Who said a change is as good as a rest?

We are just finishing up our little break in the U.S.  Remember, this is so that we don't overstay our tourist visa in Germany before our mission officially begins.  We scheduled some time back in the U.S to correspond with some planned family reunions and a visit to Pennsylvania for the baptism of our grandson.  All this was accomplished and much more.  Now we are ready to return to Germany.

We returned to Germany from Cape Verde on August 26 and promptly moved to our new apartment, which should be our home for the next two years.  The next morning, on August 27, we left for the U.S., arriving in time to host a family reunion of my cousins and their families on August 29.

I believe that we had each of my cousins (or a close family member) that are in the state of Utah in attendance.  We also had the two remaining aunts from the previous generations, my mother and my aunt LaJuana.  We do this every two or three years.  It was certainly good to get together and we especially made an important connection with my cousin Gloria, who knows so much more than we do about our Germany relatives.  We began plans for her to visit us while we are in Germany and we will work together on a short family history trip to the home of our grandmother in Nuremberg.

The following weekend we had our annual Rueckert Reunion with my mother, my brothers, and their families at the Heber Valley Girls Camp Cabins.  This has been a special time for many of our grandchildren and this year we were able again to hike to the lake and spend an hour in canoes, paddle boats, etc.  Good memories were had by all.  We had a special opportunity to have two of Camila's children, Kaisha and Cherish, with us.  They were so well behaved, they are adapting to their new situation very well.  Caide and Isake were not able to come, since they are now playing youth football.  We also had Ammon's girl friend, Flor, with her two children with us.  These newcomers did very well with their other cousins and had a great time together.  Although not all of our children were able to participate, we still had nearly thirty of our posterity with us.

During this trip we were able to follow-up with Camila and her family.  Her
children are receiving excellent care from their aunt Caren, Eddie's sister.  We spent quite a bit of time with Caren during this visit.  We are impressed with her efforts and love for these four grandchildren.  We felt that love and also the great challenges that she has as she tries to bring more structure and love into their lives. We were also able to visit a few times with Camila, who is currently receiving treatment in the University Neuropsychiatric Institute.  She is recovering from years of challenges prior to the death of her husband Eddie at the end of June.  We were able to help identify some options for her continuing care after she leaves the UNI.

During and in between reunions, we were able to have many individual visits with our children and several meaningful conversations, including some good spirituality checks.  We were able to attend a sacrament meeting where Ammon gave an incredible talk about his journey back to the Lord.  We had a wonderful opportunity to perform almost 30 baptisms for our family names with our grandchildren, Braden and Katelyn, in the Salt Lake Temple.  Moroni succeeded in gaining joint custody with his daughter Tiare and Moroni, Leenee and Tiare were able to visit us in our home.  We also had visits from Jared and Pollyanna and their families.  Each of these three families were not able to be at the cabins but still were able to spend time with us.

Finally, we were able to come to Pennsylvania to visit with Melanie and her family and attend the baptism and confirmation for their son Thomas.  This included meeting our grandson Timothy (born last March) for the first time.  After spending most of Friday with them, we were able to go to the newly completed Priesthood Restoration site near the Susquehanna River on Saturday.  This brand new visitors center and restored buildings will be dedicated by President Russell M. Nelson next Saturday.  It is always good to be on sacred ground especially with our daughter and her 6 wonderful sons (James was working on Saturday).  Thomas's baptism occurred that very night with his confirmation the following day in their little branch.  We love this special family who have been through so many trials, but have maintained incredible faith.  They are an example to all of us and the fruits of their labors is seen in their well behaved and faithful sons.

Tomorrow we will be heading back to Germany.  We managed to spend a few days in the Self-
Reliance offices in Salt Lake, hold some video conference meetings with our managers and participate in our Area Self-Reliance Committee by Video Conference at midnight our time (8 am in Germany) while we were in the U.S.  We are anxious to get back to our full time responsibilities, but will miss our wonderful family who show us so much love.

We also help the Self-Reliance initiative . . .

I recognize that many of our blogs so far make it appear that we are simply turning into tourists, visiting amazing places and enjoying the experience.  In reality, the above is true, but it is only a small part of our mission experience.  Most of the time we are working closely with our Self-Reliance Services Managers throughout Europe, sharing best practices and teaching the doctrine and principles of self-reliance.  As we visit the different regions or countries, we ask to participate in the different aspects of the work, so we can learn from their challenges and at times we have something to offer that may even help with the challenges that they have.  Mostly we love working with these managers who treat us so kindly and teach us so much..

To be truly successful, the Self-Reliance initiative must be Priesthood Led, that is it must be a tool that priesthood leaders use so they can help their members become self-reliant.  The number one priority of our SRS managers is to support the priesthood leaders in their region.  Often during our visits we are able to meet with Stake and District Presidents or at times even with Area Seventies.  At these times, we (including our SRS managers) work to help them to understand how the Self-Reliance initiative can help them in their priesthood stewardship of helping create a Zion society within the Church.  This is where the members dwell in righteousness, are of one heart and one mind and have no poor among them (Moses 7:18).

While in Frankfurt or in Utah, we spend a significant amount of time holding video conferences with the managers, in our joint management councils or individually.  During these meetings, we share principles, policies, tools, experiences and success stories.  Hopefully, this helps each of us to have better ideas to help implement this initiative with all of the stakes and district in Europe.  We have 163 stakes and districts and so far, less than half of them have successfully implemented this initiative.  We have tried to identify specific steps that should be taken by each of them and then encourage and train them to accomplish each step.  Step by step we are making progress.

In my feeble efforts to explain this process, let me share a few slides of a presentation that I recently shared with our Area Self-Reliance committee, showing success stories in some of the key processes. Many of these experiences were part of our recent visits:

Cape Verde - Islands of the Atlantic

Our last visit before returning to the U.S. was to Cape Verde, a country of 10 islands about 1.5 hours (by plane) off of the coast of West Africa. It is about a 4 hour airplane ride from Portugal, which is the route that we took, right after finishing our visit to Portugal.  One of the poorest countries in the Europe Area, it has many Portuguese speaking, humble members where the Church is growing quite quickly.  Three stakes have been created in the past 4 years, there are now 2 other districts also organized.  We have two Self-Reliance Service managers in this country, Mendonça who serves the southern islands and James who serves the northern islands.  This visit was to both of them.

We arrived in Praia, Cape Verde late in the evening of August 18 and went straight to our hotel.  It was in a beautiful setting on the coast of the largest island of the 10, Santiago.  The next two days we spent with Mendonça, visiting SR groups and leaders in the Praia stake.  We also spent the first day, mostly visiting with Mendonça and James (who came form the São Vicente island) about the role of Self-Reliance Managers, including their specific role with the PEF loan program.  We also had Elder and Sister Porter, full-time SRS missionaries with us throughout this visit.

On Friday, the 21st, we went with James to the Island of Sal, where we implemented the Self-Reliance initiative that weekend.  This included several meetings with the District President, training of the district and branch councils of the three branches on the island. On Sunday we had our first My Path Devotional and 5 self-reliance groups were formed.  Once again, we met with the District President on Monday morning before leaving the city.  On the way to the airport, we went through the tourist city of Santa Maria, where we had lunch and saw the growing tourism business of that island.

Due to storms, air flights were delayed throughout the day.  Ours was no exception, as we were told that there are only three airplanes that serve the inter-island air traffic.  We had to wait for our plane to take an earlier flight to the island of Santiago and then to return to pick us up.  Our 6:15 pm flight finally left well after midnight, allowing us to arrive in our hotel at about 2:00 am.

The next day we went with Mendonça and Elder Porter to the district that is on the other side of the island, where we saw perhaps the best self-reliance committee that I have ever visited.  We also visited with some other branch presidents further away from the district center and had a touristic drive throughout the island, seeing the manual agriculture that goes on this time of the year as the annual rains come.  We left Cape Verde that night, heading back to our home in Frankfurt, through Portugal.

The following photos show some of the sights and experiences that we had during our visit to Cape Verde:

Food highlights:  Debbie and our manager, James, sitting at a restaurant near the beach in Santa Maria, island of Sal, Cape Verde eating a tuna steak.  Next two photos are taken in Praia, island of Santiago. The first shows a dinner with a tuna steak, cooking on a rock in front of us, while we are served.  The second shows Debbie eating lobster at a reasonable price.  Seafood is easy to come by in Cape Verde!  Most of the rest of the trip we ate chicken and rice!

 Views of the islands:  First is above the main city of Praia and near the coast from our hotel:

Next are views of the island of Sal, first is from our hotel, in the main city of Espartos, the second is of some primary children with Debbie at the local branch:

The following are photos of the interior of the island of Santiago while we were visiting Assomada District on the island of Santiago.  The rainy season comes in August, the only rain of the year.  All agriculture is planted at this time in anticipation of the rain.  Much of the agriculture is planted in steep slopes with manual labor.  You can see some of this in the photos.  Since we were there during the rainy season, we saw much green, which isn't always normal.  This must be where they got the name of Cape Verde, which means Green Cape.

Portugal through the eyes of Kings and Friars

On Friday, August 14, we made our first trip together inside of Europe, to Portugal.  We had a productive day with our Self-Reliance Services manager, Antonio Paulo and have more meetings planned with Self-Reliance groups, facilitators and priesthood leaders on Sunday and Monday.  However, on Saturday we had some open time and Antonio Paulo and his wife and daughter took the day to give us a personal tour of Lisbon and Sintra, Portugal.  We share just a little of this below, to give you an idea of the wonderful things we have seen and learned with these special friends.

It focused on a historic city about 45 minutes out of Lisbon, named Sintra, which has long been the home to Portuguese monarchs, dating back prior to 1500.  We are were able to see how the summer palace of the king and queen of Portugal and were  also able to see a significant contrast as we visited a monastery where 8 monks lived far from the comforts of home, all during the same epoch.  Comments and photos follow:

This is a view of the Palace of Sinatra, which was the summer retreat for the royalty of Portugal.  The palace had origins in the 10th century bust most of what we were able to see dates to the 15th century.  The coned shape "spires" are chimneys from their kitchen:

     

Debbie and I are in the formal meeting room with ornate wall tiles and ceiling decor.  This is where many of the important treaties of the day were signed and probably where Christopher Columbus met with Queen Isabel.

Another photo from another location in the palace:

View from the front of the place of the remains of a castle and fort that is on the top of the mountain:

Afterwards we went to visit The Capuchos Convent.  The convent is made into the rock and you get a real feeling of the hardships the eight monks who lived there had to endure.  This was established in 1560, similar time to the palace that we visited.

Small living accommodations, the doors only go up to Debbie's neck:

Many of the doors are covered with cork which comes from the tress in the location.  The following shows some of the cork covering and then one of the trees where the cork comes from.  Portugal is the major producer of cork in the world:

We finished the day visiting the coast of Portugal which is the most western location in continental Europe:

Absence makes the heart grow fonder or missionaries without companions

Debbie and I have talked about serving a mission together for years.  Once we actually got our mission call in May, those talks started becoming a reality.  Things were changing so fast for us, no one understood the full picture of all that was going on except Debbie and I.  With our pre-mission opportunity in Frankfurt, we truly and emotionally started this mission way back on June 1 when we got on the plane for our first experience in Frankfurt, Germany.  This occurred only two days after we moved out of our home and into our condominium with Grandma Rueckert.  Every step of the way has been an adventure, but much more than that, it has been something that Debbie and I have done totally together and that has brought some very special feelings between us. As we made our final preparations to officially move on July 20th, our life was full of preparations and decisions, including adjusting to a new lifestyle and responsibilities and trying to begin learning a new language.  Of course, it also included our bittersweet feelings with our children and grandchildren, loving them and leaving them to the care of our Heavenly Father while we are away.

The experiences of these past few months have brought us much closer together, increasing the closeness that we have felt for such a long time.  It is hard to explain to someone who has not experienced it, but it has been so very special!  Add to that our conviction that we are doing what our Heavenly Father wants us to do and the strong guidance of the Holy Ghost that we have been feeling individually and together.  As we arrived in our apartment in Frankfurt on July 21, 2015, it was the first time in our married life that we had ever lived alone in our own home, without children or Grandma Rueckert.

So three days later, when we heard about Shawn's untimely passing we just stepped up for one more change in our life and we did the right thing, allowing Debbie to quickly return to Utah to help Kari and others during the funeral and adjustments.  We never did doubt if this should happen, I was able to carry out the planned travels and activities while we divided and conquered, we had done this many times in our married lives.

What was surprising to both of us, was how hard this separation was.  We both were busy and doing good, but we were not together and we both felt this incredible void.  I have traveled much more than I would have liked to over the past few years and we have adjusted to those times, but this was so much different.  I guess it was like being a missionary without a companion and it certainly felt different.  After 12 days, we were back together and we are now continuing on in this wonderful experience TOGETHER!  This experience of serving our Heavenly Father together 24/7 is much better than either of us ever expected.  We are finding special ways to offer all of the talents and blessings that we have each received and have found a satisfaction and peace that has exceeded all of our expectations.

Tender Mercies

 In a time of tragedy and loss, God showered down tender mercies on me and my daughter Kari Parker. Recently Kari lost her husband and best friend to an untimely death.

The first tender mercy given us was that Shawn was able to pass peacefully through the veil minutes before the doctors and nurses removed life support.

Mike Murray provided the second tender mercy when he gave Tom the go-ahead to make arrangements for me to fly home from Germany the day after Shawn's passing.

I was blessed with another tender mercy with the companionship of the Holy Ghost as I flew home without my husband. Everything went smoothly and I was filled with great calm and peace.

The support and love that was shown to Kari by her siblings was another tender mercy. They all stepped up in a big way. It was truly amazing!

Shawn's family's caring acts of kindness and love were a tender mercy that helped Kari to make it through the most difficult experience of her life. They pledged their continuing love, help and support in the days, weeks, months and years that lie ahead.

Little Serenity Grace is another tender mercy. She is the part of Shawn that lives on in this mortal life. She looks so much like her daddy that it will help to keep the memory of Shawn alive. What a great gift and blessing from a loving Heavenly Father.

The outpouring of love and service from ward members was another tender mercy that blessed Kari's life. She was amazed to come home from the funeral to find a complete landscaping make-over of her front yard. All she asked for was for lawn to be mowed and watered. This is just one example of the service given to Kari by ward members.

Kari received several monetary  donations from family and friends which turned out to be another tender mercy as Kari tries to figure out how to make ends meet financially.

Being able to bless Serenity before I had to return to Germany was a sweet tender mercy. Shawn's dad was able to give his little grand-daughter a name and a blessing.

Serenity was amazing during the viewing, funeral and blessing.She was calm and peaceful as many hands lovingly took care of her. What a tender mercy.

The fact that both Kari and Beckie have felt Shawn's presence in prompting them to do things, has been a tender mercy.

Last but not least, I was able to travel home and be reunited with my wonderful husband safely and without any problems. This was the final tender mercy given me to close this very difficult chapter in my life.

While Debbie was away . . . Tom didn't stay in Frankfurt

While Debbie was back in Utah for Shawn's funeral and to support Kari, Tom was busy visiting with some of our Self-Reliance Service managers.  He spent two full days in Spain (July 29-31) and four full days in Albania (August 1-5).

Spain - July 29-31

Spain, time spent with SRS manager, full-time missionary couple, visiting self-reliance center and priesthood leaders.  Time was very well spent, relationships were strengthened and understanding increased.  During spare moments, Tom was also able to participate in an endowment session in the Madrid Temple and see a few sights in the evening time.  People just begin coming out after the sun goes down, due to the extreme heat this time of the year, so the city plazas come alive and become very crowded after 10:00 pm.

The hotel was in the city of Alcalá, just outside of Madrid. This city is noted for a few things, Rome first conquered the area and built the city in the first century B.C.  It was also the birthplace of Miguel de Cervantes in 1547, the author of Man of La Mancha.  I spent an evening walking through the town square with our manager and his wife.  The following photos are some of the highlights of that evening:

This photo is of a university that was first built in the 1500s under the direction of Ximenez de Cicneros, a Catholic Cardinal.  The uniqueness of the building is how light is portrayed.  As students begin learning they are on the first floor where the windows are small and they begin receiving light.  By the second year, on the second floor the windows are larger (more light).  The third floor is full of many windows, signifying more enlightenment.   In the final and fourth year they arrive to the roof, which is full of light, but the true light comes from above.   On the roof is several torches, which symbolically are lighted by the Holy Ghost.  What a wonderful concept of learning and receiving light, especially from the Creator of Light and the Holy Ghost.

This photo shows me with a statue of Miguel de Cervantes, creator of Man of La Mancha.  Much of the parts of the story are shown on the base of the statue (fighting windmills, etc.).  We saw much more of this throughout the town, including statues of Don Quixote and Sancho.  Every year around Miguel de Cervantes' birthday (Oct. 9), they have a medieval week, which is full of many people dressed up and apparently quite an experience.


The next night we spent the evening on the Plaza Mayor in Madrid, Spain, truly a gathering place for many people in Madrid.  The photo below shows the spot near the plaza where all road measurements (kilometer markings) originate for Spain, all are measured from this spot, which is near the center of the country.

The plaza is full of varied attractions and many residents come to walk and watch.  The photo below is form a street dancer (acrobat) and his team that were performing on the square in an impromptu act.

Albania - August 1 to August 5

I traveled to the country of Albania on Saturday, August 1.  The primary focus of this trip was to meet with the first participants of the PEF loan program which had just been approved in this country.  We also met with the Stake President (his stake covers the entire country), many of the bishops, the mission president and a few Senior missionary couples who serve in different capacities in the country.  I learned a lot about a country that had been communist just 25 years ago and was now trying to overcome their communist past.  The Church is growing well in this country, but it is still in it's infancy.  We feel that the Self-Reliance initiative is just what the members need, it will help the Church and its members to grow.

On Monday we traveled to a city three hours south of Tirana.  While we were waiting for a meeting with the Bishop and some young adults, we were able to visit an old fort that dates back to the Greek and Roman eras.  It is on top of the mountain above the city: