Blessings of the Reformation and the Restoration

We ended our week in Wittenberg, the location where Martin Luther posted his 95 Theses against the selling of indulgences on the door of the Castle Church 500 years ago.  That was the beginning of the reformation.  Because of that courageous act to follow his conscience, the world began it's preparation for the restoration of the gospel in these latter days.  This week we have been able to participate in the joys of that restoration, including our last visit to the Freiberg Temple and the privilege to listen to living prophets in our General Conference.

In front of the door to the Castle Church in Wittenberg.  The 95 theses are written  in Latin on the Bronze Door, which replaced the original wooden door.

We have continued this week in full preparation for upcoming training trips and the transition with our replacements, Elder and Sister Carroll, who will arrive later this month.  As always, our days and evenings were full of meaningful activities.

On Tuesday we had our monthly Zoom meeting with our SR missionaries.  We were blessed to have Elder and Sister Carroll join us from Australia, third row from the top and far right on the photo below.  We also were able to hear farewell testimonies from Elder and Sister Pettit (right above the Carrolls in the photo).  They will finish their mission the day before our next meeting.  Their replacements will be in the MTC with the Carrolls. 

Also in this meeting, we were able to have Elder and Sister Bradshaw, who are serving in Hungary, share their recent experiences.  They have gotten a wonderful start on their mission.  They have now trained every young missionary in their mission and they all started a weekly companion self-reliance class with the My Foundation lessons.  The young missionaries are now wanting to invite their investigators to participate in SR groups.  This could lead to the most successful missionary implementation of Self-Reliance that we have yet seen.  This is with the full support and encouragement of the mission president.  What a wonderful story to share.

On Tuesday morning, we were able to ship three boxes of personal belongings.  This came after we repacked the previous box.  This also included all of our family history notebooks and papers. This made it possible for Elder Rueckert to clean his "office" while Sister Rueckert was at Relief Society that evening.  The amazing results is a clean office, for the first time on our mission.  Miracles never cease!

Clean office, without the clutter of family history and other papers. 

 Also on Tuesday afternoon, we were able to have a Zoom meeting with the stake specialist of the Austria Salzburg Stake and the bishop of the Innsbruck Austria ward.  This meeting also had our SR manager, Günter Borcherding and our new SR missionary couple, Elder and Sister Kitterman.  The Kittermans have just been trained in Self-Reliance in Salt Lake and will go to the MTC next week.  This meeting was to prepare for a My Path Devotional in Innsbruck on November 11.  The Kittermans will play a large role in this Devotional and the follow-up.  It is so good to have a missionary couple that can speak German!  We left this meeting fully enthused about the future of Self-Reliance in this stake and in the German speaking stakes.  This ward is the ward that we visited on a personal basis in July and is the home to some of our friends from Brazil and their family members.  Hopefully they will form a strong nucleus to help this ward take a positive step forward with the Self-Reliance initiative.

This week we were also able to meet with the SR missionary couples (by Zoom) that just arrived in London, England and Seville, Spain.  We will be visiting and training these couples in the next weeks.  We are finding the missionaries are arriving in Europe on their mission incredibly ready to make  a difference.  This brings so much joy to our hearts, it helps offset the sadness of leaving our mission.

On Wednesday morning we had our last German language class.  This has been so very helpful for us.  Even though we don't often speak German in our assignment, it is helpful in our shopping, cultural, and family history experiences in Germany.  It has also become a source of satisfaction as we have seen our abilities grow.  We are far from being able to converse successfully, but we have a much improved vocabulary and understanding of written German.  We are thankful for those who have helped us in this journey and those who have learned with us.

Right after our German class, we had a farewell luncheon for the five missionary couples that will be leaving the Europe Area in the coming weeks.  That was followed by our weekly Book of Mormon class, taught this week by Elder Lear.

Pot luck lunch, always good food.  Elder and Sister Swenson at the end of the table are one of the couples going home.

After the luncheon, Elder Proctor handed out the farewell booklets to each of the couples.  We then heard from Sister Burt who shared her testimony.  She had not been able to share her testimony in the previous Zone meeting.

Handing the farewell book to the Burts.  The Healys, at the end of the table, were the first to go home, the following day.

Sister Burt sharing her testimony with the other missionaries 

That evening we had one more session with our returned missionaries.  Only Amy was able to attend this time, so we got her caught up on the lesson that she missed last week.  Sometimes the one on one time with individuals is the most meaningful.  We really enjoyed our time with Amy.

We had decided to make one more visit to the Freiberg temple and include with it a visit to Wittenberg, which isn't too far away.  So Thursday, after work, we drove to Freiberg.  This is normally a 4 hour drive.  Due to some difficult traffic conditions in the first 100 kilometers, we were delayed.  We did make it to our hotel by 10:00 pm, in time to go to bed and be prepared for a day at the temple on Friday.

We have really enjoyed the Freiberg temple.  We went to the open house of this temple and participated in the dedication (by video while in Frankfurt) a year ago.  This was our fifth visit to the temple, counting the open house.  We have gotten to know several of the temple missionaries and feel right at home.  As we normally do when driving a long distance to the temple, we try to take advantage as much as possible.  We were able to do a couple of endowment sessions and initiatory work for several of our ancestors.  

While in the temple, Sister Rueckert prayed for guidance to know what more the Lord would ask of her.  Her answer came back in three words, "Let It Go".  She considered that to be meaning for her to let go anything and everything that gets between her and her Heavenly Father, including stresses and anxieties that she often feels.

In front of the Freiberg temple on a beautiful and sunny day

We left the temple a little after 3:00 pm with the idea to take a quick trip to Poland, that was just over 100 kilometers away.  We thought that we would have dinner there and then continue back to Wittenberg, where we had a hotel reservation that evening.

As we left the temple, we were uplifted by the spirit of our experience and the beauty of the day, including beautiful autumn weather.  We saw several autumn leaves that just add to our love of the German countryside.

turning leaves mixed with shades of green

In the yard of a home

Vines over the walls are all turning a beautiful red

As we  arrived at Highway A4, which would take us direct east to Poland, we came upon a significant traffic stoppage.  Our GPS told us that there was a 90 minute delay and suggested a detour.  We accepted the detour and went north, only to end up in a different traffic stoppage.  The GPS then told us that it would be better to go back in our original route.  Thus we ended back up at Highway A4 almost two hours later.  At this point we decided to give up on Poland.  It was a chance for us to see one more country on our mission, but we decided that it was not meant to be.  Through this process, Sister Rueckert was as calm as could be, letting it go, as we struggled with difficult traffic situations.  We believe that the counsel from the Lord is very meaningful for her life, but certainly it fit immediately into our struggles of that day.

One of our traffic stoppages.  It took almost a half hour to move 100 meters.  Finally we turned around and went back the way we came.

We then decided to head towards Wittenberg, which would get us in around 8:00 pm.  We decided to stop in Leipzig for dinner.  This was our first visit to Leipzig during our mission.  We had been told by Sister Rueckert's brother before our mission that we would need to get to Leipzig to resolve some of her family history challenges.  We have been blessed with much help with her family history and now we have been to Leipzig.

The cathedral that we drove by in Leipzig as it was getting dark

We looked for a restaurant based on the GPS.  As we neared the location, we found more road construction and were unable to get to the restaurant.  We tried another which was no longer at that location.  Finally we just stopped at a restaurant on the side of the road and had a wonderful dinner.

Restaurant Ofenrohr in Leipzig.  We ate on the second floor.

After leaving Leipzig, we found another traffic stoppage on the Freeway heading north.  Once again we were forced to find alternatives.  Unfortunately, when the GPS doesn't know about the traffic condition, it will always try to send us back to the location of the stoppage.  This is when we use our phone GPS and try to navigate different directions.  We finally succeeded and arrived in Wittenberg at about 9:30 pm.  Our hotel reservation was for a ship hotel, which we thought would be an interesting change of pace.  However, when we got to Wittenberg, the GPS took us to a location that was not the hotel.  After asking directions a few times, we finally arrived at out hotel, once again at 10:00 pm.  We felt really good about our decision to abandon our trip to Poland.  Sister Rueckert's counsel in the temple was really needed in the challenging 7 hours since we had left the temple.

Although our time on the ship hotel was just overnight, we had a very positive experience there.  The rooms were compact but well organized and the breakfast the next morning was delightful.  The ship was docked, but apparently does make some cruises during some times of the year.

Compact and functional bathroom

Our ship hotel home after a difficult 7 hours of driving

Entry and door to the bathroom

Eating breakfast with the Elbe River outside of the window

In front of the Junker Jörg Ship Hotel in Wittenberg

The Junker Jörg on the Elbe River

After a pleasant morning we headed into Wittenberg to see where the reformation began.  This was our last major "Luther" site to visit while in Germany.  This is where Martin Luther went after leaving the monastery in Erfurt.  Here he continued his doctorate in theology and preached at the Catholic Castle Church (Schlosskirche).  This is where he nailed his 95 theses against the selling of indulgences on the Church door on October 31, 2017.  He also sent the 95 theses to his superiors who forwarded his grievances to the Pope.  After being tried and excommunicated in Worms, he escaped to Wartberg where he translated the New Testament into German and later returned to Wittenberg.  Here was his home while the Reformation took hold.  Here it is that he got married.  In fact, we learned that while he was in hiding at the Wartberg Castle in Eisenach, he took on the disguise and name of Junker Jörg, which was the name of the ship where we stayed. 

We could have spent days here, but we enjoyed all that we could in a few hours.  We visited the Schlosskirche and saw the bronze door with the 95 these engraved in Latin.  This door was established in the 1800s and was a replacement for the original wooden door.  

In front of the door of the Schlosskirche

The 95 theses in Latin on the Bronze Door

Explanations of the famous door, in German and English

The Schlosskirche

We also went to the St. Mary's church where Luther did most of his preaching while in Wittenberg (after leaving the Catholic Church).  

St. Mary's Church and the town square, statues of Martin Luther and his friend Philipp Melanchthon

Alter piece of the St. Mary's church included this painting of the Last supper with a figure that was to be Junker Jörg serving one of the apostles

Luther Statue in the town square

Sister Rueckert by the Martin Luther statue

We finished our time visiting a special display of 95 Treasures and 95 People related to Martin Luther and the Reformation.  This display was created specially for this year, celebrating the 500 years of the reformation.  It was held in the Augusteum building which is one of the original college buildings from the 16th century.  It is built next to the Luther House, which is where Martin Luther resided while living in Wittenberg.  After going through this display, we had increased understanding about Martin Luther, his courage and convictions and the impact that he had on so many people in this world.

Explanation of the Lutherhaus

Special Luther Display for the 500 year anniversary, no photos were allowed inside

In front of the Lutherhaus

 We finished our tour and left Wittenberg by1:00 pm, ready for the 4 hour drive home so that we could participate in General Conference by 6:00 pm.  We only had one 20 minute construction delay and were home by 5:30 pm and at the Church by 6:00 pm for conference.  Nothing was ready for conference in the Church so we went home and enjoyed the two Saturday sessions in our living room.  On Sunday morning we got up and watched the Priesthood Session.  Soon we will be enjoying the Sunday sessions.  We love General Conference and are so thankful to hear from our prophets and leaders.  We will have to give a better report on conference in the coming weeks.

Watching the opening session of conference.

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.

Instruments in the Lord's Hands

We just finished our week on a high note, with the concluding class of our Sunday Personal Finance self-reliance group in our ward.  We were reminded once more of the power of this inspired initiative.  We also had some special family history related experiences during our week in Frankfurt.  We testify that this is His work and we are blessed to be instruments in His hands.  Our preparations to return home continue with some challenges along the way.

Last session of our Personal Finance Self-Reliance Group

We had a pretty standard week of work.  We visited with several of our senior missionaries as we usually focus on this during the second week of each month.  We started with E/S Bradshaw in Hungary on Monday morning.  We were pleased to see that they had a successful My Path Devotional the previous day and had formed 5 self-reliance groups.  Wow!  What a great start to their mission.  They also have been asked to participate in the stake bishops training session later this month.  

We also met with our couples from Manchester England, Stockholm Sweden, Lyon France, Birmingham England, Scotland and finally with Sister Ezard from Croatia.  We love each of these visits and are inspired by the service of these missionaries.  Sister Ezard shared with us her experiences in personally working with a brother in Bosnia.  As she shared the doctrine with us that she had shared with him, we were also touched.  Our theme with the missionaries this week was treasuring up in our minds and then being led by the Lord (D&C 84:85).  He then reveals His will for us in different circumstances and we become instruments in His hands as we share what he prompts us to share. 

We also met with our SRS managers on Tuesday.  In fact on Tuesday we had Zoom conferences scheduled at 9:00 (Lyon France), 10:00 (Birmingham England), 11:00 (Area SRS Manager and Operations Manager), 12:00 (PEF Mentoring meeting with Ceu Cavaco and other PEF loan workers), 1:00 (Scotland missionary couple), 2:00 - 4:00 (SRS Management team meeting).  That made 7 continuous hours of Zoom meetings!

Zoom conference with our SRS managers

Tuesday night we were able to attend the Mid Month Movies Night for senior missionaries for the second month in a row.  The company and the popcorn was wonderful.  The movie was pretty good also, inspirational.

 On Wednesday, we returned to our German class in the morning and then went to our Book of Mormon class during the lunch hour.  We were taught by Elder Goodall this week from 1 Nephi 21 and 22.  The words of Isaiah truly came alive.  There was much discussion about one of our favorite scriptures from Isaiah, 1 Nephew 21:16 "Behold, I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands".  Very inspirational, the following drawing was also shared with us.  It shows Our Savior passing the sacrament.  The reaction of those in the congregation is precious, especially the children.

Right after Book of Mormon class, we drove to Nuremberg to visit the "Gesellschaft für Familienforschung in Franken".  This is were we can access the familienregisters for so many of our ancestors.  Because of excessive rain and road construction, it took us almost 3 hours to arrive.  We went ready with three pages of names and villages to search out.  From 4:15 pm until 6:00 pm we accomplished our task and ended with 194 printed pages of names.  We then drove home that same night, another 3 hours, arriving just after 9:00 pm.  The drive went well until we hit some major road construction slowdowns that ended up with heavier rain and darkness.  We were very glad to be home.  

Sister Rueckert finding the "familienregister"s on the computer

Separating the printed lists that we took home with us

Most of these 194 printed pages had at least 30 names per page, meaning that we came home with almost 6,000 names.  If we tie in even 20% of them as relatives, that will still be over 1,000 names that can be ready for temple ordinances.  This just adds to our long list of family history and temple work to do when we get home.  We know that we have been led by the Lord to find these records.

Stacks of lists, stapled by name and location

Thursday we were back at work.  One of the tasks in front of us is working on getting subtitles for SR videos in the different languages.  It appears that some of this work finally got started for Hungarian this week.  We want these subtitled videos to be available on lds.org for the different country pages in different languages.  On Friday we quickly shared the transcripts for some of the videos that are not already translated word for word.

We are preparing for next week's Area Self-Reliance Committee meeting and for our upcoming SRS managers conference next month.  We are also organizing and preparing for upcoming trips to train the several new SR missionaries that will be arriving this month and next.

On Thursday night we met with our group of recently returned missionaries.  We finished lesson 4 of the My Plan for Returned Missionaries course.  This is always a highlight, to work with these young sisters who still have that strong spirit that they bring from their mission.

Sister that returned recently from Spain, France and the Caribbean islands

View from a better angle of these three sisters

This has been a very wet week.  It has rained almost non stop all week.  The photo below shows the accumulation of water in our window box with our pepper plants.  The water has been there so long it is growing mold.

Early in the week, we received the box that we had sent home returned to us.  We had sent a lap top computer that was not allowed because it had a battery in it.  This was very disappointing, as we thought we had completed this task.

Returned Box, it had been opened on the bottom and rebound

This is our communication of what was wrong with the box

When we finally opened the box on Saturday morning, we found that some of the contents of the box had been broken.  That included the Christmas mugs that we had sent home and parts of our nativity set that we had bought in France.  We were heart broken.  We started the process of gluing the broken pieces together wherever possible.

Broken mug an backdrop of the nativity set

While we were trying to fix the broken pieces, we forgot about the cookies that Sister Rueckert was making for a ward activity.  This batch of the cookies got a bit overdone.  This was not what we had planned on when the day began, but it is what it is and we had to get over it and move on.

As we went through the box, we found items that we had not sent, including these boots and a wrapping cloth.  We suspect that most of the damage may have been after the box had been repackaged and returned with the additional items.  

We're still not sure if we lost other items from the box, but we are preparing to rebox and send some of the items.  We were able to mostly rebuild our broken items.  We will save them to be taken in our hand luggage when we return home.

Our breakables, put back together after much work by Sister Rueckert

We spent much of the day beginning the deep cleaning of our apartment before we leave.  Our time will be very limited in October and November, so we wanted to start what we could get done now. On Saturday we finished our bedroom, including cleaning under the bed, behind the dressers, washing windows, etc.  The photo below shows the fruits of our labors.  We believe that the bedroom will be ready to go.  We also were able to clean behind the refrigerator and the clothes dryer as well as the inside of the utility closets.

One super cleaned bedroom

Saturday afternoon we went to the ward to support a family history activity.  The youth had sponsored this activity for the members to come and identify ancestors that could be taken to the temple, specifically for their temple trip scheduled for this coming December.  We enjoyed taking this time to work on some of the names that we had gathered on the previous Wednesday.

Ward Family History activity

Ward Family History Activity

Member adding names to the tree.  Over 60 names identified on the tree.  We contributed about 10 to this tree.

The Sturm family is one that we worked on during this activity.  This familienregister is one of the many that we were able to gather on the previous Wednesday in Nuremberg.
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Sample from our research.  We identified a relative in Sturm family #9

Strum Family number 9 also has 5 families coming from it and 4 generations before.  All pages have information on siblings

We finally came home and made a few birthday calls, especially to our twins, Lamoni and Pollyanna. As we talked to Pollyanna we were able to see our youngest grandchild, Paisley.  She should still be small enough to hold when we return in a few months.

Finally on Sunday we were able to attend our worship services and participate in a few more Self-Relianc groups in our ward.  I was able to facilitate our Portuguese My Foundations group during Sunday School.  Then both of us participated in the Personal Finance group that was completing our last group session.  This group had two missionary couples and Brother and Sister Vaughn.  They were not able to participate in the Wednesday night group due to conflicting Church callings.  However, we have really enjoyed sharing with them in the group.  We have all grown together in this process. At one point they shared the following "This class will be a touch point in our lives that we will always look to".  They showed their appreciation this day by giving a nice vase to each of the missionary couples.  The photo below is of ours, a beautiful memory of our days in Frankfurt am Main.  Thank you Martin and Jonette!