were over 30 individuals who joined 5 different Self-Reliance Courses. We were very pleased with the ownership of the Stake Self-Reliance Committee and the response of the Ward Council. We felt a lot of enthusiasm amongst the members. We love this great work and bear testimony of its inspired nature.
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| Watching the video together |
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| Working in groups at each table |
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| Joining Self-Reliance groups |
Finally we drove 2 and a half hours home to Frankfurt, Germany. We are happy to finish a changing but satisfying week.
Pigeon Update: As we came home we again checked on our baby pigeon. In just a few weeks, it has hatched from an egg to almost a full grown pigeon. The photos below are from this past week. The mother pigeon no longer sits on the baby, but does visit occasionally or has been here a few of the nights.
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| June 13, mother still keeping watch |
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| June 15, standing tall in the evening |
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| June 18 as we arrived home |
