Thanksgiving in Germany

Last Sunday we had a holiday in Germany (Erntedankfest) on which people traditionally take harvested products/food products to church services, offer thanks for the good harvest, have the food blessed, followed by the parish breakfasting on blessed food.

For this reason we had an outreach service and extra decoration. We as church had met early to have the Lord's Supper in an extra room and the activities started at 10:00 a.m.
Ruth Kreusel had prepared the tree you can see in the background and had apple-shaped paper and pens put on the tables.

Later, people were asked to write something, they are thankful for, on the "apples" and then go to the front and pin the apples to the tree.

When everybody was done we had a beautiful tree with many apples up there!
The theme of the event was like "Thoughts about giving Thanks" (in German it is "Gedanken zum Danken" which better shows the likeness of think and thank) and after we heard some really good thoughts about how to give thanks we had a brunch together.

When everything was over, people were asked to make a small donation and take the "decoration food" home.


A special surprise that Sunday was, that JR showed up, telling us he will be in Germany for another 10 months period. Thank you. :-)