ADVENT EVENTS

We learned about Advent from our friend Christina in Dresden and wanted to participate in this tradition. For each of the four Sunday evenings before Christmas you light a candle and enjoy family and friends with tea, Lebkuchen, Stollen and other goodies. This is a time for telling Christmas stories and singing songs.

We celebrated the first Advent on the Monday after we arrived in Magdeburg. Since we arrived Saturday and spent the day settling in, we had to shop for the Advent candles and goodies. Monday morning went to the University to email our families and then stopped downtown on the way home at the Weihnachtsmarkt. This is our Advent candle...look closely and you will see that one candle has been lit. We had Vanilla Roibos tea with Stollen (a type of fruit cake) and Lebkuchen (chocolate covered soft ginger cookie)


Our second Advent Sunday we invited our new roommates Sister Vasileva and Sister Hoffman to join us. They were happy to be part of our celebration and it helped us get acquainted. Sister Gill was so excited to be able to entertain. We had Christmas Guacamole, chips, crackers, salsa, Lebkuchen, Stollen and a winter tea. It was fun. See the two candles burning?


The third Advent Sunday, all the missionary sisters went to a nursing home after church and sang Christmas carols..in German (we can read it pretty well) and read scriptures. We then rushed home and prepared for the Advent Social. We had invited all the JAEs and investigators. Sister Gill was really in her realm of entertaining glory. We added to our repertoire. We read Christmas stories from the Liahona and enjoyed each other. We did not light the candles because we were in the church.


The girl on the left, reading, is our newest baptized member and the boy in the green sweater will be baptized on New Years day.


The fourth Advent Sunday we were back to our little group in our apartment. We had traditional baked apples with vanilla sauce and tea. We did not get a picture of this but here you see our special guests that attended all of our apartment festivities. These were all gifts. The stores are full of them in all different sizes and personalities.


This is an Advent calendar that our good friend, Heidrun from Dresden, gave us before we left. She and her 9 year old son, Paul, hand made these bags. Each day we got a little candy and a scripture in German. It was nice to remember them daily and the good times we had with them.



This shows the Advent calendar that our JAEs in Dresden gave us as we were leaving. In each package we found a different German Weihnachts (Christmas) tradition. We sang the songs, read the stories, baked the apples, made the potato salad, cut out the cookies and cooked the goose. We even enjoyed a Cinderella type Fairy Tale filmed in Prag with the German dubbed in called, "Drei Haselnusse fur Aschenbrodel". Our final gift was a CD of Russian Saints sharing their musical testimonies. It is beautiful and one we will listen to and enjoy for a long time.


Sister Gill could not resist this Nativity. We have enjoyed it being in the center of our decor to remind us of the true meaning of Christmas.