A Great Seminary Activty

We enjoyed a wonderful week at the outreach center and associations with the Young Adults and Missionaries.
The highlight of the week had very little to do with our normal calling. We received an invitation to participate in a young men and young women activity sponsored by the Seminary program in the area.The young people from three Stakes (Düsseldorf, Honover and Dortmund) came to Dortmund to have a "Schriftstellenfestival" - Scripture Festival. There were about 110 young seminary students that came. It was a whole day of activities and dance and food.
The major part of the program was to test the skills of the young people in knowing the Scriptures. As they arrives they were all given a name badge and number on that badge (1-10). They were quickly divided into 10 groups. There were 10 stations set up and each group went from one station to another station, led by one of our young adults. At each station the group was tested of how quickly they could identify various scriptures, find them, quote from memory and talk and give testimony about a certain scripture. All of that was done under certain time restraints. Points were given for each completed task. Anina and I managed one of the stations.
It was an amazing experience to see the level of competency they displayed and how much understanding they had. Thy were able to know the location of the scripture, able to find the scripture and able to quote it from memory at a proficiency we had not seen among young or old. I visualized those young seminary students challenging all of our full-time missionaries to a similar activity. The outcome of that challenge would surprise many of us.
Some future Mission President will be thrilled to have many of those students as full time missionaries in just a few short years.
In some ways they already act as missionaries. They put away as much food as our missionaries do. It was a great experience to be involved in such a fun and uplifting experience.

We are doing well and enjoy good health. We just wish we could get over our homesickness. We are beginning to think that that illness is going to stay with us for the remainder of our time.