Living In Frankfurt, but Involved With International People

The other night we had four missionary elders over for dinner. They were just getting ready to leave when the sister missionaries called. The sisters had an urgent need to help with a discussion they had with a young man. We invited them over to our place.  

The young man was from Iran. He spoke some German and very little English. His main language was Persian.

Here's how the discussion went. The sister missionaries used their tablet to contact an elder from Berlin for a video chat. When the sisters taught, they would say it in English. The elder would translate to Persian. The young man would comment or ask a question and that would be translated back to English.

A few days after the appointment we learned that the Church is now training some missionaries at the MTC to speak two languages. Evidently, this young elder learned German (because he is serving here in Germany) and Persian. That is absolutely amazing. This allows the missionaries to teach people that are from countries where it is prohibited to send missionaries. We're wondering where he was from in the United States, because "y'all" was part of his English vocabulary. 

It was wonderful to see the interest the young man took in the discussion. He commented several times that he felt the Spirit as things were discussed. This is truly one of the more interesting missionary appointments we have experienced.

Elder Skoubye, our good friend and fellow senior missionary, offered me a bicycle. He had purchased a couple of bikes from a missionary couple who have left the field. In the process, he also inherited a third bike. I've been wanting to ride one, but was not sure my back would handle it well. So, now I'm able to try riding and see if I can handle it.  

I've gone riding twice now with Elder Skoubye. I think he is used to riding fast and long. The two things I can't do yet. Riding long ways is not a good way to test this out on my back. As for fast, the bike has 7 gear speeds compared with his about 15 gear speeds. But that is not the only reason for not being able to go fast. Of the 7 gear speeds I have, only one works, and, you guessed it, the only working gear speed is one of the lower gears.

Yesterday, Elder Skoubye and I biked to a local bakery. Now that I'm back to a non-restrictive diet, I thought I'd taste some of this country's cuisine. From the picture you can see that I chomped down on this pastry before I even thought of taking the picture. It was filled in the middle with fig filling.  

The move through the window

You know what this means?  I'm going to have to go bike riding more often with Elder Skoubye.
After returning I went to help out with a member move. I didn't stay until the end, but did stay for close to five hours. It was so enjoyable working side by side with the local members.  

I've done a lot of moves before, but none quite like this.  The windows here in Germany don't typically have screens. Many of the windows are large. So was the case here. Because the land sloped up the side of the apartment house and with having large windows in their living room and being on the 2nd floor, we simply handed down boxes and furniture through the window to those outside.  In this picture, President Dicataldo (Italian), Elder's Quorum President is on the ground and Bro. Allen (UK), Executive Secretary to the Bishop is in the window.

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It looks like I actually worked

While I was gone Diane attended a baptism in the German Ward. It was a Chinese brother who had been friendshipped by the Fu family.  The Fu family are Chinese also and having been baptized not long ago are actively involved in missionary efforts. They are so excited about the gospel and now there is another Chinese brother who is equally as excited.

We want you to know that we love all of you.  The Lord is blessing us in so many ways and we hope that by sharing some of our experiences, you, too, can partake of the joys of those blessings we have received.

Brother Fu on left and Brother Liming Zhao on right

Tender Mercies and Much More

It has been nearly three weeks. You probably thought we had dropped off the face of the earth. No such luck. Actually, we have been enjoying the appearance of some tender mercies from that Lord that we'd like to share with you. We also have some great news to share.

A couple of weeks ago we were able to attend a baptism of a young girl. Her mother is Chinese and her father is Italian. This is one of the tender mercies of living in the International Ward. The first speaker was a member of the bishopric. He is an American working at the embassy. He gave his talk directly to the girl. It was in Chinese.

The rest of the meeting was in English, but at the end when she was confirmed and given the Gift of the Holy Ghost by her father, he did it in Italian. Evidently the girl, only eight years old, understands all three languages.

Last Sunday I was asked to teach the Gospel Essentials class. I had taught this chapter about priesthood before, but decided at the last minute to make some alterations. One in particular was to compare the priesthood to how electricity is conveyed from the power plant to the individual homes.

Having taught the lesson, I felt successful in helping those attending to understand that priesthood is a means of God sharing some of his Godly power and authority with us. I felt that the rest of what I taught turned out to be a flop. Throughout the rest of the day, I regretted not having done as well as I had intended.

That evening, we decided to take a walk before retiring. We were just turning off from the sidewalk to our building when the junior elder missionaries drove up and stopped us. They wanted to thank us for the Sunday School lesson earlier that day. It turned out that one of the investigators in class was Muslim and his educational background happened to be electrical. He told the elders that the example I used had helped him understand what priesthood was. Another tender mercy.

For the first time in my life, I was given an opportunity to sing with a quartet. I would never have chosen to do that, but they were desperate for a fourth person, so I agreed. To tell you the truth, I actually enjoyed it.

We sang "Abide With Me; 'Tis Eventide" for our zone conference.  Diane played the piano.

In seminary we had a fun activity object lesson.  I won't go into the details of it, but we had the students search for a treasure following four hints to find it. Part of the treasure were these bookmarks we gave each of them. On the back we wrote something personal to the student.

Seminary is coming to a close soon. We only have two more weeks. Actually, next week the kids are out of school. Then we have two weeks after that. We've worked pretty hard on seminary. We were even counting down the number of classes when we learned that the other ward's seminary teacher had to go back to the States because of her ailing father. She found substitutes for her class during the mornings, but that left us having to handle the Wednesday evening class she was going to teach. We were scrambling for a lesson when we remembered that Elder Skoubye is a patriarch in the Church. We asked if he would not mind teaching a class on patriarchal blessings. He agreed and he did.

What can you say about patriarchal blessings that you can't say in ten minutes? Well, both he and his wife shared personal experiences they had when he would give blessings. She told how she would record as he would pronounce the blessing and later transcribe it and have to add punctuation and all. She told us how amazing it was that they both remember each blessing with such clarity and after mailing them or literally handing them off, they had no memory of what was in the blessing.

He told the youth that after his first blessing, he felt that there was something missing. It disturbed him to the point that he could not sleep that night. He decided to read over the blessing again, hoping to find relief or figure out what he may have forgotten. As he did, he told us that the Spirit suddenly gave verbal direction. He was told, "Put an article here." "Extend this sentence with these words." He was amazed at all he was told and when he finished he felt the comfort of knowing it was exactly as the Lord wanted him to have it. He had recognized how special those spiritual promptings were and from then on, when he would pronounce a patriarchal blessing, he would only do it as he had learned to be prompted.

The tender mercy here was two-fold.  One, that we didn't have to come up with a lame class on the spur of the moment, but two, and this is really special, the Spirit in the classroom was so strong. I even noticed one student who was there who rarely comes to seminary, stayed focused nearly the entire class. How wonderful was that?

Sister van Hoff and Sister Enger

Elderberry blossoms

Sister Enger taught us how to make Holunderbluten syrup. This is syrup from elderberry blossoms. It turned out so well, I decided to make a second batch. Besides, everywhere you look, there are elderberry trees and bushes. What is great is that we learned that elderberry grows all along the east coast of the US and even as far west as Texas. I'll be making more when we return.

Before we sign off, we have to tell you, we gave a presentation to the Europe Area Presidency. Actually, Sister van Hoff gave the presentation. It involves forming organized,  multi-stake networking technology groups. The presidency approved our proposal, but to start it out with a pilot program, which was part of our plan. WhooHoo!!!

We are so excited. We have been working on this since last September. Yesterday, we chose the two areas where we will pilot the program and sent emails to those who will be involved.

It is our hope that this is what the Lord wants at this time. If the pilot program is successful, then we will know.

We are working on other projects as well.  Here are some pictures of us testing out the best way to hold multi-ward (large group) video conferencing.

Setting up for large group video conferencing.

Projecting computer screen onto a large screen.

Main hub for audio and video out and in.