Freiberg Temple

Last weekend Brad & I were able to go to the temple. A family in our ward let Kason hang out with them overnight so we got to have a little temple getaway ... and it was SO nice! (Thanks to the Platt's!) The Freiberg Temple has temple housing, so we got to stay right there at the temple. It's a nice little set up. 

The history of this temple is pretty cool. Back in the 1980's, when Communism was still going strong, the Church was constantly requesting permission from the Government for the Saints to attend the Bern, Switzerland Temple. The Government started to worry that the Saints wouldn't ever return so, they said to the leaders of the Church, "Hey, would you ever consider building a temple here in Germany?" And of course, the Church decided that was a swell idea and in 1985 the temple was dedicated by President Hinckley. Pretty neat! We are technically in the Frankfurt Temple district but, Freiberg is actually closer and only takes about 2 1/2 hours to get to! The temple workers were SO friendly, I felt so welcomed and just wanted to hug all of them (and well, might have hugged some of them). There was couple from Montana serving their mission there, it was great to talk to them for a little bit. It was a great experience. 

Here's our weekend together: 

Brad went outside early to grab breakfast and this is what he saw. I never get to see the sunrise because it's too early for this girl so I'm glad he took this picture so, I could enjoy in the beauty of it!

This was our room. The housing is technically a hostel but, there weren't very many guests there that weekend so, we got the whole room to ourselves. We kind of felt like we were in an Orphanage. 

Outside the temple after our session: 

I sure love this guy (have I ever told you that?) ... it was so wonderful to getaway with him for a bit. 

So, funny story. We wanted to change after our session so we walked into the church store there on the temple grounds. Of course, nobody speaks English and we speak zero German so we tried to tell them we wanted a bathroom to change in. They kept asking if we wanted the temple and we said, "No, toilet!" Finally I think they got what we wanted and this cute little lady walked us down to the basement. The whole time she was jabbering away in German and using hand signals to try and make sure we understood what she was saying. She showed us the tunnel to the temple (cool huh? they have an underground entrance!) and then, assuming she was taking us to the restrooms, we followed her to where she opened up a storage closet. She said some things in German, that I can only assume, due to her hand signals, meant: get changed here, leave your clothes here, walk through the tunnel to the temple, and then come back and change after your session. She kept waiting for us to respond but instead we just looked at her blankly and smiled. We told her thank you and once she had left, got changed in the storage closet! It was pretty comical and we get SO frustrated with the language barrier but, apparently not enough to learn German. ha! She was such a sweet old lady - she's the type I really wish I could talk to and hear her stories about life. I'm sure she's got some amazing tales to tell. 

After changing in the closet ... we left and went to IKEA. We walked around for a bit, dreamed about our future home and ate yummy food and desserts.

{this looks better than it tasted. Brad's tasted better than it looked.}

There was also a little shopping mall right by IKEA so, naturally we had to take advantage. And naturally I had to take a picture of Brad in an awesome hat! He does such a great job of humoring me and my picture craziness. 

After that we headed home and picked up the munchkin! Such a great weekend!