Couples Retreat

We are just about to wrap up a couples retreat here in Garmisch-Partenkirchen.  What a wonderful experience for both Ed and I.

The retreat was sponsored by Ed's unit and we had to attend married couples sessions where we were exposed to young couples.  In fact we were the couple who was married the longest.  But the whole point of the session was being reunited with our soldiers after their year long deployment.  No matter how long a couple has been married - we all were going through the same thing and that was having our spouses back in our lives again.  

Anyway the sessions were good and we had the opportunity to take some tours.  We went to tour a castle and made some stops along the way like the wood carving shop

and a beautiful church of which were on time to attend mass.

There was no heat in the church and when I was going to dip into the Holy Water to make the sign of the cross the water was frozen solid.

The priest said mass in German and although we didn't understand what he was saying we knew what to do based on his action and the action of the altar servers.  When mass began there was noone attending mass.  Our tour group enters just to see the inside.  But we stayed for mass.  When it came time for communion we headed to the aisle to go receive communion but we were not sure if Father was going to give communion so we waited and when he realized that we knew it was time for communion he sent the alter server to get the chalice of hosts.  I was the first one and Father asked if I was Roman Catholic and I said yes.  He gave me communion.  Needless to say by the time we had reached that part of mass I was near freezing despite my being bundled up.  I was shaking when I gave Euros in the box.

After the mass services eveybody came in to take photos.  These shots were taken by Ed:

THE ALTAR

THE CEILING

 THE SIDES

THE PIPE ORGAN

What a wonderful experience attending mass said in German and being in such a beautiful church.

Tomorrow I'll blog about the castle tour and all the Bavarian cuisine we savored.

PUG HUGS TO ALL