In His time and in His way and according to His will

This week we were taught by Elder Massimo De Feo on a few occasions.  His description of how the Lord blesses us has touched our hearts.  His words of "in His time and in His way and according to His will" describes so much of what we have learned on our mission.  This also applies to our experience with Werner and Dorota Rückert and their family who we visited for the last time on our mission.

With Werner and Dorota Rückert, their two daughters and our new friends Hanna and Markus Frenzel

We spent our work week in Frankfurt preparing for and participating in our Area Self-Reliance Committee meeting and other upcoming activities.  This included preparation for our Team seminar in Paris and our upcoming training visits.  Our time in Frankfurt is always enjoyable, as we are able to participate with employees, other senior missionaries and our ward.

This week was our monthly senior missionary devotional.  We were taught about insights into the Pearl of Great Price by Elder Peery, an Area Mental Health specialist.  Elder Peery has spent years studying the Pearl of Great Price in depth and was kind enough to share many of those insights with us.  Each of the Europe Area senior missionaries come with different backgrounds, special talents and experiences.

Elder Peery

Elder Peery sharing his insights about the Pearl of Great Price

On Wednesday night we had our weekly meeting with the returned missionaries in our ward.  Amy was not able to be there, but Perry Leimer, who has recently returned, joined with us.  One of the sisters has just been accepted to school in Wales and will be leaving us.  Another has gotten a job opportunity.  They are truly working on their plan for Self-Reliance!

On Wednesday morning we had our quarterly Zone Conference with all of the Europe Area senior missionaries.  We have five missionary couples that are leaving in the next month and each took a moment to share their thoughts and testimonies with us.  These were tender moments and we were edified.  This included E/S Healy, E/S Swenson, E/S Burt, E/S Hacking and E/S Proctor. All but the Hackings arrived after us and now will be leaving before us.  Elder and Sister Hacking arrived on their mission before us, but stayed in our employee apartment during one of our trips back to the U.S. before we became full-time missionaries.  They have all become special friends. In her comments Sister Hacking shared a scripture that she had recently found.  It is found in Mark 5:19, "Go home to thy friends, and tell them how great things the Lord hath done for thee, and hath had compassion on thee."  What appropriate counsel for all of us as we complete our missions.

Photo of E/S Hacking who shared the experience of the death of a daughter during their mission and the amazing spiritual insights and blessings from our Savior during this time.

Elder and Sister Proctor, our Zone Leaders for the past 10 months

After the sharing of testimonies from these amazing missionaries, we were blessed to hear from Elder Massimo De Feo, second counselor in the Europe Area Presidency.  Elder De Feo is the first Italian general authority and served the first year of his calling in the U.S.  He recently arrived in Europe to serve in the Area Presidency here.

Elder Massimo De Feo

Elder De Feo and his wife attended the entire conference and made meaningful comments on the testimony of the other missionaries.  He then tied it so well with his comments.  He shared a blessing that Elder Holland had left with mission presidents and their wives from the Europe Area the previous week.  He said that he had blessed each man and woman in the meeting, and their children.  He also quoted D&C 31:1 where Thomas Marsh was promised that the Lord would "bless you and your family".  He told us that our service brings vicarious and real blessings to our families.

He then shared the story of Jairus, a ruler of the synagogue, in Mark chapter 5.  He had come to the Savior to ask for a blessing for his daughter who was ill.  The Savior agreed to accompany him to bless his daughter.  While en route we read about the story of the woman with the issue of blood who had touched the Savior's robe and was healed.  The Savior obviously took time to identify who had touched his robe and to teach about her faith.  While in this process, Jairus received the news that his daughter had passed away.  In verse 36 it says "As soon as Jesus heard the word that was spoken, he saith unto the ruler of the synagogue, Be not afraid, only believe".

With this comment, the Savior gave Jairus hope.  The Lord's time and way are not what we expect.  He promised and he did.  Verse 39 says "And when he was come in, he saith unto them, Why make ye this ado, and weep? the damsel is not dead but sleepeth."  He then healed her and brought her back to life.  Elder De Feo shared this concept to the senior missionaries and extended the blessing from Elder Holland to include all of us.  He said that the Lord would bless our children in His way, in His time and by His will.  He told us to remember this the rest of our mission and the rest of our life.

As we listened to Elder De Feo, I received a witness of his divine calling.  I could see the Lord speaking through him.  He shared other wonderful thoughts and at the end of his message he repeated that with our struggling children, we should "know that they are not dead, but only sleeping.  He will heal them in His time and in His way and according to His will.  He will heal them physically maybe, emotionally hopefully, spiritually certainly."

What a blessing it is to be able to hear from one of our Savior's special representatives.   The next day we also had our Area Self-Reliance Committee meeting with Elder De Feo.  He was so attentive to what we shared and interested in helping move this initiative forward.  The meeting went overtime but he took additional time to ask Sister Rueckert and I to share our testimonies with the committee, since this would be our last committee meeting.  We felt honored to have that opportunity.  We also have great hope for the future of the Self-Reliance initiative in Europe under his direction.

As I have pondered this, it certainly applies to all that we do.  We must trust in the Lord and in His timing and in His way.  Over a year ago when we first met some potential relatives in the city of Buchheim, we suspected that we might be relatives and we wanted to share the gospel with them.  After our initial visits with them, I prayed about how we could proceed with them.  I received a clear impression that they would not understand relatives from hundreds of years ago, but would be receptive to their own forefathers that they could remember or had heard about.

Since then I have been on a mission to do their genealogy and share it with them.  We have visited with them several times since then and have found the feelings of friendship growing.  Each had received a Book of Mormon from us and have been somewhat receptive to gospel discussions.  This weekend was to be our last opportunity to visit with them before the end of our mission.

I have worked diligently on their genealogy in the past year including extra efforts the past few weeks.  I have strived to continue to fill in all of the missing spots on their Family History fan charts.  This has included visits to parishes where their grandparents records were held and the acquiring of some of their families registers at the genealogical society in Nurnberg that we visited a few weeks ago.  Since I have subscribed to the Archion German genealogy website, I have found that many of the cities of their ancestors had records available.  This has been the cause of many late nights to bed as I have discovered more and more of their ancestors.

We have focused our efforts primarily with Werner and Dorota Rückert and had scheduled a visit with them for this past Saturday.  We had also done similar work for Gunter and Barbara Meyer, but had not had contact with them since our last visit to them in May of this year.  Finally on Friday, I was able to contact them by telephone and confirm a visit also to them.  Prayers had been answered after much persistence.  As I finished up all that I could do, I completed the following fan charts (and much more for several of the lines).

Fan chart for Werner Rückert.  His wife is from Poland, so we didn't make much progress on her line.

This fan chart is for Simone, Gunter and Barbara's daughter.  It shows most of  the blanks completed.

Our first meeting with Barbara and Gunter was scheduled for 3:00 pm on Saturday.  We left with plenty of time for bad traffic and arrived a half hour early, so we decided to make a short drive through the neighboring village of Pfaffenhofen, one of the locations of my ancestors that I had not previously visited.

Pfaffenhofen, 3 km from Bergtshofen and 5 km from Hochboch

View of the Church in Pfaffenhofen

Older but typical house with beautiful flowers

Some of the beautiful fall flowers that we saw in Pfaffenhofen

After our short visit in Pfaffenhofen, we arrived at the home of Gunter and Barbara Meyer.  This would be the fourth time we had met them and the third visit in their home.  They have always been gracious hosts.  As we discussed our findings with them, we were well received.   We have identified common ancestors with them on both sides of their family tree.  We are pleased to consider them as relatives.

They also helped explain some of the unique findings that we had discovered.  Barbara's grandfather was adopted into a family that did not have a son so that he could work on the farm and continue the family farming for the next generation.  We had discovered part of this, but they had known more of the information.  We did recognize that their English was more limited than we had thought in our earlier visits.  We will probably get more results from emails if we send them in German.

Sister Rueckert with Gunter and Barbara Meyer in front of their home

Closer up view of Sister Rueckert, Gunter and Barbara

After that we visited with Werner and Dorota Rückert.  Included in our visit was our new friend, Hanna Frenzel and her bilingual nephew Markus.  These are the friends we met last month in Nürnberg, also members of the Church.  Initially we had thought that they were relatives to Werner's grandmother.  Once again, there was an adoption involved.  As we pursued this further, we found that our original thoughts were incorrect.  We have identified, with Hanna's help, the biological parents and in the past two weeks I have been able to extend that family tree.  In that process we have found that they tie into the Frenzel family through the new family line.  So, they are still living relatives to the Rückert family.

In our visit, Hanna and Markus made a very positive impression and clarified much of what we couldn't with our language limitations.  Werner's daughter, Claudia was with us also.  She had saved the previous Fan charts that we had left.  She wanted to know all about her ancestors.  We will continue additional communication with her.   Their other daughter, Carolin, also showed up later in the meeting and was very receptive to us.

The photo at the beginning of this blog is of all of us together in their home.  We spent two hours together in a very enjoyable way.  They have now scheduled for the missionaries to come to their home next week.  We will pray that their hearts have been softened enough to listen to the message from the missionaries.  Hanna and Markus are now an additional resource that can help as they hear the message of the restored gospel.  We left them a gift of a DVD of "Testaments",  The Church video about the visit of the Savior to the Americas.  We have enjoyed this DVD and realized that it had a German version.  As we talked about it, they began to understand a little bit about the Book of Mormon that we had left with them previously.

Another tender mercy.  When we decided to share this DVD with them, we thought we could order it from the distribution center in Frankfurt.  However, when we did, it was out of stock here and had to be shipped form the U.S.  This DVD arrived at our office on Friday, the day before our trip.  We know that the Lord was helping us in this effort.

Beautiful flowers in front of the Rückert home in Buchheim

Sunflowers growing in their yard

We don't know what will happen with these seeds that we have tried to plant.  We will try to keep email contact with them and pray for success with the missionaries.  What we have tried to do is follow the promptings of the Lord over a year ago.  As we finish this portion of our journey we have felt that we have done all in our power and the Lord has placed key people (the Frenzels) in this path.  We know that all will work out "in His time and in His way and according to His will".  We pondered this as we returned to Frankfurt last night and we have peace in trusting the next steps to the Lord.

As we finish this portion of our mission, I am finally ready to pack away several of the binders of family history names that I have accumulated during our mission.  These represent much effort and some considerable cost and they will be key in our continuing family history efforts after our mission.  With all that we have going on the rest of our mission, I believe that I also have to say good-bye to individual family history efforts for the rest of our mission.

Binders of family history names that we have accumulated for the villages in Bavaria.  Now in a box to be sent home.

On Friday night we did make one more trip to the National Bibliotek to review a few more family history books for the Erfurt area where Sister Rueckert's ancestors were from.  These are also treasures for us.  We go into the books and take photos of all of the pages that have one of the 13 surnames that we have identified for that area.  These don't take any physical space, as they are stored on the computer.  However they add to the resources that we will use in our family history efforts after our mission.

10 more books of printed family history information for the Erfurt Area, true treasures

On our way home from Buchheim, we took a few photos of turnip crops.  We thought that these were piles of potatoes, but in fact they were turnips which had been recently harvested.

Mounds of harvested turnips

Closer view of another pile of turnips

Individual turnip from the pile

Finally, today, we are enjoying our Sabbath Day worship.  We took time to watch the Women's Conference that happened last night while we were sleeping.  What a joy it is to hear these inspired messages from our women leaders.  I just wanted to share a comment by Sister Joy D. Jones, general Primary President.  She said "When we sin we are less worthy but never worth less".  What a profound message.  I pray that we may be ready for all the inspired messages that we will receive from  the leaders of our Church this coming weekend.

Sister Joy D. Jone, General Primary President

A few other memories from Frankfurt:

Landscaping company that works at the Area Office, bearing the Möller name, which is Sister Rueckert's maiden name

The third name to this restaurant close to our home.  When we came, it was Zum Lowen, than it was Split.  Now it is El Croata.  The constancy is in their Zwiebelschnitzel, which is a Weinershcnitzel with fried onions on it, very delicious. 

We buy boiled eggs at the store.  They come colored like Easter Eggs.  Makes it easy to have boiled egg for breakfast, which is common for us.