Hallo List:     The following article is translated to the best of my ability.                                                                 -----------------------   Page 3, Die Welt-Post, Thursday, March 20, 1924   Messer, January 12, 1924 To: Jacob and Annamaria Triebelhorn       Denver, Colorado   Dear brother-in-law and sister:   We joyfully inform you today that we received your letter, the money and the calendar that you sent. With these things you have made our family of 13 souls happy and joyous. You are affectionately greeted by us all, especially by Friedrich who has only one arm and goes to school in Grimm. He writes pretty well with his left hand. Brother Heinrich and his wife and 5 children, and I and my wife and 4 children are still what we are and we leave our future to our dear Lord's discretion, which he will certainly determine because He has promised to be with us unto the end of the world and also through the storms of our present times with deaths to such an extent as to be indescribable.   We want to mutually extend our hands in love across the wide sea in the comforting knowledge that our pilgrimage in this world cannot continue for much longer. Read the holy scripture and it will be clear to you that the Judge is at the door. Read Matthew 24, faithfully, which refers expressly to the end time. Thus with fear and trembling we work towards blessedness so that if we should not again meet here on earth, we will meet again in eternity.   With regard to our earthly condition, things stand very poorly with us. We have no working livestock and if one does not have livestock to do the work, one is like a farmer with his hands and feet bound. The price of livestock is outrageously high. A horse costs One Hundred Billion Rubel and more. We have a cow, but no sheep. Clothing items are so exorbitantly high that one cannot afford to buy them. An Arschin (2 1/3 ft.) of Sarpinka (Gingham) costs over a Billion Rubel. The Gold Rubel is equal to 4 Billion or more Rubel or a little more than a half-dollar of your money. A bag of Flour costs 5 Gold Rubel. You can imagine how things must be for us in the face of a very bad harvest. (Sentence obscured)   In the hope of further assistance from you, I will close with affectionate greetings from my house to your house.                                   Your brother who loves you,                                     Franz Lang (Mauters)                                                          --------------------------------   Hugh Lichtenwald, from the farm in Monetta, SC VC, Wiesenmueller