God works in mysterious ways

My sister finally made it back home safe and sound. While she was there she was able to see my dad a couple times. God is good.

While sitting in Mission Support School last week surrounded by other missionaries God sent to spread his gospel throughout the United States. While there I really did discover the meaning of the military being a small world. I discovered that one of the college ministers from Alabama, his wife, grew up in Germany for a couple years right where my family is now. I also found out that one of the missionary husbands in New Orleans is a chaplain in the National Guard. Well he was my dad's pastor in Iraq for 3 months. It's crazy how God brings all these people into our lives and while we may not know the reason for it then but we will one day.

Prayers

My sister is in Iraq for three weeks for her work. She is there to do inventory for AAFES. I pray that she stays safe and that she is able to see our dad while she is there. I wish her the best of luck and all our love.

Christmas

Christmas was fun and lonely this year. It kind of seemed like just another day. We read the Christmas story from Matthew, prayed and then opened gifts. We spent a couple hours baking and then headed to some good friends of ours for steak and baked potato dinner. I know not the usual Christmas dinner but we decided to do something out of the ordinary. We spent the rest of the day playing games and watching movies with friends and family. Earlier in the day my mom and I drove to Landstuhl to drop off desserts for the Wounded Warrior Center christmas dinner. They also deserve to have a good christmas especially because they are so far from family and have given their lives to fight got their country. What have you done to help someone during this time of the year or during the year?

Thanksgiving

The last time I wrote on my blog I was still on my internship in France. Well that is over and am back home with my family. My dad came home for 2 weeks the day before I got home and then the day after I got back we packed up and went to the Edelweiss Lodge and Resort for 4 relaxing days. We went sightseeing by day and sat in the hot tub by night. We enjoyed tons of good quality family (minus 1) time together and even got wonderful professional massages. On the way home we stopped at Stuttgart, where we used to live, to have thanksgiving dinner. You see the dining facilities at all the bases have thanksgiving dinner for anyone who does not feel like cooking, are single, soldiers, airmen, people on vacation and so on. It was a fun time. We saw some old friends of ours and even a few old teachers. One sight did make my heart ache. This sight was the sight of single soldiers eating alone in a room of families. It made me sad to see that they had no one at this time of year when it has a lot to do about family.

Multiple Lives

Have you ever felt like you have multiple lives but never really felt part of them when you are away or taking part in one life or another? Like your lives continue without you but everything still stays the same for you. It's just weird and awkward. Like you don't want to got back to one life or another but you don't want to stay in the life that you are in now. You try so hard to be in one or the other but you end up giving up and creating your own life or world.

Chocolate Project

I previously published a post about the flavors that I was using for my chocolate project and asked for your feedback. Well you will be glad to know that the production part of the project is officially over as of Tuesday. On Tuesday we had to produce all three of our chocolates in 6 hours. Of course anything that could go wrong did. It took me a good hour to temper the chocolate for my molded bonbons and pour it into the mold. My marshmallow although the flavor came out great, I just mixed it a little more than I should have because I walked away from it for a few seconds. The caramels came out great, but I did dump 3/4 of my sesame seeds on the floor when I was taking them out of the oven. It was a bad day for everyone. They didn't have the ingredients that half the people needed which was the whole reason we had been practicing. It was very stressful. But all in all even though things got screwed up and we were all down to the wire my flavors were delicious and I was very happy about that. I am just glad that it is over.

Geneve

This past weekend was a three day weekend because of all Saints Day. Annette and I decided to take the train to Geneve, Switzerland for the weekend because we would have gone crazy here in town and it was Switzerland. It poured buckets of rain on the way there but once in Switzerland it maybe drizzled for 10 minutes total the whole weekend. We arrived on Saturday night at the hostel, switched some money (because they still use the Francs) and went searching for food. We found a pizzeria still open so we sat for a delicious pizza. It was a little over priced though, but that's just the way Geneve is. Since everything, and I mean everything, is closed on Sunday we decided to do most of if not all of out sightseeing then. We saw the Jet Eau, the flower clock, St. Peter's Cathedral (from where we overlooked all of Geneve), saw the reformation wall, played checkers on life size boards and discovered Geneve. We walked around from 9 am to about 8pm. We were exhausted. But it was a fun time and can now say that we have been to Geneve. We got back to the hostel and since were were bored and nothing was open we ended up playing the box game and then conked out. On Monday since we had no school and everything was open again, that is when we did all of our shopping. A lot of that shopping was swiss army knife hunting to find the best deal. I ended up buying my brother one with his name engraved on it. In the morning though we stopped at the United Nations because part of it is located in Geneve, that is why they speak so many languages there. It was gorgeous and the beautiful morning added to it. With some more shopping, and the hunt (literally) hunt for chocolate shops, which was surprising. Our day came to an end with a dinner of the most expensive Chinese food I will ever eat. But it was good.