Connecting Families in the Land of our Forefathers

We spent this past week researching the family history of Sister Rueckert's ancestors and then preforming temple work for several of our ancestors in the Freiberg Germany Temple.  Each day we spent the morning and early afternoon hours with these planned activities.  In the late afternoons and evenings we were able to experience a little more of each of these locations.  As we sealed some of our family together in the temple on Saturday, the purpose and joy of our work was magnified.

Original Church Books for Thamsbruck

Some time ago, we planned to spend a week concentrating on family history for Sister Rueckert's family.  We chose time in July/August when our self-reliance activities were more limited.  To prepare for such a trip, we spent weeks of communication to organize the time in the different parishes and archives.  The end result was a productive week of research in four different locations and two wonderful days in the Freiberg Temple.

Monday,
Grossengottern - Schade, Motz, Born and Apel

Sister Rueckert under the sign entering into Grossengottern

We started our week on Monday morning by making the 2+ hour trip to the Grossengottern parish.  We had never been able to get a response from this parish before.  Finally a few weeks ago, I made a phone call to the pastor and he invited us to come up on Monday at 10:00 am.  We found him to be extremely helpful as he spent over three hours with us reviewing the parish books and seeking out our ancestors.  He was willing to spend the time to read the old writing and bring out the books as our search expanded.  We were able to extend one family line several generations and clarified information in others.

Elder Rueckert reviewing parish books with the Pastor

The pastor looking through the parish  books

Marriage Record of additional grandparents added to  the Moeller line

We had another visit at the Muhlhausen parish scheduled for the afternoon, but arrived late due to the success we were having.  We jointly decided to just concentrate one full day in Muhlhausen on the following Wednesday.  That left us a little extra time for our drive to Magdeburg, a few hours north.  There we would be visiting the regional archive the next morning.

While there, we decided to visit the Magdeburg Water Bridge, described from Wikipedia below:

The Magdeburg Water Bridge (German: Kanalbrücke Magdeburg) is a large navigable aqueduct in central Germany, located near Magdeburg. The largest canal underbridge in Europe, it spans the river Elbe and directly connects the Mittellandkanal to the west and Elbe-Havel Canal to the east of the river, allowing large commercial ships to pass between the Rhineland and Berlin without having to descend into and then climb out of the Elbe itself.

This man made bridge for a river expands nearly one kilometer, 690 meters over land and 228 meters over water.  The water depth in the bridge is 4.25 meters.  We walked up to the bridge where there is a lock to transport other boats down to the connected canal from the bridge location.  It ended up being quite a walk!  The first photo is taken from the Wikipedia page.  It shows this better than we were able to capture.

By Lotron at the German language Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1323934

Lock for boats to descend from the bridge to a canal connecting to the Elbe River  

Water in the bridge and the Elbe River below in the background

Sister Rueckert alongside the river bridge, looking towards the river crossing

With the river bridge looking out towards where it joins the river in the distance

Tuesday, 
Magdeburg Archives - Möllers From Dachwig to Gispersleben

Sister Rueckert by the sign entering Gispersleben

Sister Rueckert under the sing as we entered into Dachwig, about 14 kilometers from Gispersleben

The next day we spent all day, until they closed the archives at 3:00 pm, in the Magdeburg Regional archives, looking at microfilm for the Church records of the region.  This is our prime source for several of the records of different locations around Erfurt.  Here we were able to take photos of all of the Gispersleben familienregisters that we had seen in our last visit and find a few more original records in other locations.  We were also able to get into the records of Dachwig, where Christian Wilhelm Moeller was born.  There we were found some more limited familienregisters which gives us more information about the siblings and parents of Christian Wilhelm Moeller.  We still were not able to tie down the birth locations of his parents.  That leaves additional work for another time.

Part of the familienregister for Moeller in Dachwig

 We never have enough time at this archive.  There seems to be unlimited things to research.  However, each time we go, we learn a little more and capture some additional information.

After finishing at the archive, we drove back to the Erfurt area.  We decided to take the time to revisit the home where Sister Rueckert's father lived.  This may be our last visit to Erfurt on our mission, so we did want to make one more visit.

Sister Rueckert on the steps where her Father had stood as  a child

We decided to explore the locations that we had just researched.  We went to Gispersleben and Dachwig and pondered their place in our history.  We also celebrated by eating dinner in Gispersleben.  The plan was to have an ice cream in Dachwig, but we never found an ice cream parlor open.

By the Gispersleben Kiliani Church, home of the primary Church records for  the recent Moeller

At an Italian restaurant in Gispesleben

The ceiling of the restaurant, stars, clouds, etc.

By the Dachwig primary Church, home of the Dachwig parish records

Wednesday,
Mühlhausen - Focus on Döring, Michel, Harnisch & Heussner

Sister Rueckert in front of the entrance sign into Mühlhausen

The next morning we visited the Muhlhausen parish.  We were met by our good friend, Dr. Stefan Kublik.  He arrived early so that we could spend more time there.  As he did last December, Dr. Kublik spend the entire day with us, guiding us through the different books and reading the entries in the books.  We identified several new ancestors in some lines that had not gone very far, including a a 5th great grandmother who was a 17 year old single mother and her parents.  We had another parish in Allmenhausen who was willing to let us come visit them, but we thought our time was better spent where we had such able help from Dr. Kublik.

This parish has records from six different Churches during this time.  To research, we would often have to look at the church books from all six Churches.  This is where Dr.Kublik was extremely helpful.  For example, we found Johann Andreas Döring birth record in the St. Nicolai records and his death record in the St. Petri Books.  The marriage record of his in-laws (Michel and Harnisch) was in the St. Blasii books.  We also found some more printed books of several of the parishes in Mühlhausen, which was another treasure.  Sister Rueckert took photos of all of the pages that referred to the 10 names or so for which we had primary interest in Mühlhausen.

Books of printed books with indexes to marriages, births and deaths at several of the parishes in Mühlhausen

Birth of Margaretha Elisabeth Michel, daughter of Johann Christoph Michel and Martha Christina Harnisch

We took a lunch break and celebrated our stay in Mühlhausen with a Mühlhausen Pizza at the local Mama Mia's restaurant.  This was perhaps the best pizza that we have eaten in Europe.  It pays to buy what is named for the local city.

Excellent "Mühlhausen" Pizza 

Once again had to finish by 3:00 pm. We then took time to explore downtown Mühlhausen.  The largest Church in the city is the St Marien church which was a block away from the pastor's office.  The Church has now been turned into a museum.

We found this especially interesting as we learned about Thomas Münzter, a reformer at the time of Martin Luther.  Although he initially sided with Luther, he ended up opposing the Roman Catholic Church and Martin Luther.  He preached in many locations.  However, his last place of preaching was in Mühlhausen.  The exhibition in the Church states:

"The old city council is dissolved and a new "Eternal Council" established.  Whereas Luther called on the peasants to exercise moderation and reject violence, for Müntzer the time has come to separate the "chosen" from the 'ungodly".  When the Peasants' War reached Thuringia, he takes on the mantle of the leading theologian of the revolt and marches at the head of a contingent o peasants from Mühlhausen into the Battle of Frankenhausen.  After the bloody defeat against the army of the Dukes Müntzer is taken as a prisoner, tortured and finally executed in front of the gates of Mühlhausen on the 27th May 1525."

After his death, the city of Mühlhausen rejected the Catholic Church and became a stronghold of the reformation.

In the Church Museum

St. Marien's Church in Mühlhausen

We then went and visited many of the other Churches in the "old town".  In a short space, we counted six different Churches.  All of them were built before the reformation.  In one of the largest, St. Blasii, there was an exhibit of the history of Lutheran pastors as the city turned from Catholic reign during the reformation.

Sister Rueckert reviewing the history of Pastor families

In front of the St. Blasii Church

St. Blassi Church

St. Jacob's Church

Corn Market Church

All Saints Church

Kiliani Church

Thursday,

Thamsbruck - Stolls and many of their relatives

Sister Rueckert under the sign of entering into Thamsbrück

On Thursday we went to the Bad Langensalza parish, which now had the books for Thamsbruck.  This is the home of Sister Rueckert's grandmother Stoll.  We had visited this parish last year but were told that the books for Thamsbruck were not available at that time.  Fortunately, they recently brought these old books into their parish.  We were allowed full access to these books and so we went through and photographed everything that had any of the several names that we were looking for.  The primary name here is the family name of Stoll.  We found many records for them dating as far back as we looked.  Many of these names are in Family Search, but not their spouses or cousins.  With the extensive records that we saw, we should be able to add many names to Family Search.  We were also able to find some of the additional names on other lines that are linked to Grandmother Stoll.  We did not take time to review them in detail.  However, we have hundreds of images to review now that we are back in Frankfurt.  This certainly will last well into our post mission experience.

The biggest challenge was the size of the books.  Sister Rueckert went through the first three books, especially picking up records that were identified in the alphabetical indexes.  The larger book for the 1700s did not have an alphabetical index.  I went  through most of the pages back until 1740 and took photos of each page with an identified name.  Unfortunately we ran out of time, as the parish only allowed us to be there until 2:00 pm.  Once again, we have something to return for.

Sister Rueckert taking photos of one of the "books"

Marriage record of 5th Great Grandfather Stoll of Sister Rueckert.  Better information than was in Family Search.

After the parish visit, we decided to go and get an ice cream in Thamsbrück.  We were told that they had a great ice cream shop just outside of town.  We found several ways out of town and none led to an ice cream shop.  On one such adventure, we followed a road that went by some geese and then turned into a bicycle path.

Geese on the side of the road "out of town"

The narrowing road left us no room to turn around

While we looked for ice cream, we picked a little wheat from the fields and satisfied our hunger with kernels of wheat

After going to a neighboring town we asked about an ice cream store.  They sent us back to Thamsbrück where we finally found our ice cream store, within the city of Thamsbrück.

Busy ice cream store in Thamsbrück

 As we finished each of our parish visits, we left a thank you to each pastor or administrator.  These nice chocolates are the merci brand, which of course means Thank you in French.  They were well received with smiles from each of the kind people that helped us this week.

Friday and Saturday,

Freiberg, Germany Temple - families sealed together

After finishing in Thamsbrück, we drove for a few more hours to arrive in Freiburg, home of the only operating temple in Germany.  There we spent all day Friday and Saturday morning.  We enjoyed a couple endowment sessions and an initiatory session on Friday before the temple closed at 3:00 pm.  We were able to do another endowment session and a sealing session on Saturday morning before heading back towards home.  

In front of the Freiberg temple on Friday afternoon

A very unique evergreen tree in front of the chapel  on the Freiberg temple site

This was our fourth visit to this temple, counting the open house a year ago.  We got to know individuals in this temple and have some fellow missionaries that we can consider friends.  It certainly feels like "our" temple.

As I sat in the endowment session on Saturday morning, my mind reflected on the sealing that we had just completed that morning.  I remembered that this is the purpose of our family history efforts, to help individuals receive temple ordinances and covenants and to help families to be sealed together forever.

As an example of this wonderful work, the following photo hits one of the examples from this visit.:

We were able to perform the initiatory and endowments for Hans Michael Rueckert and Susanna Geissendorfer on Friday and seal them together on Saturday.  Hans Michael was also able to be sealed to his parents and one of their sons was sealed to them.  Three others are now ready for our next sealing session with another 6 siblings in various stages of preparation.  This takes a lot of involvement from a lot of people.  Contributors to these ordinances and others that were sealed on Saturday include grandchildren, nephews, ward members, some of our children, fellow senior missionaries and ourselves.

After we left the temple on Friday, we went looking for nearby castles.  We found and visited a few in the vicinity.  See the following:

Castle in downtown Freiberg

Castle in Nossen, Germany

Inner court of the Castle in Nossen, Germany

Part of the torture chamber of the Nossen Castle.  Sit on this chair and you cannot lean back or rest your arms.

Entrance to the dungeon.  Entry and exit only by a rope or some extended object into the dungeon.

Saturday,

On the way home - Erfurt Castles and Kassel

After the temple session on Saturday, we checked out of our hotel and headed home, the long way.  As we drove back near Erfurt, we decided to visit a few of the castles that we have often driven by.  There are three within a short distance of each other.  Some were not easily accessible.  Photos of them follow:

Veste Wachsenburg

Outside of Veste Wachsenburg

Burg Gleichen

Blumenberg

While visiting this area, we visited a wonderful restaurant in the city of Mühlberg.  There we had the best bratwurst that we have eaten in Germany.

Great meal, bratwurst, sauerkraut and mashed potatoes

We than continued our journey to the city of Kassel.  There is a mechanical waterworks that is normally working on Sunday and Wednesday afternoons.  This is done by the release of an incredible amount of water that works it's way down the park.  Once a month, this is done in the nighttime.  Yesterday was the day.  So after some confusion on how to get there and view it, we ended up watching a pretty interesting display of man made waterfalls.  It was pretty impressive, but doesn't really match what we had seen in June in Croatia.  Our conclusion is that our creator does a better job than man in creating natural beauties.  However, not bad for man made:

Water flowing from the top (Hercules)

One of the waterfalls along the way.  Foot bridge on the top.

Blue lights with the water above a castle wall

In front of the great fountain at the end of the water works.  A little closer than we needed to be as we got pretty wet.

Great Finds in Local Places

Not all weeks are full of great miracles and places to visit.  Sometimes we go to the office each day to work and go home to our daily routine.  This week, we never even drove our car except to a nearby restaurant on Friday night.  However, we still see opportunities to serve and many blessings in our lives, right here in Frankfurt.

Sister Rueckert teaching the Young Women how to make her famous Chocolate Chip Cookies

We love the Sabbath Day!  It is the highlight of each week.  We love the chance to worship, serve and study.  We testify that the Lord asked us to honor the Sabbath for "our sakes".  When we learn to do that, the blessings of heaven are open to us.  We also believe that sometimes it is a day of rest.  I caught Sister Rueckert meditating on her scriptures this past week.

A day of rest

Just like in the U.S., Monday was the 24th of July.  However, here it was not a holiday but a normal workday.  We had plenty to do, so we worked.  However that evening we thought we should also celebrate.  After returning home, I went down to our store which is one of the great blessings of our mission, and bought the fixings for our own barbecue.

With purchased hard boiled eggs ( a German specialty), Sister Rueckert made deviled eggs.  We then fried up some hamburger patties and had our own hamburgers with all the fixings.  We also found some corn on the cob and some watermelon.  Sister Rueckert got out some paper plates to give us more of a barbecue feeling.

Table set with our 24th of July Barbecue

A nostalgic and tasty meal

After our Pioneer Day dinner we watched the concluding video of The Work and the Glory.  We have loved studying the history of the Church this year with the Sunday School curriculum.  We are so mindful of their extreme sacrifices of the early Saints to help establish the Kingdom of God on the earth in these latter days.  We are amazed how much was restored in just a few years.  We can only imagine how difficult it was to get the Church organized and functioning while growing so rapidly.  Thank goodness that the Lord is in charge.  He sorts all of that out, puts things in perspective and provides needed revelation for all of his saints, including those of us who came 150 years later.

It has been a cool week, temperature wise.  On Tuesday July 25th, the high was 60 degree Fahrenheit.  We have had a lot of rain, but we aren't complaining.  It beats the heat in this humidity.

Tuesday was our monthly meeting with missionary couples.  Two more couples are going home in the next month, Elder and Sister Simoncini (Italy) and Elder and Sister Vernon (London).  Their replacements are not yet here, so our numbers are getting fewer.  Some of the other couples had conflicts this month.  Our numbers will increase greatly over the next few months.

Sister Simoncini on the upper left sharing her testimony with us.  Elder Vernon is on the middle right.

Wednesday, after our Book of Mormon class taught by Elder Garrett, we (Thomas King and us) spent the rest of the day in a video conference with our SLC SR interface, Jorge Alvarado.  We used this as a preparation conference for the new general authority leaders that will begin their new assignments on August 1.  That includes Elder Mervyn Arnold who will be our first contact in Self-Reliance in SLC and Elder Maximillio De Feo who will join our Europe Area Presidency and will be the chairman of our Area Self-Reliance Committee.  After this joint planning meeting, we spent the rest of the week, preparing the preliminary draft of our August Area Committee presentation. We needed to send that to SLC to give Elder Arnold an update of where Europe is in the Self-Reliance Initiative.

Wednesday evening, Sister Rueckert taught the young women of our ward how to make her famous chocolate chip cookies.  This was a chance for service.  She also brought a few cookies home to share with her husband, which was an additional blessing.

Thursday and Friday we worked hard in reviewing the self-reliance status of each of the stakes in Europe and summarizing results to be presented.  I enjoy analysis and presentation.  Much of my career was spent doing this, so it is a pleasant task.

While analyzing results I came to a pleasant realization.  We have generally assumed that only 60% of our self-reliance activities get registered on-line by local SR facilitators.  As I looked back to the early part of the year, I found that the on-line registration has mostly caught up with the manual reporting.  What this means is that the data in the database, although not 100% complete, is much closer than we had expected.  This is the purpose of analysis, not only to present, but more importantly to learn.

Thursday night we enjoyed a Chicken salad.  This is a normal meal for us, but it was more special because the pepper and tomatoes we used were grown on our own balcony.  There is always a special joy to eat the food that you have been able to produce.

Chicken salad with home grown peppers and tomatoes

The number one priority of the Area Presidency is to help unemployed leaders in Southern Spain to get jobs.  We have put great effort into this this year, with some improved results.  However, they still fall short of what we want to accomplish.  Too many leaders are still unemployed or underemployed. Part of our current plan is an even more intensive effort in the Granada Spain stake.  We will begin a pilot with this stake next month.  On Friday night we had a first training meeting with the Stake President, high councilor and stake specialist.  This included us, our Spain manager, our Area manager, our Director of Temporal Affairs and a few individuals from SLC.  So this became part of our date night this week.

When we have a week at home like this week, we have a chance to more consistent  in our exercise and eating habits and in our study of German.  When we do, we make more progress.

For just a minute I want to share our current diet that is bearing great fruit.  Last March we heard from our German teacher about a diet that she was doing that was working.  She simply fasts three times a week.  That means three days of the week, she eats nothing until dinner, but does drink water. We decided to give it a try and have been doing it for almost 4 months.  When we travel it gets more complicated and we fast a bit less.  When we are home, we get better results.  In the first 15 months of our mission, we added quite a few pounds.  Now in the last 4 months, we have lost more than we had added and are now under our pre-mission weight and continue to lose pounds.

Most diets require a lot of extra effort and costs to prepare special foods, etc.  This one goes the other direction.  We don't have to buy as much food or spend as much time in food preparation or doing the dishes.  We are feeling liberated from many of our daily tasks and finding more time to study, etc.  When we eat, we try to be careful but are still able to eat normal foods and also some desserts  Our bodies appear to have adapted well to this new approach and we are feeling good.

This week we also have been preparing for a family history week next week.  We will be spending the week visiting parishes and archives for Debbie's ancestors.  A big part of our current strategy is to do what needs to be done here and leave what can be done after our mission for then. This means mostly we are data gathering in the best quantities possible.

As part of this strategy, I found that some of the records we are seeing are available on microfilm in the Family History library in SLC.  So we decided to order a few of the films to make sure that our assumptions were correct.  This week  some of them arrived at our Family History center  in Frankfurt.  We also discovered that some genealogical books about the Erfurt area (where Sister Rueckert's father was born) are available in two locations.  One is at the Family History Center in SLC and the other is in the National Bibliothek (library) in Frankfurt or Leipzig.  So we ordered a few of these books to review on our date night on Friday so that we would understand what is otherwise available.  When the Video Conference with the Granada stake got scheduled on Friday night, we switched our plans from Friday night to Saturday afternoon.

So our Saturday activities were Family History oriented right here in Frankfurt.  We walked to our Church and accessed the new microfilms that had arrived and I took the train for two stops to the National Bibliothek to review some of the books that they had.

Sister Rueckert taking pictures of microfilm in our local chapel

A record from 1739 with the Möller name

Reference to my Great Great Grandfather's birth in Alsace Lorraine, France (alphabetical index).  Can't yet find the record on a microfilm, but at least we know where to look.

Reference to the Church where the alphabetical index referred to

 We find this work with microfilms very tedious and difficult.  We can often identify some names, but the rest of the information is almost illegible or only able to be read after much time, zooming in and study.  We know this is part of the price that we must often pay to find important information about our ancestors.  Both of these examples above were on films that we had seen in recent visits to Magdeburg and Strasbourg.  So even though our progress was limited, we confirmed that we don't need to spend time looking at films that we can review when we return from our missions.

In the afternoon, Sister Rueckert was invited to a baby shower for Constanza, our administrative assistant. I went to the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek on my own to see the books that we had reserved.  It was a quick trip on the train and much easier than driving and parking.

Train station sign with the building behind

Street view of the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek

Official sign of the library

When I arrived I was pleasantly surprised to find these books below waiting for me.  They are books with many of the details of Church Books in the Erfurt area.  They don't have this for Gispersleben, the home of many of the ancestors, but they are of the neighboring area and should have some of our ancestors going back.

There are over 20 books like this prepared once again by an individual who probably didn't have any idea why he was doing this.  We know that the Lord was inspiring this work to be done to facilitate family history for us and so many others.  Much of this information is available on microfilm but so hard to access and read.  Here the results are summarized by names and with specific reference to the Church Books where more information is available.

One of several pages full of Möllers, with birth years and references to Church books

These particular books are mostly from the 1600s and 1700s and I have not found any ancestors to tie directly in, but we believe that eventually this will greatly help our research in a very readable format.  These books are also available in the Family History Library, so we don't need to capture all of it now.  While also at the library, I had reserved a book of the history of Gispersleben.  This was very interesting to learn about the very town where Sister Rueckert's ancestors lived.  I took a few photos of some of the pages.  We hope to be able to tie some of it to the house that we have visited during our visits to Erfurt.

History of Gispersleben, going back to 1142 AD

When I returned from the library, Sister Rueckert was still at the baby shower.  A few photos that I took in my short visit:

Sister Rueckert with Sister King, wife of our Area Manager

Wider view of the shower, Constanza is on the left of the group standing

Sister Rueckert won this prize for being the fastest to identify potential baby names for each letter of the alphabet

After Sister Rueckert returned home, we went downstairs for a group missionary dinner.  11 senior missionaries decided to go to a restaurant downtown together on the train.  This was a good Thai restaurant that came highly recommended.  We love socializing with other senior missionaries.  It was a fun way to finish our day and our week in Frankfurt.

Five elders trying to figure how to buy two group tickets on the train

All the missionaries standing in the train on the way home

We did stop for Ice Cream on the way home at the world famous Christina's Eis.  As we walked from the train to the ice cream parlor, we saw this history of the Mormon Church in the window of a book store.

Pioneers Then and Now

Our week ended with our 3rd annual Pioneer Day 5 K walk/run.  It was a great success and helped us have a little more appreciation for the 1,718 K trek that the pioneers experienced 170 years ago.  In contrast, ours took less than an hour, theirs took 110 days.

Participants in our annual Pioneer 5K walk/run

Our week began in Innsbruck, Austria where we spent the previous weekend.  The photo below shows the cloudless view from our hotel.  The challenges that we had with clouds and rain were now history as we left for home.

View from our hotel on the other side of the street

We left early in the morning so that we could go home through Liechtenstein.  This is a small country in between Austria and Switzerland.  We didn't do anything other than fill up with gas. However, it did add one more country to the list of those we have now visited.  The scenery around Liechtenstein is very similar to Austria.

Entry into the country of Liechtenstein

Our trip to Liechtenstein should have taken around two hours.  It took a little longer because the Arlberg Tunnel was closed for maintenance.  This tunnel is 13,976 meters long (over 8 miles), the longest in Austria. We did okay going over the mountain instead of through it, but it took us an additional 45 minutes.  It only took us a little over 4 hours for the stretch from Liechtenstein to Frankfurt.  

Traveling in Germany is amazing.  The roads are almost always straight, with minimal incline or decline.  Where there are valleys, they build a bridge.  When there is a mountain, they build a tunnel.  The following photos are of just one of the smaller tunnels and bridges that we encountered.  However, they are representative of the amazing road system in Germany.

Tunnel through a small hill in Germany

Driving in a tunnel for a long time

Bridge built over a valley.  No water involved, just avoiding the ups and downs of a valley

Perhaps the biggest challenge on the highways is the constantly changing speed limits  We go from Autobahn speeds (unlimited) to slow downs for tunnels, construction zones or for reasons beyond our understanding.  One of our senior missionaries shared this in a  cartoon that he created.  With his permission I include the cartoon here:

We arrived back home in time to go into the office and make last minute preparations for our monthly senior missionary devotional.  This month we were privileged to have Armin Cziesla speak to us about the conditions in Germany at the end of World War II.  He is the father of our Stake President and one of the German Pioneers of the post World War II era.

Armin was 7 years old in 1944 when the war was winding down.  His mother, who was a member of the Church since 1926 chose to move her family out of East Prussia (currently Poland) to Western Germany.  They wanted to be where the U.S. troops were dominating and not where the Soviet troops were already occupying. The Soviets were already controlling the passage through this territory, so it took creative efforts to be able to relocate.

During this time and throughout the war, Armin's father was in the German army stationed in Norway.  His wife constantly communicated with him during their ordeal, so he knew where his family was.  Armin told us many stories of how his mother would sing Church hymns to him and his older sister and pray with them to ask for the blessings of heaven.  He told of the many ordeals that they endured to get around the Soviet troops.  It took them almost three months, with little to eat and only what they could carry with them.  When they finally arrived in Northern Germany, they stayed with a farmer, in his barn.  After some time there, their father found them in that very barn.

Only ten years later, in 1956, did Armin happen to see a building with the name of our Church on it.  He recognized it from what his mother had told hime so many years before.  Once they were reunited with the Church, Armin, his sister, and his father all were baptized.  He told of other faith promoting experiences of his wife, who also joined the Church above the objections of her parents.  Armin ended up serving a full-time mission in 1962 and later served as a patriarch and the president of the Frankfurt Temple.

We were extremely blessed by the sharing of his experiences and his testimony.  There are not many eye witnesses to the challenges of World War II left.  What a blessing to all of us to listen to his words.

Armin Cziesla, German Pioneer

On Tuesday we held our July/August team meeting with our SRS Managers.  Our main topic was that of reporting to Stake Presidents and Area 70s.  The opinions of our managers are always diverse and they are not bashful in sharing their thoughts.  After hearing the different thoughts, we spent time to put together a survey of thoughts on reporting moving forward.  So far, the responses continue to show diversity.  Our manager, Tom King, will try to sort all of this out and see the best solution for reporting going forward.

We continued to meet individually with several missionary couples this week, worked on our operating budgets (due next week) and continued efforts to help find more unemployed leaders jobs in Southern Spain.  This has now included the best thinking of the SLC team to find better solutions in the coming months.  

On Tuesday night we had our last German session with Sister Peterson in Provo. We have decided that we will continue to work on our German skills.  We hope to return to Germany on a family history trip after our mission.  It also feels good as we understand more and more.  We believe that it is good for our minds to keep learning new things.

Sister Rueckert has an assignment to teach the young women how to make her famous Chocolate Chip cookies next week.  She has been practicing with the oven in the Area Office so that she will be familiar with the setting.  On Friday, she spent some time practicing and then shared three plates of cookies with the employees and missionaries on our floor (and some on other floors).  Each time a plate of cookies went out, they disappeared almost instantly. This photo is of the remaining crumb on the last plate we set out.

Friday was also the two year mark since we moved to Frankfurt to begin this wonderful experience.

During the week we were also making final plans for our annual 5K race for senior missionaries.  With a new mission president, the young missionaries were not invited.  Employees only received an invite earlier in the week.  However we were prepared for better or for worse.  The photo below is of the trophy that Sister Rueckert prepared.  It is made of a hand made pottery that we had received, adorned in bright aluminum foil.

  I had been training on this course for some time and had run the course on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.  My fastest time was 26 minutes and 40 seconds.  We arranged for course guides to avoid anyone getting lost.  We set out the markers and bought oranges and water for the finish line.

On Saturday morning the time for the event finally arrived.   It had rained throughout the night before but had stopped in time for the race, giving us perfect weather conditions (no rain and about 70 degrees Fahrenheit).  Over 20 senior missionaries and 3 employees participated. 

We felt like the event was a success.  We received positive feedback from many of the missionaries. Elder Healy took a wrong turn and he was guided back on the course by Elder Stay, our bicycle guide.  Photos below are from this even:

Pre race instructions and a tribute to our pioneer forefathers

Photos together at the starting line

The race begins, Elder Rueckert off to an early lead.

Elder Garrett (in the middle) making his move

Others walking at varying speeds

Elder Garrett and I ran side by side for more than half of the race, but he was running at a faster pace than I was prepared for and so I dropped back.  I finished at 25 minutes and 50 seconds and in 2nd place.  This was still almost one minute faster than I had run during the week.  As an official measurement, the course was measured at 2.83 miles, a little short of an official 5 K.

Elder Rueckert finishing all alone in 2nd place, a minute and 20 seconds behind Elder Garrett

Gold, Silver and Bronze.  Coraline took third place and 1st among employees.

Sister Rueckert handing out the 1st place trophy

 Each of the first three finishers also received a jar of our home made strawberry jam.  I had to finish in the top three so that we could have some jam back for our enjoyment.

The day ended up with intermittent light rains  In the afternoon we captured this beautiful rainbow from our balcony.  It reminds us always of the watchful care of our Heavenly Father.

Just a little gardening update.  We are now harvesting tomatoes and peppers.  The photos below are of one of our tomato plants on our balcony and one of our pepper plants.

Tomato plant on the floor of our balcony.

Unique green peppers growing,  We fear that they be the hot variety.

Today, on Sunday, we enjoyed our sabbath meetings.  We love our ward and our ward members.  We receive much inspiration from them.  Today we started our Portuguese Sunday School My Foundation Only Self-Reliance course.  There were only 4 of us in total, but the spirit was strong and the time uplifting.  We also received notice from a member who has finished the finance self-reliance course in our ward.  She has a brother-in-law in Munich who wants to participate in the same opportunities.  This word of mouth will continue to help this work move faster throughout Europe.   Our new missionary couple for Germany will have plenty opportunities to help.  We also have several missionaries returning in the ward, beginning this week.  They appear to be perfect candidates for some of our self-reliance groups.  Much to do, without going too far!