Lindsey Unedited: Germany Day 11 and 12

On Sunday we invited Manuel's mom and our niece Nalani to church with us. Church was being held in a hotel downtown. Apparently The city was making the church jump through a lot of hoops to be able to rent a place of their own. It has taken three years of paperwork and just when the city says it's okay, they change their mind again. It's crazy.

It was fast and testimony meeting and I bore my testimony about prayer. I asked the branch president if he would translate for me and I guess what I said made him emotional which made me emotional so we both cried through my testimony.

I don't know if I mentioned earlier that I had been corresponding back and forth with the missionaries (the husband who is also the branch president) for a couple of months before I came over. My sister's husband's parents are serving a mission in Germany and they are friends with the other missionaries that I had been talking with. The first Sunday, I walked through the door of church services, I told the missionary that he looked like one of my high school teachers. I didn't think it was him because he said he lived in a small town in Idaho and my high school teacher had facial hair. He said that he had taught high school in Utah. It turned out after a few more questions that he was my high school teacher. It all fit together. My high school teacher had a German exchange student staying with him and I became friends with her. Now I know why he had a German exchange student - because he speaks German. It was so funny. Such a small world.

The next day we went to a city called Regensburg. It's an old city that has Roman influence from centuries ago. We took a river boat down the Danube River and visited a monastery on an island. We had lunch there and went into the cathedral. We also went and played in the river. There were tons of these little fish everywhere swimming around our feet. Gabe caught one and was so proud of himself.

We then took a train into town and visited a really cool building where we could overlook the whole city. There was a spiral staircase that never seemed to end. There was a beautiful view at the top and magnificent statues everywhere.

The toughest part about this day was the heat. We were so thirsty and we ran out of drinks earlier in the day. Our drinks were hot and I just needed a cold drink of water. There are no drinking fountains in Germany and it's very hard to find water. We had to get it out of the bathroom sinks when we had the chance.