Out with the old, in with the new

A full week in Frankfurt with new experiences.  It started with a wonderful General Conference.  After that our primary focus was on getting our new Self-Reliance courses started, preparing for our Area Self-Reliance Committee meeting and studying the German Language.  We even got a new car. We start our blog with Sister Rueckert's favorite thing about Frankfurt, the beautiful view of the skyline of the city from the balcony of our apartment.  When we return from our different travels, it is always there awaiting us and giving us peace and joy.

As evening approaches, the is the time to see the lights but still distinguish the buildings. caption

A little before dusk, with a little of our geraniums in our balcony

General Conference: Since Germany is 8 hours ahead of Utah, the General Conference sessions obviously start later.  Only the morning sessions are shown live at the chapel.  The other Saturday sessions (afternoon and Priesthood) are shown on Sunday, during the day.  The Sunday afternoon conference is shown as part of Church services the following Sunday.  Due to the time difference, our first session begins at 6:00 pm in the evening.   While many watch in their apartments on the internet, we like going to the chapel.  The German feed is in the chapel, the English in the Cultural hall and a Spanish feed in the primary room.  The photo below is of our English audience, comprised of Elder and Sister Rueckert and the young missionaries.  On Sunday, the attendance is a bit higher.

We were able to attend all the general sessions during the weekend live, morning sessions live at the Church house, afternoon sessions at home, finishing up at midnight each day.  We watched the Priesthood session after the fact on Sunday morning in our apartment.

What a glorious thing it is to hear these messages from our leaders.  We are so inspired by their words.  Sister Rueckert and I have made a list of things that we have chosen to work on based on what we heard.  We especially love that we can listen to these talks over and over again, while we exercise, while we drive or just sitting down and soaking up the spirit.  It certainly rejuvenates us for the next six months.  Today as we watched the final session again at Church, we were able to follow along with the written version on our iPads, which made the talks even more meaningful the second time around.  

We felt several strong messages from the conference, including great insights on how to be a better missionary to others.  We loved the references to the Great Plan of Happiness and to Joy.  The good news of the gospel to live and to share is based on love and the atonement of our Savior.  We must not "look beyond the mark . . . Jesus Christ is the mark!"

Monday after conference was a German Holiday, Unification Day.  This celebrates the day that East and West Germany were reunited 26 years ago.  We think this holiday is a pretty unique and special.  Being here, we get a little feeling of the impact of the separation.  It hits us in much of what we do.  It is so hard to imagine the challenges that the separation caused, but we rejoice with the German nation on their reunification.

We chose to stay at home during this holiday. We wanted a day to relax and prepare.  We have learned to cherish our time at home and never seem to have enough to time to do all that we want.   This includes catching up on our work, studying the German language and taking as much time as possible to work on our Family History.  That was our priorities of this day.

During the day we went to the office to print manuals for our new Self-Reliance classes.  It is much better to do on a holiday because we are not competing for the use of the printer.  While Sister Rueckert printed and bound manuals, I took the time to put more of the Rueckert names that we have found into Family Search.  I completed a family of 25 children with two different mothers.  Of those, 14 died before the age of eight.  Every time that I see the tremendous number of infant deaths in our family history work, I get so excited to be able to seal these children to their parents in the temple.  These don't need baptisms or endowments, only the sealing ordinance.  After spending a few hours on this, I was also able to enter in names that will require over 30 baptisms and endowments.  We are just getting started to document the many names that we have found.  I was also able to send hundreds of images to our angels in the U.S. (Gloria and Stephanie) who are indexing names as fast as I can send them. 

While in the office, we saw Elder and Sister Stay, who also had stayed home due to the rainy weather.  We have been wanting to have them to dinner for some time, so we invited them to eat with us on Monday evening.  To our joy, they accepted.  We then had a wonderful dinner with them.  The food was our leftover food from an earlier dinner, but the joy was in their company.  Elder and Sister Stay are on their second mission in Frankfurt and they are currently working with the refugees.

What is unique about them however is their incredible knowledge of the gospel and especially of the Hebrew language and the Old Testament.  We wanted to know how someone gets to this advanced stage of knowledge.  They were kind enough to share their experiences.  Sister Stay studied Hebrew while living in Ohio and ended up getting a degree in Hebrew from the Overland College while being a stay at home mom.  She also spent considerable time learning in a Jewish study group in a synagogue. She took an interest and soaked up all that she could.  She has since taught Hebrew and the Old Testament classes in the past few years of her life.  She teaches senior couples these classes during the day and evening to accommodate the time availability of the missionaries and others.  We attend a class with her on Wednesday evenings when our schedules permit.   This dinner with the Stays was a special blessing to enjoy on our German holiday.  

German Study: On Monday we were also able to give extra time to our German study efforts.  We have tried to be diligent in our study of this language so that we can communicate with others.  Our vocabulary has increased and also our understanding of the grammar.  However, we still have difficulty opening our mouths in conversations.  We have been studying weekly with Sister Peterson, who we met in the MTC.  She Zooms with us each Tuesday evening (noon her time).  She has been an incredible help with our grammar and we are now doing more conversation with her.  We have also started a Tuesday night German conversation class with a local member and 4 other senior missionaries.  Sister Rueckert continues her German class with other Sister missionaries late Tuesday afternoon.   That leaves us with a German Tuesday afternoon / evening.  Sister Rueckert goes to class from 4:30 to 5:30.  We start our new German class at 6:00 to 7:30 and then we speak with Sister Peterson from 8:00 to 9:00 pm.  We usually spend most evenings studying on-line.  Sister Rueckert focuses on Duolingo while I focus on Rosetta Stone.  The following photos indicate are current status on those efforts.

This is Sister Rueckert's screen from her Duolingo web site.  She is certified 47% fluent and has a current steak of 30 days in a row.  When we travel she often ends up losing her streak and then starting again.

This is Elder Rueckert's screen from Rosetta Stone.  The course has 20 units, I have been trying to finish one unit per month so that I can finish by the end of the mission.  This last week was an exceptionally good week, I was able to finish Unit 9 by Sept. 8, my best effort so far.

Sister Rueckert studying and drilling me on our homework from our new German Class after our Breakfast.  We use much of our meal times to study together and practice conversing.

On Wednesday we had another farewell luncheon for senior missionaries going home.  These are always tough, but it is also fun to get to know the new missionaries that are arriving.  This week a new couple arrived for Family History and were assigned the vehicle we had been using.  It was an unassigned family history car earlier this year.  With that we got assigned a new car that belonged to Elder and Sister Edmunds who went home.  The photo below shows Sister Rueckert with our new car, a Nissan Nolte.

Sister Rueckert being the first driver of our new car, while I am waiting for my license to come back

Side view of the car.  It is a little longer than our Hyundai that we had before.

Our efforts this week have included preparing for two new Self-Reliance Groups that began today.  Each is with new material that has not yet been published in Europe.  Hence, we have to take files and build our own manuals.  It is nice to be in an English speaking ward where we can try out new materials.  Today we started a Health and Well Being class with 5 individuals and a new Education for Better Work class for 3 young men.  Each also had a facilitator, Sister Rueckert covered the Health class for our facilitator that has been sick.

Health and Well Being SR Group

Education Group, missing one of the participants

The rest of our week has been focused on preparing for our next Area Self-Reliance Committee.  At the Area Presidency request, we are proposing a strategy to make better use of senior missionaries time so that they can be "Multi-Purpose" missionaries.  We'll see where this goes, but it has been fun to ponder and prepare and share examples from some of the wonderful missionaries that we meet with around the Europe Area.

On Saturday night we were able to eat at our favorite restaurant, Zum Lowen.  It is walking distance from our apartment.  We had the entire restaurant to ourselves with a candle light dinner. The following photos are of our favorite dishes;

Sister Rueckert's favorite, Schnitzel Diablo

Elder Rueckert's favorite, Schnitzel Zwiebel (Onion)

Finally we were able to get registered for an absentee ballot in the upcoming U.S. elections.  We are now legal to vote, we still have to determine how to act as we exercise that important right.

"Fährt" from Frank"furt" to Roman "Fort"

A Self-Reliance week in Frankfurt and ending as we traveled (Fährt) to an old Roman fort!  Our primary focus this week was to start the next Self-Reliance Groups in the Frankfurt 2nd ward.  

In front of an old Roman Fort, our Saturday activity

The week started with a Self-Reliance sacrament meeting in our ward.  17 graduation certificates were awarded to those who completed the last Self-Reliance groups.  Each was able to shake the hand of the bishop and the stake presidency member and high councilor from our Stake Self-Reliance Committee.  We were then able to listen to three speakers from among the 17.  Each shared a wonderful testimony of the principles of Self-Reliance and their experiences in the Self-Reliance Group.  It represented one person from the Education group, one from the Finance group and one from the My Foundations Sunday School group.  We were really pleased with the Sacrament meeting.  We felt that it did a good job of sharing the doctrine and the tools of the Self-Reliance initiative.

We prepared invitations to hand out to all at sacrament meeting and the bishopric extended 13 personal invitations to attend our My Path Workshop on the following Thursday evening.

We trained three of our new facilitators on Wednesday afternoon, preparing them to facilitate some of the groups and to assist in the workshop.  Personal invitations were given to some returned missionaries and investigators.  In fact, on Wednesday night, the missionaries introduced us to an investigator who was looking for a job.  We promptly invited him to the workshop the next day.

On Monday night we went to the office to run off copies of some of the new manuals.  We need to do this at night to not dominate the printer when others are using it.  We also went on Thursday to set everything up.  With everything that we could think of to be prepared, we came to the workshop with faith that others would be there.

My Path Workshop facilitated by Sister Rueckert for the Frankfurt 2nd Ward

Another photo of the workshop from a different angle

As can be seen in the photo, we had around 30 individuals in the workshop.  Four were from the German ward who came to see how this works.  Seven were supportive senior missionaries.  Counting us, five were facilitators.  That left 14 individuals who came to pursue their own self-reliance. In the end four groups were organized with a few more to be organized if we can identify others to participate.  Below is a photo of the My Job Search group that began the very next evening. This includes the one non member and another member who did not attend the workshop the night  before.  The other groups will start next Sunday, since today is General Conference.

My Job Search group (4 plus the facilitator)

Coming back around, the photo below is of the Mendes family, who are our dear friends.  We have the privilege to home teach them.  They all graduated from the Self-Reliance courses and have been so supportive and kind to us.  They had invited us to dinner, but did not have necessary chairs for us to sit at their dinner table, so we decided to have dinner with them at our apartment.  They brought the food and we provided the space.  We were able to have this wonderful dinner right after Church on our Self-Reliance Sunday.

Melissa, Ury, Wilson and Sister Mendes (mother)

 The photo below shows the end of the first phase of our mission.  Sister Rueckert provides incredible note taking expertise to all of our meetings.  She is always writing on her yellow legal pads.  She writes on both sides of the paper.  The problem is we cannot find this type of writing pad in Europe.  We brought a large package of these on our mission.  The yellow pad below is the last of those that we brought.  Sister Rueckert will need to adapt to local supplies for the rest of our mission.

We also started a formal German class on Tuesday evening.  For the next 10 weeks, we will meet with 4 other senior missionaries and be forced to learn and practice more German conversation.  The instructor is a local member of the Church who is a translator.  We know quite a bit of German vocabulary and grammar but have great difficulties to express ourselves.  Hopefully this will help us take the next step forward.

On Friday night, we felt like our challenges of the week were over and we could relax for a long weekend.  Next Monday is a German holiday (reunification day) and we are planning on enjoying the General Conference weekend.

On Friday night we were invited by Elder and Sister Healy to go with them to Saalburg, the ancient Roman fort which is fairly close to where we live.  We decided to make this trip on Saturday, with time to return home before conference began (6:00 pm, German time).  The following is from our trip to Saalburg.  The following is a description of Saalburg form Wikipedia:

The Saalburg is a Roman fort located on the Taunus ridge northwest of Bad Homburg, Hesse, Germany. It is a Cohort Fortbelonging to the Limes Germanicus, the Roman linear border fortification of the German provinces. The Saalburg, located just off the main road roughly halfway between Bad Homburg and Wehrheim is the most completely reconstructed Roman fort in Germany. 

 The ruins here date back almost 2,000 years to the time when the fort was active.  Most of what we saw in the fort has been reconstructed.  However, we were able to see several items from the Roman era and a few remains of structures that were there:

In front of the entry to the fort.  The reconstruction was ordered by Kaiser Wilhelm II in 1897

Elder and Sister Healy looking out from the fort

Inside of the fortification, easier access than from without

Near the back gate to the fort.  It was a rainy day, but not too cold

Other original foundations and ruins.  Looks like water ways

An old original bath foundation?

Old Cooking ovens

Old roman cooking utensil to put items in the ovens

Room full of Roman items from the 2nd century A.D.

Part of monuments to Roman Gods

Roman base for a statue, dated 222 A.D.

 

This fort is part of a long line of walls that separated the Roman Empire from the German Empire.  The  item below shows where this line of fortifications were.  Below that shows some of those fortifications.

We ended our week attending General Conference.  We are not through yet, but so far it has been amazing.  Our thoughts are too many to include in this blog.  We will save that for next week!

The Power to Astonish!

 The Power to Astonish!  This was the theme of our annual seminar with the Self-Reliance Services Managers in the Europe Area.  The seminar was held this past week in Madrid, Spain.  The results of this seminar and the activities of this week were absolutely astonishing! 

Our Self-Reliance Team after completing an endowment session in the Madrid, Spain Temple

Our week began with a busy Monday before heading to Madrid.  We had last minute preparations for the managers seminar and had our second session of "My Continuing Mission" with Pedro Santos.  It is great to see the spirit of a returned missionary.  He had done all of the assignments from the previous week and has a good start to his own personal plan for his life.  We also had our monthly senior couple devotional that evening.  Elder and Sister Galbraith, Public Affairs missionaries, shared with us experiences and perspective on the Freiburg Temple Open House and dedication. 

On Tuesday morning early, we got on a plane to head to our seminar in Madrid.  We arrived early to help with last minute preparations.  However, the major efforts needed were simply to pick everyone up as they arrived from the different locations in Europe. With a little time available, we went early to the temple and completed the initiatory work for those that were baptized the previous week at The Hague Temple.  There was only about 6 or 7 names for each of us to do to complete what we began the previous week.  We were then able to sit in the peacefulness of the temple and wait for our Self-Reliance team to arrive.  

As they arrived, I gave some of our family names to several of our managers.  In total we were able to have 10 males performing an endowment for a "Rueckert" in the same temple session.  Sister Rueckert and I were asked to be the witness couple for the session, which was a special treat.  The session was held in English, since that was the predominant common language.  We had never done a temple session with our managers before.  As we were able to see each other in the celestial room after the session, many had spiritual experiences.  We all felt a strong feeling of unity and love for those we work with as we shared this special experience.  What a wonderful way to begin our astonishing week.

Full photo of the Madrid temple in the evening, after our temple session

After the temple session, we went to the Mercado de San Miguel for an evening of "Tapas".  These are small portions of all types of food.  Throughout the market, you choose and buy what ever small items you would like.  The photos below show a little of the variety:

Outside of the mercado as we left

Inside the mercado, standing room only

Sister Rueckert with our French Manager, Momo, near sea food options, including a major fish head

With members of our team (Mendonça - Cape Verde, Les - England, Thomas King - our Area manager and Ether - Italy)

 Wednesday morning we continued our seminar.  It began with a doctrinal discussion of D&C 109:22 from the Kirtland Temple dedicatory prayer. This verse promises power, His name, glory and angels  from our temple service. This was a perfect tie in to our seminar theme.

Thomas King, our Area manager, then facilitated a discussion on The Power to Astonish, including materials that had been shared in his regional training seminar a few months ago.  Thomas is an excellent manager and did a wonderful job of coordinating and organizing this seminar.  His message started with a review of the recent conference talk from President Monson "A Sacred Trust".  That set the tone perfectly.

We were privileged to have Elder Paul V. Johnson of the Europe Area Presidency join us by video conference at 11:00 am.  His message was powerful and added to the great spirit that we had felt. He shared his experience of the years that he served on the Board of Directors of the Perpetual Education Fund and his perspective on the expanded role of Self-Reliance.   We were encouraged to serve priesthood leaders by helping them with their needs and goals rather than "dumping" additional responsibilities on them.  We love the support that we are receiving from Elder Johnson, who is the Chairman of our Area Self-Reliance Committee.  It was clear to all that he understands the blessings of this initiative. His counsel is invaluable.  

After his presentation, we continued with our review of The Power to Astonish.  So many quotes and scriptures support our opportunity and privilege to access the powers of heaven in the work that we do.

After lunch, Miguel Adriano led the discussion of Power to Astonish, part 2.  Our team is very participative and they added great insight to the discussion.   Once we start sharing scriptures and insights, there is unlimited participation and the Spirit is so strong.  I finished up the day sharing ideas on how we can have the continuing momentum of the work that has begun.  The managers shared some of the experiences of the most successful stakes in the Europe Area to help us see how the culture is beginning to change.  Once again, more ideas than we had time to include.

On Thursday, the training continued, beginning with a doctrinal discussion around the quote from President Benson, "When obedience ceases to be an irritant and becomes our quest, in that moment God will endow us with power."  This is so profound and once again our managers had many insights.  One of my favorites came from PAco, our Spain manager.  He shared a quote from Seneca, a Roman philosopher "I do not obey God, I am in agreement with him."  That summarizes it so simply!

The rest of the day we had break-out sessions and continued discussion about many aspects of our work.  We were privileged at 3:00 pm to have Elder Joseph Sitati of the Seventy participate with us via video conference.  Elder Sitati is the General Authority responsible to supervise the Self-Reliance efforts in Europe.  He taught us from the scriptures in the Whys and Hows of Self-Reliance.  Another Spiritual Feast.

We finished our seminar with a testimony meeting.  Most were able to share their feelings of love and appreciation for being involved in this great work.  We felt more unity and power amongst our team than ever.  We love working with them, they have become our best friends and associates during our mission.  The following are a few photos taken during the Thursday morning doctrinal discussion.  You can see that the entire seminar was facilitated, not taught.  No one standing in front, everyone participating.

On Friday morning we had time to make one more visit to the Temple before returning to Frankfurt.  Our German manager, Günter and our Area Manager, Tom King went with Sister Rueckert and I as we did some family sealings.

Photo outside of the temple.  Appeared appropriate before going in to seal children to parents.

Inside the sealing rooms, we felt the abundance of the Spirit.  There were others in the session with us.  The sealer spoke only Spanish, so all the work was done in Spanish.  The session lasted for an hour and a half and still all of the family names (ours and others) were not able to be completed.

It was a spiritual experience to kneel across the alter with my wife and participate in sealings of couples that are our relatives.  The culmination was probably when we were able to be sealed for Sister Ruecker's 5th great grandparents (Moellers) and to have her 4th great grandfather sealed to them.  Sister Rueckert had been able to complete the endowment for her 5th great grandmother on the previous Tuesday.

We were also able to have children sealed to my 8th, 9th and 10th great grandparents, including many that died as infants.  Emotions were high and many tears were shed.  We were also able to witness a brother from Spain have his parents sealed together vicariously and then be sealed to them.  We could feel that incredible power first hand as we watched this special sealing occur.

What a wonderful way to finish our "Astonishing" week.  Below is a photo of the names of the individuals whose work was done in the Madrid temple this week, either in the initiatory sessions, the endowment session or in the sealing work that was performed.  Many of these names have been discovered in our family history work last month.

Couple sealings on the left and the family work done for Sister Rueckert's great grandparents.  Also the children by family with my 10th, 9th and 8th grandparents.  Additional work done in endowments and initiatory work on the right.

On Wednesday evening, we also were able to attend a Flamenco performance in Madrid with our Self-Reliance team.  This was an astonishing cultural experience.  The following is the Wikipedia description of Flamenco:

 Flamenco (Spanish pronunciation: [flaˈmeŋko]) is an artform native to the Spanish regions of Andalusia, Extremadura and Murcia. It includes cante (singing), toque (guitar playing), baile (dance), jaleo (vocalizations), palmas (handclapping) and pitos (finger snapping).

The following photos are from that evening.

In front of the Flamenco house

Photo from the stage of part of our group.  We had dinner before and during the show.

Clapping, singing and dancing

Men behind the dancer are singers with a very unique singing style

Dance includes feet stomping

Guitarrist, singers and dancers

Grand finale dance

After the performance we walked around downtown Madrid with our group.  The following are some of the photos of the walk before we returned to our hotel:

This was a hotel in the background, but we thought it looked a little like the Nauvoo Temple from the distance

The middle spot of Spain.  Equal distance from the East and West of the Iberian Peninsula.

Main plaza of Madrid