Sunday, July 26, 2015

Debbie returns to Utah - In memory of Shawn Parker

We received the terrible news that our son-in-law, Shawn Parker, became hospitalized on Thursday afternoon and passed away on Friday morning.  This situation can best be explained by the words that our daughter, Kari, shared on Facebook:

My wonderful sister in law wrote this for the love of my life, my knight in dented armor, Shawn Parker.





Today we lost our brother, son, husband and father, Shawn Parker.
On Thursday morning Shawn was involved in a minor vehicle crash that sent him to the hospital. He was released a few hours later but once home collapsed and stopped breathing, the result of an accidental overdose. When he arrived back at the hospital he was put on life-support. Due to the prescription medication already in his system and the years of abuse his body endured his body could not recover, he passed away peacefully this morning surrounded by his family. 
Our hearts are saddened but we know he is now in the presence of our Heavenly Father and that we will one day be with him again.

As a result, we put Debbie on a plane yesterday (Saturday) and she has arrived home to strengthen and help Kari through this difficult time.  She will remain in Utah until August 5, when she will return to Germany.
All of our prayers go out to Kari and her family and all of those who are mourning Shawn's passing. 
 We must pray continually so that we can have the blessings that our Heavenly Father wants for each of us, which includes understanding and peace.

Praying at all times

On Friday afternoon, we had the privilege of meeting with two different stake presidents in the greater Frankfurt area.  We went with our German Self-Reliance Services manager, Günter.  Both stake presidents spoke very good English, so the communication was clear.  We wanted to understand their challenges, especially as they related to Self-Reliance, so our main goal was to listen and understand.  We must say that the meetings went very well, we were well received and the stake presidents were very kind and sincere.

The first stake president is the president of the stake where we live and is the managing partner of a large law firm.  We started our meeting with a prayer.  The stake has very little temporal self-reliance needs, but he recognizes the needs for spiritual self-reliance.  It was a great meeting with the conclusion that the My Foundation course could be used with small groups during the Sunday school portion of the meeting block.  As we finished our meeting, the stake president asked if we could finish the meeting with a prayer, which of course we agreed.

The second stake president is an airline pilot and had just come from the airport, after returning from one of the flights that he had piloted.  His stake surrounds the Frankfurt temple and the stake center is adjacent to the temple grounds.  Again we had a wonderful meeting.  We once again started with a prayer.  The needs in his stake include more temporal needs, especially as it relates to managing finances in the home.  He was very supportive and very interested in some of the results that we have seen throughout the world.  He would like to involve more members and has a very active Stake Self-Reliance Committee and Self-Reliance specialist.  They are talking about getting their first Self-Reliance groups started.  Hopefully our meeting helped accelerate this process.  We felt genuine love and leadership from this stake president as he seeks to help his members become temporally and spiritually self-reliant.  Once again, as we were about to finish the meeting, he asked if we could finish with a prayer.  I thanked him for reminding us to pray and then he taught us a lesson:

He said that when Elder Kopischke was the Area President in Europe, he noted that a certain region was growing spiritually in an incredible way and asked some of the leaders to visit them and understand what was causing this wonderful growth.  As they went to this region, they found that they did the same things as other regions with one exception.  They found that the members and leaders were always praying.  They would stop in the middle of meetings and pray about the items they were discussing, they would not wait to only begin and end meetings in prayer.  This constant emphasis on prayer, on understanding the will of the Lord and seeking his constant guidance and assistance made all of the difference.  It is clear that that message has been heard by these two great stake presidents and now it was heard by Tom and Debbie Rueckert.  We pray that we can follow this same example and be much more diligent in praying about all that we are doing, on a constant basis.  As I have thought back about it, I don't believe that I offered a prayer, while being lost in Frankfurt earlier in the day.  Perhaps that is why it took so long to find my location.


Saturday, July 25, 2015

Lost in Frankfurt

It all started on Thursday afternoon, I received a wrong number call from another senior missionary who ended up telling me about a special Pioneer Day 5K walk or run the next morning.  It was being organized by the Senior Missionary that is a doctor and included some of the office employees as well as senior missionaries.  Anyway, not knowing many details, I (Tom) agreed to participate.  Debbie agreed to help with the logistics, beverages, fruit, etc. and to be at the finish line to welcome me.  A map was sent out to me that evening by email.  I didn't understand much, since I don't know my way around yet, but I understood where to meet to get started which was a block or two from the Church office building, which is next to our apartment building.

To not lose our daily routine of walking/jogging in the beautiful cemetery, we started our Friday morning out there, with a shortened walk so that we could meet the others at 6:45 a.m. for a 7:00 a.m. start time.  There were about 21 individuals participating including 2 young elders.  I made a mental decision to not be so competitive and just to  have fun, but I was determined to not just walk.  The course went up the side of the street (where we were beginning, then turn left into a neighborhood, continue to the end of another street return to a park which we would circle two times and then return the way that we came.

As we started, it became clear that most of the individuals would be walking.  But the doctor, the two young elders and another senior missionary that runs marathons were running, so I started out running with them. To maintain my non competitive nature, I let them get ahead of me and kept my own pace, making sure to stay close enough so that I would know where I was going.  All went according to plan and as we entered into the park, I was clearly in 5th place, behind the other 4 runners and far ahead of the walkers.  However, the other four were getting a little further ahead of me, which was just okay with me.  I felt that all was well under control, I expected to finish the 5 K in a little less than 30 minutes. 

As I left the park, with probably 4 of the Ks already completed, I looked forward to running through the neighborhood and then turning right onto the original street and finishing in a blaze of glory for my 5th place finish.  Who knows what might happen if I gained a little speed in the last 1,000 meters.  Somewhere in this process a strange thing happened.  I made my turn onto what I thought was the main street and started returning, when I found that the street was turning into residential areas that ended up in a dead end.  I thought that I had turned to early so I retraced my tracks and tried to find the correct street.  At this point, I knew that I would not advance in the race, but should still finish far ahead of the walkers.  However, the next street I took also needed up in a dead end.  This experience repeated itself over and over until I found myself totally lost.  I remembered that one of the streets started with an M and had found one, but it didn't seem to work.  I kept hoping that I would come out of the streets somewhere near to the finish line, perhaps even coming from the other direction, but to no avail.  I had not taken my phone with GPS, emails, maps, etc., since it would get in the way of my running (perhaps still a little too competitive).  I knew that eventually I would find myself, but worried about Debbie and the others worrying about me with no way for them to find me, since I was obviously no longer near the charted course.

All the time I am still jogging, knowing that I needed all of the time possible to get to the destination in good time.  Finally I found a major street with train tracks (there were train tracks near the original starting spot), so I gained courage.  However, these tracks were a major train line, running on the side of the street where I should be running.  By know, I wasn't sure which direction I needed to go, so I started running north (I think).  Things started looking even less familiar, if that was possible, so I turned around and started running south.  Finally I found a bus stop that had a map on it.  I could find out where I was, but I had no idea of where I wanted to go, at least on the larger map.  Then I found in the list of the future bus stops, I saw the M street, with the correct name that I could now remember.  My thought was if I can find that street, perhaps I can figure out where I am.  I then had to approach individuals on the street and ask for help, hoping that they could speak a little English since I can't speak or understand German.  My first attempt gave me minimal direction that didn't feel right.  She was telling me to go underground or something, I think to a subway station.  I tried another, who finally suggested that I go back to the train street and turn right for a few more blocks.

Without any other options, I tried this and found the street with the M name, actually it is Marbachweg, and felt that I was getting closer.  As I continued down this street, I was overjoyed to see a large fire station, for I had remembered seeing this fire station last month when we drove from the Church offices to the hotel.  I finally knew where I was, which was no where near the 5K race course, but at least I knew how to get back to the starting line, perhaps another half mile away.  As I finally approached the Church office building, I saw the controller and his wife (who were the slowest walkers of all) in their car heading home.  He saw me and said, "you are in trouble with your wife".  As I finally arrived at the finish line from a completely different direction, Debbie, the doctor and a few others were still there wondering where I could be. It was now well after 8:00 a.m.  It was a great relief to find myself and the finish line and we all had a good laugh.

Obviously, I did not finish 5th, I was dead last, but I was the only one to run 10,000 meters or more in a 5K race!

I have since tried to drive the course to understand where I went wrong, but most of the course were on walking paths, where cars cannot enter.  I have not yet tried to follow the course again on foot.  I have found that most neighborhoods have streets entering into them and ending in dead ends, where most of the residents park their cars.  Apparently, I had crossed the main street in a bridge over the street without being aware that I had done that. So when I turned, I was already off the race course.  As I kept trying to resolve my situation, I just got further and further away.  Probably not a great experience, but a safe ending, even though my legs were really tired.  It has now helped me to understand our neighborhood much more, after the fact.  I had been commenting to Debbie that driving by GPS is very dangerous, since I have a need to understand the overall geography by a map, rather than just running when the GPS tells me to do so.

No photos, because I didn't have my phone, but a lesson that will never by forgotten.

Thursday, July 23, 2015

Getting Settled and Loving It

We have now been in Germany for two days and we are actually getting quite settled.  Finally the Vonage phone is working, so anyone can call us at our normal home phone number (801) 280-2157 without paying for a long distance call.  Please remember that we are in a time zone 8 hours ahead of Standard Mountain Time.

By the way, this is the first time in our married life that we have been living without anyone else in our home.  Our apartment overlooks a green area, which includes a cemetery and beautiful trees.  See the following photo that shows the view from the balcony of our apartment, which is on the 10th floor.


We took this photo on the night that we arrived.  The next morning, we went out for an early morning walk and jog (couldn't sleep, since our body clock was confused).  We walked into the cemetery area and were enchanted with the experience.  It was serene and beautiful.  We repeated the experience this morning with a little more exploration and continued peace.  It has been one of the highlights of our time here.  See photos of parts of our experience, including beautiful gravesites:


Our apartment is small, but sufficient.  Our small kitchen table is in the corner of our living room, but it works just fine for the two of us.  The following is our first dinner at home, last night.  It is wonderful being married to a wonderful cook, no matter the new circumstances:



We are adjusting to new eating habits, eating lunch at home each day.  Today we had bratwurst and saurkraut, genuine tasty German cuisine.  Our kitchen is small and there is no dishwasher, but we don't make that much mess, so it isn't hard to clean up after ourselves.  Tonight, was the ultimate as Debbie was able to experiment with the oven and make her first half batch of chocolate chip cookies from the ingredients that we brought with us.  They turned out wonderful!


We actually do more than just eat (and exercise).  We have had some full days in the office, in fact we enjoy the office because it is air conditioned, more than we can say about our apartment.  We have gotten to meet with our supervisor, John Mulligan, who is retiring in just two months.  He and his wife have already been called to be Self-Reliance missionaries in Angeles, Philippines.  He is a great supervisor that gives us great support and space to create our own contribution to this work.  We have had some productive meetings with a few of our managers and today were able to spend more than an hour with Elder Timothy Dyches, of the Europe Area Presidency.  We have been able to get our computers and phones hooked up, learned how to use the printers and copy machines, followed up with various matters and are preparing for a visit with our German manager tomorrow and upcoming trips to Spain next week and Albania beginning with the next weekend.  We enjoyed a wonderful lunch Book of Mormon class with the other senior missionaries on Wednesday.



Tuesday, July 21, 2015

We Arrived!

We have arrived in Frankfurt, Germany.  We left SLC yesterday at 4:55 p.m., flew non-stop to Amsterdam (9+ hours) and than an additional short flight to Frankfurt, arriving about 1:30 p.m. on Tuesday (Frankfurt time - 8 hours earlier than SLC time).  We were met at the airport by Elder and Sister Sharpe who did not realize we were bringing 3 bags each.  However, we were able to put three of the bigger backs in the back compartment and three more in the back seat, still leaving a little space for Debbie and I.  In the end we arrived at our apartment (10-4), were able to put our belongings in their place, hook up to the internet and install our Apple TV device.  We went shopping at the small food market at the base of our apartment building, but decided against cooking anything tonight.  Instead we went to dinner at a restaurant that we enjoyed the last time we were in Frankfurt, close by.  It is a restaurant as part of a small castle.  This is fairly close to our apartment.  See photos below:




Restaurant and part of menu.  We had the minced beef stew.  


Debbie in front of the restaurant.



Us eating in the area behind the castle.



Sunday, July 12, 2015

Getting Started

On May 12, 2015 we received our mission call.to labor in the Germany Frankfurt Mission.   Our primary assignment is to serve as PEF Self-Reliance missionaries in the Europe Area.  Our mission call was to begin on January 25, 2016, it has subsequently been changed to January 4, 2016.  However, since the need is immediate (the previous couple were to finish their mission on June 10, 2015), we were asked to move to Frankfurt as soon as possible and serve while still employed until Tom retires at the end of the year.

We visited Frankfurt in early June to get to know the Self-Reliance Managers in a seminar and to transition with Elder and Sister Vassel before they left their mission.   We have been working with the managers since then from our home in South Jordan.  On July 20, we will get on a plane and move to Frankfurt to begin our new adventure in our new home.

We sold our house to our son River and his wife Jamie.  We moved out of our house and into our Condominium on May 30, 2015.  We had bought the condominium in December of last year and Tom's mother has been living there since January, 2015.  We spent 36 hours in our condominium before we left for our first visit to Frankfurt.  We have been able to enjoy an additional month in the Condominium before moving to Frankfurt on July 20, 2015.  Our condominium is in the Cornerstone Condominiums, just west of the Jordan River Temple.