Author: Ann Laemmlen Lewis

I arrived in Utah late Saturday night and was greeted by Aaron and Abbey.  How strange to walk into our quiet empty home.  It’s nice to have A&A living next door.

Sunday I got to attend our Stonewood 4th Ward.  A couple of weeks ago all of the ward boundaries in our Stake were realigned.  Every ward had changes.  Here’s a map of our stake and the new ward boundaries.

It was a shock for friends and neighbors to see me, here on this side of the ocean.  And it was really fun for me to see their surprised faces.  There were lots of hugs today!

I am here because today I met with my oncology team for some tests.  They told me the tests needed to be done here, not in CT, so I came.  I will get the test results in a few weeks.

This evening we went out for famous Connecticut pizza and it sure was good!

I flew through Dublin to Hartford on April 24-25.  I had 2 very heavy carry on bags, filled with gifts and some Polish pottery.  On the way I read an interesting historical novel about the Grimm Brothers.  On 15 May 1825 Wilhelm Grimm married Henriette Dorothea Dortchen Wild, a pharmacist’s daughter and childhood friend who had given the brothers several tales.  This book tried to tell her story.

I arrived with my Stuff in Hartford and had my first glimpse of baby Caleb.  He is perfect in every way.  We spent the evening unpacking the polish pottery I brought for Claire.  It was like Christmas!

I had about 10 days with Claire and Graham to soak in Caleb’s goodness.  It was wonderful to be with them.

We all relaxed and took turns holding Caleb.  I watched Claire and Graham figure out their new lives as parents to this one week old little peanut.

Here are some of Caleb’s first outings–we went to a local park to see the tulips and blooms.

We ate a lot of tuna sandwiches and Cheetos, my favorite.

We went to Costco (HEAVEN).

We took a trip to Claire’s local Polish Pottery Outlet.

We mostly looked and were happy that the prices in German were WAY less than they are here.

We went to the beach and spent the day listening to the waves, resting and reading.

We took neighborhood walks and smelled the lilacs.

We looked at all the pics we took of Caleb.  This was his homecoming from the hospital last week:

We fixed Brats and a good German meal.

We looked at all the Christmas Market ornaments I brought back.

We visited Mark Twain’s Hartford home and had a living tour.  It was excellent.  Wished photos inside were allowed.

Walked through old Hartford and visited a few fun shops.

Really enjoyed the Dogwood trees in full bloom!

We had some great Mexican food!

We visited a country farm and bakery for lunch one day.

I bound a quilt Claire made.

We had some famous CT pizza.

And we stared and stared at this beautiful boy.

My days with this little family flew by way too fast.

First, farewell to Elder and Sister Koch, who will depart for home while I’m gone.  We’ve loved serving in the Offenbach Branch with them.  They’ve been working in the Frankfurt Mission Office.

I’ve been packing my suitcases this week, taking home everything we have here that could possibly go home–things from the Christmas markets, clothes we don’t need, gifts for family and friends.  My bags are filled and weighed.  Tomorrow I fly.

Tonight we were invited to a Raclette dinner with at the Winzenrieds with the Olsons.  It was fun and we enjoyed their American version of one of our favorite Swiss meals.

Our day was filled with training, and discussion about Pres. Nelson’s vision for the future and the many ways the Lord is hastening His work here.

At the end of the day, one of the translators from Italy taught us all how to make Neapolitan Pizza. We made batches of dough, then used dough he made last night to bake pizzas in his little portable pizza oven (200 Euro for an oven that goes to 750 degrees). So we had fun with that, and ate what we made, but then it was dinner time and they had a catered Indian meal that was tasty.

We all stayed through the evening. They had games and 2 guys brought out their guitars and played great music–Simon and Garfunkle and all the oldies. They were really good and I loved hearing that music.

Seminar, Day 2

Today we talked about what they call a SWOT Analysis in the business world: Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. We broke into groups and each had one of these topics. We used big post-it notes to list all of the things we could about our situation as a Church trying to communicate with the world.  It made for an afternoon of interesting discussion and evaluation.

After lunch we continued by talking about how to create objectives (the what, not how) of what we want to do with each of these SWOT topics. We stayed in the same groups and each worked on a single objective to go along with our Area Goals and Purposes. Our two were: Create excitement about peace, belonging and covenant connection found in the temple.  Then, Assist local church leaders to build positive relationships with community and opinion leaders.

The next step (but we were out of time) would’ve been to create action items (the how) for our objectives.  This seminar will continue next month as we all continue working on the things we discussed this week.