Flower Boxes and Pizza

 Remember for more detail you can go to Nancy's email.  Also, if you want to go to the pictures, they are at the bottom so just scroll down.

This was another great week.  We were able to begin a process to evaluate the past three months of working with the outfall of the war and how the church responded to the different needs.  We are looking for lessons learned and how we might improve when future crisis happen.  As part of the process we will interview different people with different perspectives.  It's not meant to be a history - others will do that.  It's meant to be a reflective learning opportunity for improvement.

We were also able to participate in a JustServe project at the Frankfurt Warehouse.  Pallets of food boxes were sent there from two stakes in Spain and needed to be checked (quality control), QR code stickers put on, and then re-palletized and prepared for shipment to Ukraine.  We bought 16 large pizzas for after the work.  It was well attended from JustServe groups in three stakes.  This was the closure activity for the Food Box pilot with Spain and Italy.  Many lessons were learned from this project and activity.  

The two activities above remind me of how good people are.  Sometimes as thinkers, planners, organizers, and trouble shooters we wonder if any good is being done.  So, it's wonderful to get out and see the good works that are being facilitated.  I love the idea of getting on our knees and praying, but then getting up and going to work.  I have felt the Lord's hand in this work many times, and I have felt the constant companionship of the Holy Ghost as we've tried to create a working structure to bless the lives of people.

Reflecting and going through the lessons learned process for the ERC takes time, but we still had time to meet with several of our Welfare/Self-Reliance couples through Zoom.  We got a new couple in Poland and are excited to help get them started.  

We also had time for some JustServe work.  We met with Chris and Sariah Knabe(Just Serve specialists for the German speaking countries) who are doing great things one of which is partnering with the Alpine area FSY (For the Strength of Youth) summer conference.  It's like the old EFY conferences when we were young.  JustServe has helped to organize the service project for the conference.  They also updated us on the progress of a JustServe platform in Germany.  They had talked to people in Salt Lake and in the Area office. One of whom was Daniel Kopischke who is the Church employee over communications in the area.  We know him because he was on the ERC with us.  So, we spoke to him and got the good news that others are thinking of the same thing.  Daniel will be the connecting piece.  It will be interesting to see where this leads. 

This weekend we stayed home.  We shopped at Ikea, Sunflower, and Metro.  We got flower boxes and flowers for the balcony.  We also got a lot of food from Metro which is Germany's smaller version of Costco.  Nancy got some clothes and looked at shoes, but didn't get any.

Nancy, Libby Murri, and Baylor (one of the interns)

Putting out the pizzas

Take the boxes off the pallets, open and inspect them, put QR stickers on the items, re-palletize, and ship.  It was a fun and productive project.  Notice the pickleball lines on the floor.

Making a video to show people how to palletize boxes.  Greg, Nancy, Libby, Elliana, and Baylor.



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