Living IN the Land of our Forefathers

We are loving being in the land of our forefathers! We are receiving many blessings from our Heavenly Father as we engage in this Family History and Temple work.  Miracles come, some quickly and some after we toil through the "4th Watch".   For others we must be patient and wait on the Lord's timetable.

Debbie is literally in this Rapeseed field.  We love these beautiful yellow fields.

We are fully engaged during our days at archives and parishes and then updating the data that we have gathered in our computers during the evening before we forget what we have just discovered.  Some nights we are traveling to the next city or village to be ready to start again the next day.  We were also able to spend a holiday day at the Freiberg Temple this past week.  Our weekends are filled with visits to friends, new and old, and to attending our Church meetings.  While we are in the towns of our ancestors, we try to take a few minutes and acquaint ourselves with old family sites.

We enjoyed staying in an open missionary apartment for two nights in Frankfurt.  We felt right at home, including visiting our Frankfurt ward on Sunday.  We realized that we had many friends here besides the wonderful missionary couples, many of which have gone home.  We were able to eat one of our standard simple meals, bratwurst on baked bread while in our apartment.

Before we began the first leg of our "research", we took a walk through the cemetery in Frankfurt as we often did on our mission.  This time of the year is beautiful with trees, bushes and fields in bloom.  We also met one of our dear friends on the way back from the cemetery.  What a good way to get started.

Debbie by the tree in the cemetery in full blossoms

Debbie with Jonette Vaughan, a dear friend in the ward whom we had missed in Church the previous day. She was riding her bike to work as we left the cemetery and we had this joyous reunion.

Our first stop was in the Magdeburg archives, four hours north of Frankfurt.  We traveled there on that first Monday.  As we mentioned in our last blog, we are helping on a school project for our grandson, Ashton, taking photos with Flat Stanley, our two dimensional friend.  The following are a few of the photos that we have taken with Flat Stanley.  It identifies some of the things that we enjoy in Germany and a few places that have been part of our journey.  The due date for Flat Stanley photos has passed, so this will be the last time to include them in our blog.

Germany with Flat Stanley

In front of a castle that we found as we were nearing Magedeburg

In the rapeseed field near the castle.

In front of an old Church in Magdeburg, first built around 900 AD

Eating an ice cream cone, one of our favorite activities

In front of an "Autobahn" church, accessible from the freeway for those who need a quick visit.

With us at an Italian Restaurant in Nürnberg.

In front of the Regional Archive in Nürnberg

In the Church Book in Betzenstein

By a few of the "Church Books"

Outside of the Marion Fortress in Wurzburg, It was a castle, the residence of the Prince Duke until the 1500s

In the courtyard of the Wurzburg Marion Fortress

Inside the Fortress looking out

No Flat Stanley, but a view of the Residence Palace of the Prince Duke, an amazing place.  This was a view from the fortress above.

At dinner with Cristian in his house, the house built by my great grandfather

Another photo without Flat Stanley, but a view of the many different garbage cans for the Germans to  segregate their trash.  We learned that true garbage has a cost to have it disposed.  Recyclable or bio garbage are collected for free.  Therefore economics helps keep the country green.

Our Sunday dinner at the hotel near Betzenstein with food that we bought on Saturday

With our colored hard boiled eggs, stored at room temperature. Great to take for food on a trip.  These lasted until Thursday night.

Friends, new and old

As we prepared for our trip, we had opportunities to communicate with several individuals who had seen our names in Family Search, actually my mother's name. She has been putting in many, many names into Family Tree.  Two of these are residents of Germany and we made arrangements to meet them on our first weekend here.

The first was a man who discovered that we were doing work for his grandmother.  We were excited to visit with him on our first Friday afternoon, after leaving the Nürnberg archive.  He lives in a little town, Herzogenaurach, that is the world headquarters of both Adidas and Puma, athletic shoe companies.  

 Just as a side note, we learned that Adidas and Puma were founded by two brothers who had been running a shoe business for athletes for the 1936 Olympic games in Germany.  They had a parting of the ways and each continued on in the athletic shoe business independent of the other.  The two companies are now two of the largest athletic shoe companies in the world, based in the same small town. 

World headquarters of the Puma athletic shoe company

When we arrived for our visit, Manfred was excited to meet us.  He had developed a large printout of his genealogy and ours and how they came together.

Manfred and his wife with the printout of our genealogies and the link together

Tom and Manfred comparing our genealogies

We found that his grandmother's sister had married a Rueckert.  They had known this family very well.  It was related to the same family that we had visited in Buchheim while on our mission.  This was an older gentleman who had fed us well and shared many family photos.  Manfred showed us some photos of the family, including one that I had photographed from our earlier visit.  It was a wonderful visit and we have discovered one more family that are our friends in Germany.  We have since continued to email and share photos and other information.

With Manfred ands wife and one of their sons.  The other took the picture.


The next day we made a visit to Dr. Detlef and his wife in Wurzburg.  That is why we took time to visit the Wurzburg Fortress before our scheduled visit.  He had also connected to us through some common family members.  Once again, we were very well received in their home.  We found that they were experts in German and Bohemian genealogy.  Her ancestry comes from Bohemia.  They tried to help us with our line into Bohemia from my mother's genealogy, which has never been resolved.  Again we have continued to email and they have offered to try and help us more on this.  I have sent them all that I know about my great, great grandpa, Samuel B. Hartmann, who came on a boat from Bohemia to the U.S. in the 1860s.  We have never been able to tie into his parents in Bohemia.

We also found that Dr. Detlef has worked quite a bit with the Fritz Magerlein Familienregisters.  In fact he shared with us a full electronic copy of one of the books ((300 pages) in Welbhausen, a village where we have many ancestors.  These are all unexpected benefits and blessings that we have received beyond our earlier plans and expectations.  God is Good!

Tom with Detlef and Martina

While in the temple on May 1, we asked if they could do a baptism for Debbie's great great grandmother Müller, so that we could finish up the temple work for her on this trip.  We have hope that this may help us to find her birth records and parents.  The temple worker that arranged for this baptism to be done, also helped Debbie through the veil on a session later that day.  The name that Debbie was doing work for, was also a name in her genealogy.  We arranged to visit with them after the temple closed and reviewed the extensive genealogy that they have been working on in Germany, close to the birth place of Margarethe Müller.  As we reviewed it, we did not find any connections but we will meet with them again next week to pursue this further.

As a side note, her mother had learned to play the organ from the Tabernacle Choir Organist, Alexander Schreiner.  The Schreiner family was baptized by my grandfather, Johann Adam Rueckert, during his mission in Nürnberg, Germany in 1903.

Debbie with Elder and Sister Lindsay, workers in the Freiberg Temple

Finally we have the privilege on this trip to stay in the home that my great grandfather had built in the 1800s.  This is the home where my grandfather first heard the gospel.  We have developed a friendship with a Romanian couple, Cristian and Marianne, who now own this home.  We will be staying in this home on most of the weekends that we are in Germany on this trip.  We have a great love for this couple.  They have been so good to us and Marianne is cooking way too much food for us.

Debbie and Marianne as they met for the first time on this trip

Cristian and Marianne

Grilling our Saturday lunch

Cristian and Tom, Grillen partners

Delicious barbecue lunch with Cristian and Marianne

 19th Year Anniversary of our Temple Sealing

Sometimes we receive blessings that we had not even considered.  While planning this trip I did not even think about our April 30 temple sealing anniversary which we try to celebrate each year.  This year we visited a parish in Betzenstein on Monday morning and then drove to Freiberg to go to the temple the next day, since May 1 was a holiday.

That left us with an open Monday night and the following day in the temple, which was perfect for our unplanned celebration.  When we arrived in Freiberg, we saw a restaurant extending into a pond.  We decided to celebrate there.  It was a delicious dinner. We then enjoyed a walk along the neighboring park area.  We loved the time to ponder and reflect.  It couldn't have been better if we had planned it.  We then had a meaningful time in the temple the next day, including meeting the Lindsays.

Entrance into the SchwanenSchlosschen, which means Swan Castle

Anniversary Dinner, great salad for Debbie and Schloss Schnitzel for me..

With the pond behind us, a beautiful setting

On the side of the Freiberg Temple Angel Moroni and the German Flag together

Land of our Ancestors

One of the benefits of being in Germany to research family history is experiencing the actual places that our ancestors lived.  We have loved this opportunity during the past two weeks. After our mission, we found an old journal that showed another address where Debbie's dad had lived.  This was different than the house that we had identified at that time, perhaps it was a house that he lived before immigrating to the U.S.  Anyway, after our day in the temple, we went to Poststrasse 58 in Erfurt and looked for the apartment building.  The street still exists and is near railroad tracks that were identified in his history, but the address 58 is no longer valid.  However, we found a building that seemed to fit the criteria of the description.  Here follows photos of the building where we think that Debbie's dad was born.

An old apartment building on a corner, with a commercial area adjacent

Debbie on the steps of the apartment building where there was a butchers office on the main floor. 

When we were in Muhlhausen we read the journals of Debbie's great grandfather Stoll, who joined the Church in Muhlhausen.  We were staying in the old town part of the city and on one afternoon, after our review of the parish books, we searched out the addresses where Grandpa Stoll had lived.  We found 3 out of 4 of the locations. All were within walking distance of the "old city".   The second was right next to the entrance of the old city, just up the street from the St. Petri Church.  This is the house where Debbie's grandmother was born and the Church in which she had been baptized as an infant.

Feldstrasse 55

First apartment for Berthold Stoll, after moving out of the home of his  in-laws

Next home was again with his in-laws at Petristeinweg 1b

Address was 1b, this is close enough

St. Petri Church on the same street

They than moved to Mittelstrasse 135.  This is the home where Berthold Stoll joined the Church.

House number 135

Address is Mittelstrasse 135

Mittelstrasse today.  The smallest building in the back of the picture is 135.

Current map of Muhlhausen.  The red stars show the homesites that we visited.  The lower right circle of road surrounds the old town.

After we visited the Betzenstein parish we drove through the actual village where my great Grandfather Steger's family came from, which was Weidensees.

Beautiful rapeseed field in the area

Dandelion crop almost as yellow as the rapeseed

Rocksdorf, original home of the ancestors of my Grandmother Schlerf.  We were able to identify many Schlerfs in the parish records that were not previously in our family tree. 

Debbie amidst the rapeseed near Rocksdorf

Finally we come to the homes of my grandfather.  He was born in Hochboch and early in his life moved to Steinach a.d. Ens.  Since we are staying in the home in Steinach, I decided to take a Saturday morning jog between the two houses.  Google maps shows the distance to be around 7 kilometers, making a round trip to be over 8 miles.

I left without knowing how to arrive at Hochboch, since I did not want to take the main roads. I wanted to experience the open farm land that stood in between.  In the end it took me almost 2 hours and I believe I went around 10 miles.  That said, it was a delightful experience to enjoy and ponder the surroundings of this beautiful spot in the world.  As you can see from the photos, I arrived at the home in Hochboch and arrived back at Steinach.  There was mainly just farmland in between.  This was an experience that I will not likely repeat, but also that I will not forget.

Beautiful farmland in the area where my grandfather was born and raised.  Rapeseed fields to the left.

Finally arrived at the Hochboch 4, home where my grandfather was born

Rapeseed fields in the 4 miles in between the two houses

After more than an hour and a half, arriving back to the home where my grandfather was raised, where we are staying on the weekends

Actual Family History Research 

Of course the main purpose of our trip is to do family history research, this varies by location.  I wanted to just point out some of the details of what we have  accomplished so far with the help of the Lord.

We started our trip in Magdeburg where we are able to access many of  Debbie's ancestors records by microfilm.  Our first priority was the Moeller line, which has been so difficult.  Based on promptings we received earlier, we determined to look in Gebesee for the marriage record of Johann Georg Moeller and his wife Maria Margaretha Hauss.  We found the record but were unable to identify birth records for either of them.  In Dachwig we were able to identify death records for each of them and also for Georg's mother Margarethe, but still no birth records.  We were able to identify other children and relatives from their marriage.  We were stuck and prayed for ideas.  One of the administrators of the archive suggested that we look through the registers of neighboring parishes.  I selected 4 of the neighboring parishes and the administrator suggested one more, a little further away.  Debbie proceeded to look through the microfilm for each of them.  As we were about to give up, she found the birth of Johann Georg in the last parish or on the "4th watch" (see Mark 6:48).

Debbie holding the microfilm of Bad Tennstedt where she finally found the birth record of Johann Georg Moeller

Birth Record of Johann George, born to a single mother, Margarethe Müller

We tried the same approach for his mother, Margarethe Müller.  We have a good idea of her birth date based on information in her death record.  However, after looking through about 14 different microfilms, we have determined that there is more for us to learn, including patience with the Lord in resolving this mystery.

We spent 3 days at the Magdeburg archive and were able to extend other lines of Debbie's ancestors, especially of Bernard Motz, where we were able to identify many, many Motz in one of the parish records.

On Friday we went to the Nurnberg Archive for Tom's ancestors.  We only had a half day that day and weren't sure what we would find.  There we are able to access original books, alphabetical cards or lists and digital copies by computer.  We had asked for a few things ahead of time for our first day, including some alphabetical indexes for Marktbergl, where many of my ancestors are from.  We only asked for four names for three hundred years.  We were amazed when they wheeled in the following cart.

Each of these boxes were full of handwritten alphabetical cards for periods of time.  Debbie went ahead and started identifying and copying them.  We only got through half of the boxes that day, the rest will have to wait for another visit in a few weeks.

Debbie taking photos of hundreds of cards with valuable information that is already extracted out of the original books, a treasure.

While Debbie took those photos, I started on one of the original books for Fuchstadt, where one of my shortest lines ends.  I was able to find the Harnisch line and additional information for multiple generations.  What a blessing.  It took me all four hours and there is still more to do.  A line that was previously lost has been found.

Tom, reviewing the old original books of Fuchstadt

The next Monday we started in the parish of Betzenstein, home of many ancestors of my grandmother Schlerf.  Once again we were able to find handwritten alphabetical cards.  We picked up some that we had missed a year ago and added to that with other names.

Debbie taking photos of the handwritten cards

We also found original records that my cousin Gloria had requested.  We had time also to take photos of most of the marriages and death records for about 200 years.  Gloria will search through them in detail and pull out additional missing information.

We left Betzenstein and went to Freiberg  to visit the temple on Tuesday, a German holiday.  Tuesday night we went to Muhlhausen, where we spent the next two days working with the man responsible for the records.  He has been the most helpful of anyone that we have ever met in Germany.  Once again he spent two days with us, searching out various lines within the 6 different parishes for which he has responsibility.  During most of these two days, Debbie was extending the family line for Sharon Tristani's ancestors, a wonderful lady that we had met a few weeks ago in Orem.  This is a great blessing for a wonderful lady who has dedicated her life to doing family history work in Muhlhausen.  We were also able to find more records for several of Debbie's ancestor lines, especially the Trautmanns, that we were able to extend back into the early 1600s, about 3 or 4 generations.

Dr. Kublik and Debbie searching through old original books for ours and other ancestors

We finished our week in Sülzburg, searching through the books of Rocksdorf, where we found many more Schlerf names.  Unfortunately, the books only began in 1686, so our progress was stopped at that point.

This was the first two weeks of our research.  We have more scheduled for the next 3 and a half weeks and have great anticipation of the names that we can be guided to identify.  Overall, we have literally taken thousands of images, all of which need to be identified and organized for our future family history work.  We feel so blessed to be able to participate in this work.  It brings joy to our hearts and great satisfaction to our souls.  

As promised in general conference by Elder Renlund, when we participate in Temple and Family History work, the Lord blesses us in many other ways.  Just during this trip, we have seen one of our children return to activity in the Church, including personal visits with a bishop and counselors.  This is something that we certainly could not do on our own but the Lord is able to do all things and he will do all things in His time and in His way.   

As we travel from village to village we have listened to the recent conference several times.  We are finding that many of the talks are relevant to what we are doing right now, especially the talk from President Nelson about revelation.  As we listen and we ponder, we are learning and hopefully will be able to receive additional revelation in this great work.

Back in Germany with Flat Stanley

We just arrived safely back in Germany for a 40 day family history experience.  We have spent much of the past 5 months after our mission preparing for this trip and are excited to see what the Lord has planned for us.  We have already seen a few miracles in the past few weeks which remind us who is in charge and that "man doth not comprehend all the things which the Lord can comprehend" (Mosiah 4:10).

We also took Flat Stanley along for the ride as part of a school assignment for our grandson Ashton.
This is an assignment for Ashton to gather photos of Flat Stanley in travels with others over the next two weeks.  He asked us to take Flat Stanly with us and take photos of him wherever we go.  Several of our blog photos are those that we took with Flat Stanley in the first part of our trip.

Back looking out at the skyline of Frankfurt, Germany from the apartment where we are staying for our first two nights.  Flat Stanley is enjoying the view with us.

Each of our days and weeks are full of opportunities for service and the joy that comes when we serve.  We will try to cover the past three weeks by general topic.

Jordan River Open House and Ordinance Worker Training

We had one more opportunity to take some of our grandchildren to the Jordan River Temple open house.  Since we are no longer in Utah, we have invited several others to participate.  On our last visit, we went with Gina and Pollyanna and their children.  As usual, this was a wonderful experience and an opportunity to teach our grandchildren about "Jesus' House".  Our granddaughter, Addisyn was looking for the bed where Jesus sleeps in "His house".

Gina and Pollyanna and their children with us in the Photo opportunity

In front of the Christus statue after the open house tour

These young children get heavy to carry after a while.  We took advantage of a ride back to our car in one of the carts that are provided to facilitate the experience for those who attend the open house.

Selfie taken by Pollyanna from the back of the cart

In the video that is shown at the beginning of the open house, we were pleased to recognize some of our friends from Germany, the family of Jonathon and Ashely Evans-Southall.  This video clip was from a few years ago, but it brought back fond memories of these dear friends.  During our mission we spent several family home evenings with them, participating in self-reliance lessons.

Jonathon and Ashley and their first son Noah

The whole family at that time, including their daughter Beth

We also attended our first training meeting as Temple Ordinance workers.  This was the first of two Sunday evening meetings.  Our session had well over a thousand participants.  It is amazing to be able to serve with so many  people who are consecrating their time to the service of others in the temple.  Unfortunately we will miss our first two Wednesday day time shifts while we are in Germany but will be there for our first Saturday evening shift on June 2.

About half of the participants waiting in line to receive their temple ordinance name badges after the training.

April Birthdays

Since we would not be around the last half of April, we needed to celebrate some grandchildren birthdays ahead of time.  This was for Tiancom (turning 7), Olivia (turning 3) and Charlie (who turned 5 while we were in Pennsylvania with him).

Tiancom, right now the only male "Rueckert" amongst our grandchildren

Olivia, opening her two Olivia books

Charlie opening one of his books on his birthday in Pennsylvania

Other Grandchildren time

 Our activities in the past weeks included visits to Layton (Ashton and Dawson), Hyrum (Ellie and Olivia) and Pennsylvania, (James, Thomas, Henry, Edward, Charlie and Timothy).  We also had a visit in our home from Natalia and Tiancom.

Ashton and Dawson at the playground

Natalia and Tiancom on the stair chair

Grandma reading a birthday book to Charlie

Ellie and Olivia at McDonalds while their parents where enjoying an anniversary date

Grandma reading the Olivia books to Olivia and her sister and mother

Ellie playing her first soccer game

Dinner at Burger King with the DeVore Family (and Flat Stanley)

Self-Reliance Courses and other graduations

Before our trip we were able to complete the 12 week Personal Finance class for our family members.  We are pleased with the six individuals who completed the training.  We learned a lot more about each of them and feel that each of them are making positive steps in their own financial and spiritual self-reliance.  The photos below show Melanie and James receiving their graduation certificates from the course.   

Graduation certificates for James and Melani

We also finished 10 weeks with our young missionaries at Welfare Square.  We will finish their course up with them soon after we return from Germany.  The photo below was with all of them in our 10th lesson.  Some will be finishing their mission before we return home.

With the young missionaries at Welfare Square

We were also blessed to attend the graduation ceremony for our exchange student daughter Giovanna.  She and her husband both graduated from LDS Business College.  We love being part of her family.  She always treats us with so much love.

Debbie and Giovanna

With Giovanna, her parents, and her husband Leo (also graduated)

Random Moments

There are always lots of little things going on that make our days special.  Here are a few of them:

The other day we found out that we had a bad outlet attached to our security system and our freezer in the garage.  As soon as we found out, we had a walk in visit from one of the great ladies in our ward.  She sent her husband over who knows a little about electricity and he identified and solved the problem the same day.  I believe that this is what a Zion society looks like.  No concern about cost or inconvenience, only about helping one another.  What a wonderful blessing to live amongst this type of people.

Our neighbor George LeBaron fixing our bad outlet.  Example of Zion!

Right before leaving for our trip, we had a double missionary Sunday.  WE started by going to a missionary talk for a young man who was my home teaching companion before our mission, Michael Nelson.  He was a great missionary companion and will be a wonderful missionary.  The double blessing of this was a chance to return to our long time ward and to renew acquaintances with so many.

After that we went to the missionary talks of Tom and Ruth Rich, a wonderful missionary couple friend that we served with in Europe.  As always, they taught with the Spirit of God and edified us.  One of the real blessings of these occasions is to see other missionaries from Europe that were also in attendance.  There were nearly 20 of our missionary friends there.  The photo below just reflects those that ended up in the photo at their home afterwards.  E/S Healy, E/S Burt, E/S Thomas, Sister Keyser, Sister Hacking and others were also there.  This was a great warm up for our return to Europe, with fond memories of every day of our mission.

E/S Mills, Rueckert, Rich, Swenson, Proctor and E. Jensen

Our tulips from Holland are starting to flower beautifully.  However, the best tulips will be coming after we leave town.    This is one of our best groups, still with flowers to come.

We were able to attend the BYU ballroom dancing show.  It was great, full of talented and modestly dressed young people.  It gives us hope for the future.

The first part of our trip, 4 days in Pennsylvania

When we visited our daughter and her family last December, we felt prompted by the Lord to spend more time with them and help more than we had in the past.  We believe that in President Nelson's words, we were to minister to them.  They are a wonderful family of 8 who have had their share of challenges in life, especially temporally.  However, they have never faltered in their desire to serve our Heavenly Father and teach their children the gospel.

Based on the promptings received, we decided to come and spend more time with them, participating and helping them facilitate their daily responsibilities.  We weren't sure how this would turn out, but we trusted that the Lord would guide us.  With humility, they accepted our offer.  In the end, it all turned out wonderfully and we were able to get to know this special family on a much more personal basis.

We finished our visit with a visit to some family historical sites, near their home and participating in a  major league baseball game between the Philadelphia Phillies and Tom's favorite baseball team, the Pittsburgh Pirates.  It also happened to be Charlie's 5th birthday.

Melanie and Timothy with Timothy's "Grandma" blanket that he had not previously received.  Debbie is now caught up.

The children around their new kitchen table, playing games together with their grandparents

Henry vacuuming the floor, his newly assigned responsibility in the dining area

Timothy asleep after a long day, while the parents were able to have a  night out without children

With Melanie's superior googling abilities, we were able to find the sites where some meaningful historical markers stood.  Each of these represented some of our ancestors who had originally settled in Pennsylvania many years ago.  The following is from the first Amish bishop in America who is our great grandfather:

3 generations of descendants of Jacob Hertzler

The next sign was commemorative of the site where an Indian massacre occurred with these Amish people.  Amongst the casualties was one of our great grandmothers and a few of her children.  Two of her children were taken captive and raised by Indians for 7 years.  There is quite a story attached to the Northkill Amish and our ancestor, Jacob Hochstetler.

With daughter, Melanie under the Northkill Amish marker

Thursday night we went to the baseball game.  We had planned this for some time and were very concerned about the weather.  It had been raining and been cold.  The good news is that the rain had stopped, but the wind made the 46 degree (Fahrenheit) temperature even colder.  All of the grandkids were willing to endure to the end of the game. They did not want to desert Grandpa.  Unfortunately, the Pittsburgh Pirates did not win or even play well this night.  But we all had an experience that we will not soon forget.

With Charlie in front of the ball stadium on his birthday (with Flat Stanley)

Everyone "enjoying" the game.  Not too many other spectators were in our section.

Tom in his Pirates jersey in the Phillie ballpark

On Friday we drove back to Philadelphia to participate in an endowment session before continuing onto the JFK airport and our flight to Germany that evening.

With Flat Stanley in front of the Philadelphia Temple

Back to Family History

This is the purpose of our trip to Germany.  We have felt prompted to use some of our resources and time to pursue additional family history opportunities.  During our mission, we were blessed to find the names of many ancestors and other relatives.  However, that was not our full-time assignment, but merely time that we were able to squeeze out of our other missionary responsibilities.

Now, we will spend our full efforts for the next 40 days visiting parishes and archives and trying to find many ancestors that have not yet been identified.  We have spent the past 5 months summarizing the family history findings of our mission so that we could see where else we could search effectively.  We have been blessed to schedule specific visits with many parishes and archives and are looking forward to this opportunity.  While we have prepared we have already seen several "miracles" beginning to unfold.  Let me share a few of them:

We have been stuck on the Moeller line, Debbie's paternal line.  We had thought we had found more information about Johann Georg Moeller, but have determined that we were wrong.  We had been able to take a picture of the birth record of his son, which identifies his name and the name of his wife, but we have not known where to take the next steps.  I sent the photo of the birth record to Debbie's brother Doug who is much better than we on reading the old German Script and the language.  Two weeks ago he sent back his translation in which he says it identifies where the mother was from.  However, he could not decipher exactly what it was saying.  We decided that the place began with a G, had a b in the middle and Doug thought that there was a "l" or an "f" towards the end.  I began to search using the Meyers Gazeteer on-line tool to identify the original name of the city, using "*" as wild cards.  I spent over an hour on this without success.  So I decided to start looking at Google maps, identifying all of the cities and villages in the area where the son was born, which was in a little village named Dachwig.  

When I began to look, only 5 kilometers away, I saw a village with the name of Gebesee.  It fit perfect, the third identified letter was not an "l" or an "f", but an "s".  It was also close to the birthplace of the son.    I then looked at the records that will be available at one of the archives that we will be visiting this coming Tuesday, and the records of Gebesee are there.  As I made this discovery, the Holy Ghost came over me and I felt chills going up my spine.  I knew that I had been guided to find this.  We will still see what more we find, but I know that we are heading in the right direction.  When I showed the record to Debbie the next morning, she quickly agreed that the word did say Gebesee.  This is just one of many experiences that we expect to have during this visit.

Also, as we add records into Family Search we are becoming acquainted with other individuals who are our relatives, also working on these same family lines.  As I was working on records we had found in Muhlhausen, the home of one of Debbie's great grandfathers, I discovered another individual who had put many records into Family Search. Her name was Sharon Tristani.  I reached out to her and found out that she had spend years doing family history research for Muhlhausen, the city where her late husband's ancestors were from.  We were able to visit her in Orem and receive a flash drive full of her years of efforts.  Many have touched on Debbie's ancestors.  This was certainly a miracle and we are now going armed with some specific research needs for Sharon that I believe we will be able to find.

Debbie with Sharon Tristani in her home.  One of those angels who spends her life trying to  help our kindred dead.  She has identified around 5,000 individuals in the city of Muhlhausen from her work so far.

 Each day other occurrences are happening.  A week and a half ago, my mother received an email from a German who noticed that she was adding information to his family line.  This is based on information that we had gathered during our mission.  We have since entered into contact with this good German (we don't think he is a member of our Church) and we have been invited into his home this coming Friday.  He lives near where we will be staying, which is near some of the cities that we have visited in the past.

Just last night as I boarded the plane to Germany, I noticed one more email that my mother had forwarded to me of another person in Germany who has seen her efforts and wants to collaborate with us.  I have sent him an email and hope to make contact with him also during our trip.  Each one of these examples is a witness to me that the Lord's hand is in this work.  It can and will move forward if we do our part, for the greater blessings will come from above.

Today as we arrived in Frankfurt, we were able to go to the National Bibiliotek and found 9 more books of alphabetical listings from Church books in Erfurt and Muhlhausen.  An additional 8 books were not available at this site.  However, the people at the Library are willing to request those books from Leipzig, where they currently are located.  These will be available to us in 4 weeks when we are back in Frankfurt.

Nine additional reference books that we had not been able to access earlier.  Today we were able to add this to our resources as we look for our ancestors.  

In our recent stake conference we heard an amazing quote about family history and temple work from Wilford Woodruff.  I close this blog post with that quote which I believe with all of my heart:

“I wish many times that the veil were lifted off the face of the Latter-day Saints. I wish we could see and know the things of God as they do who are laboring for the salvation of the human family who are in the spirit world; for if this were so, this whole people, with very few, if any, exceptions, would lose all interest in the riches of the world, and instead thereof their whole desires and labors would be directed to redeem their dead, to perform faithfully the work and mission given us on earth; so that when we ourselves should pass behind the veil and meet with Joseph and the ancient apostles, and others who are watching over us and who are deeply interested in our labors, we might feel satisfied in having done our duty” (The Discourses of Wilford Woodruff, ed. G. Homer Durham [1946], 152).