Thursday, September 11, 2009 ~ Frankfurt, Germany

With the time changes, it was a long trip but short night. We left Atlanta at 6:30 PM Wednesday night and landed in Frankfurt at 8:30 AM Thursday morning. We deplaned, grouped up and headed through Customs. After picking up our bags, we wondered where we’d possibly find Elder Thomas in this huge airport. We hadn’t gone far when we spotted another Elder approaching us. My first thought was, “Well, there’s one of them, the rest must be close by.” I didn’t even notice that his name tag said, “Elder Thomas”. I was just looking for my Seth. With that, he came up to us and explained that he was Elder Henderson and that Elder Thomas was trying to trick us but that if we would look up we’d see him coming down the escalator.
And, sure enough… there he was. How exciting!!! He tried to trick his Dad, too, but… it didn’t work. We knew who we were looking for. We gathered our luggage and the men headed off to get the rental car while the women waited at the airport. After what seemed like hours we were all together in a huge black Volkswagen Van with loads of luggage in the back. I can’t say I remember much of our ride to the hotel because I was still so excited about being with Seth again. After checking into our rooms and unloading the luggage, Seth took us out to see “his city”-Frankfurt. After serving in the Mission Office for 6 months, I'm sure he thought of it as “his city.” He drove our van as he’d been driving the mission van for months and he knew all the best places to park. He’s pretty good at horizontal parking in little tiny spots. He took us to a street market and then on to the Mission Office where we met Sister Coles and the other Elders and Sisters that he had worked with there. He traced his mission transfers on a huge wall map for us and relived funny stories with Sister Coles.
We left there to walk the streets of Frankfurt, just as Seth had done before us. We saw beautiful trees with their leaves changing colors, amazing flower boxes outside almost every window and balcony, and some very nice cars parked along the narrow streets. We went to the markets and saw the wine fest activities on the sidewalks. We shopped and browsed books store, ate pretzels and chicken. We took pictures of The Frankfurt Opera House in remembrance of Gaylin and we went to see some of the buildings and sites of Frankfurt that Seth had enjoyed for months. Totally exhausted, we walked back to our rooms and fell into a peaceful sleep; all except for James who was coming down with a nasty coughing cold. So sorry, James