Hard Work and Success

This week was full of long hours of work and having success all along the way.

As of the end of this week we have succeeded in initiating 7 out of 10 technology groups for our first rollout over Europe. For this first rollout we chose groups who spoke English, or at least had the capability to speak English. Other than the United Kingdom and Ireland, the groups consisted of the following countries: Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Iceland, Poland, Croatia, Bosnia, Slovakia, Serbia, Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Albania, Macedonia, Greece, and Cyprus.  Obviously there are more than 10 countries. Some countries only have one or two technology specialists or none at all, so we combined some countries together.

Our meetings with these groups are in the evenings. So after a full day at the office, we go home for dinner an immediately head back to work for the evening of meetings. Some times we worked until 10:00 PM.  By the end of the week, we began to feel the effects of putting in so many hours.  (Note from Sister van Hoff: sometimes I took comp time and came home for a few hours in the afternoon.) 

It is really interesting to visually meet these church members from other parts of Europe. There are so many different personalities and background stories. Some have performed the responsibilities of a technology specialist long before the Church created the position. Some members in the groups have only been in the position for a month or less and are clueless of their responsibilities.

We had one interesting group that actively communicated during the video conference. They had questions and comments and even got involved with a discussion amongst themselves. We learned near the end of the meeting that they had been messaging each other the whole time. That feature is available on the video conference software. It shows up on the right side of the screen.

In another group we witnessed just the opposite. For whatever reason, they would only use their cameras for a short while. Only when they unmuted their microphone, they would also open up their camera. When they finished talking, they would mute their mic and turn off their camera. One of them went a step further. When he talked he would do the same as the others, but would put his hand in front of the camera so that we could not see his face. We tried to encourage them to use their cameras so that each of the members could get to know each other. That didn't change anything.

We’ll have one more video conference with each group before we begin the second and final rollout.

Earlier in the week we got an email from a U.S. military stake. (A stake consists of a geographic cluster of meetinghouses.) They were asking us for help. They had audio difficulties while testing out their webcasting equipment.

We sent them some step-by-step instructions, which we had written up, and told them if they followed them precisely, they should have success.

Equipment set up in chilly High Council room.

Tuesday evening, at about 9:00 PM, we had just finished up with a technology group video conference and were getting ready to head home. The military stake called us up on our cell phone. They were at the church testing out the equipment, but couldn’t get the audio to work. For the next hour, we had them test out each piece of equipment. We checked their streaming capabilities online. We even had them take a picture of their mixer to see of any of the controls looked odd. Nothing worked. So we agreed that we would make arrangements to go to their stake building (a couple of hours away) and work on the problem ourselves.

Sister van Hoff packing up.

Thursday morning we packed up the car with our own equipment and headed to Kaiserslautern, Germany. We used the High Council room to set up our equipment. They had a huge table which gave us plenty of room to set everything up. The only bad thing is that there was no heat on and it was chilly. We turned up the radiators, but still nothing. The heating system must have been on a timer.

The correct way to connect.

We set up our equipment first, because we knew our cables and devices worked. We were successful with the first attempt. Piece by piece, starting with the microphone, we switched out to use their equipment. Next was the XLR cable, then the mixer, then the "Y" adaptor.  Everything worked.  Finally we started to switch out the Teradek.  That is when we found the problem.  The Teradek is a device that encodes the video and audio input and sends it out to the internet.  Immediately we noticed that the audio input jack was connected to the earphone output jack connection on the side of the Teradek.  It should have been connected to the input jack connection in the back.

We ran one final test with all of the equipment and everything worked.  Wow!  Two hours of driving and three hours of testing equipment, all for a mini jack plugged into the wrong place.  Still, it was a great feeling to have solved a problem ON OUR OWN.  WhooooHooo!

By the weekend, we really felt we needed a rest.  We still worked, but in a more fun way.  I did take a cold bike ride Saturday morning.  There was frost on the ground.

In the afternoon, we helped the Sister missionaries teach a young man from Vietnam.  The lesson ended with him accepting and wanting to be baptized.  He has been talking to the missionaries for a couple months.

In the evening SIster van Hoff and I, along with tow other missionary couples;Elder and SIster Johnson, and Elder and Sister Lindsay, were judges in a road show competition.  There were five youth groups who put on skits.  There was comedy, singing, and dancing.  they were all good and very entertaining, which made it difficult to judge.  Yet we had an enjoyable evening.

We love you all and pray for you.  We want to thank you for your prayers for us.

Just Some Of Our Missionaries

This week has been pretty exciting for us.  As we have mentioned in past posts, we are rolling out the Technology Group program.  (Just a reminder: we formed groups based on geographic areas where everyone will speak the same language.  Communication is the key factor in how well these groups function and become self-sustaining.)

We're forming 22 groups.  (One group will be called the Europe International Technology Group.  It consists of 4 separate groups, but they are so small we had to put them together.)  Last week we organized and had Zoom video conference meetings with 3 groups.  Counting the 3 pilot groups, we now officially have 6 groups up and running.  For us, that is a big deal.

It was so much fun meeting and talking to these brethren. Groups can include sisters, but so far there have been no female technology specialists. I even learned about two texting apps that I'm now interested in using.  My sister back in Virginia helped me play with them to me find out which I would like the best.  They are both encrypted, both work on iPhones and Androids, and both allow you to form group texting.  What makes this group texting special is that, even if you delete the conversation in the groups, the group itself remains on your contacts.

We also learned about making a green screen background using Zoom video conferencing.  I'd like to buy some fabric and try it out. Fun stuff.

So, other than working with the technology groups, we had an interesting evening on Thursday.  Immediately after one of our group video conference meetings, we got a phone call from the Kaiserslautern Military Stake in Germany.  They had audio problems when testing out their webcasting equipment.  We worked with them until nearly 10:00 PM.  We think we narrowed it down to one piece of equipment and the next day we drove 1-1/2 hours down to their stake to drop the piece off.  They have their Stake Conference in a week.

We don't have any new pictures so we thought we'd share pictures of some of our favorite missionaries.  These young men and women work so hard.  We are so impressed with them and their diligence and determination.  The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will be in great hands in the upcoming generations.

Elders 

Robinson (very mature and calm)

Bentke (very serious German and a thinker)

Hamilton (had a way of saying things in just the right way)

Johnson (brought happiness and excitement into the room)

Sisters 

Griffin (always happy) 

and Schulz (always a pretty smile)

Sisters 

Schultz and

Hodges (super dedicated)

Sisters

Lowe (powerful testimony)

Fried (loving and happy)

Baker (filmed by reporters and by the Church)

Ruesch (learned German almost overnight)

Elder Winsborrrow (always smiling Tech Elder)

Sister Bonholzer (dedicated and persistent)

Three Weeks of Stress

It has been a while since our last post, but once you hear what has been going on, you'll understand.

Three weeks ago, with the approval of our Area President, I went back to the States to attend my son's wedding.

Earlier in the year, my son called to tell me that he had proposed to his long-time girlfriend and that she accepted. I was ecstatic. A few days later we video conferenced to talk about when the wedding would take place. I told him that I wasn't sure I could get permission. I proposed that I video conference in, but he wanted me there in person. When he mentioned that he would be willing to wait for me to return from our mission in April, I could see the look on his fiancée's face. There was great disappointment in her eyes.

Fortunately, and quite surprisingly, I was given permission to go back home for the wedding. It took a lot of planning on my part, because I've always promised my sons that if they ever got married, I'd make the wedding cake. And that I did. For those who are not aware, I used to be a baker a long time ago.

The day after my arrival I was dealing with jet lag and had had only about 4 hours sleep.  Nevertheless, I was under a tight schedule. I spent that day, from 7:30 AM to 10:30 PM, baking cakes and making icing at my sister's place in North Carolina.

My sons.  The one getting married standing next to me.

Most of the next day was spent on the road to the Outer Banks. That evening we had the rehearsal and rehearsal dinner. Early the next morning, the day of the wedding, I went to the facility where the wedding would be and spent the morning icing and decorating the cakes. I needed to move and assemble the cake in an outdoor tent,  but it was hot and muggy. So I drove to the home of the in-laws, a beautiful beach house, to take a shower and change. I barely had enough time to move the cake and started decorating it with fresh flowers. I positioned the flowers and was getting ready to place the stems around. I looked at my watch and saw that I was 10 minutes late for the wedding.  I  literally threw the stems of leaves on the cake.

Still the wedding was beautiful and the wedding started 15 minutes late. The Lord answered our prayers and just minutes before the outdoor wedding began, the rain stopped.

The reception went very well. It was great to see my family members and to meet many of her family. A few days later I was back on the plane heading home. And it is great being back home again, here in Germany.

Probably due to the stressful schedule I had on that trip and averaging 4-5 hours of sleep each night, I came down with a bad cold a day after returning. Between the visit and the cold, that put me out of work for 2 weeks.

On Tuesday of the next week, I was scheduled to go to Klinikum Darmstadt to have surgery to have some skin cancer cells removed. Now, had I had the squamous cells removed in America, I would have been looking at having everything done in a doctor's clinic and completed in one day.

However, here in Germany, things are done differently. I was originally told that they would make an incision and take some of the cells and the analysis to determine if they got them all would take 24 hours. I would need to stay overnight with an open wound (sealed with some spray on bandage).

It turned out to be longer than that. When they got me onto the operating table, I was then told that it would take two days to analyze the cells. If successful, they would stitch me up, and I would need to stay over one more night. That meant another week of no work for me. Poor Diane has been holding down the fort by herself for three weeks.

During my stay at Klinikum Darstadt.

My ministering fellow senior missionary gave me a priesthood blessing before I left for Klinikum Darmstadt. Between that and prayers from many, I was blessed to have all the squamous cells removed on the first cut, rather than having to stay over the weekend.
This was stressful, but a memorable adventure. I was in a town about 40 some minutes away from my loving wife, staying in a strange facility where almost no one, except for the doctor, spoke English.  Fortunately my German was enough to understand most of what I was told, but it was too difficult for me to communicate back.

Even my roommate, a wonderful man, spoke absolutely no English. He was polite to listened to me struggle to get a conversation going, but I could tell he was grateful that I finally gave up trying.

Now I'm home and things are back to normal. My cold is finally about gone.

Service Project.  This was only one of 3 rooms being used.

Saturday, we even went to the church to help out with a Stake service project. Members and missionaries donated all sorts of clothes, personal care items, and food for the homeless here in Frankfurt. At the church we organized everything for distribution.  We had such a member/missionary turnout, that the 3-hour planned service project only took about 30 minutes.

Still feeling stressed? No. I am back home and ready to get to work with our missionary assignment. More importantly, it is comforting to be back with Diane. When we taught the Dave Ramsey courses, he would encourage people who became debt free to yell out, "We are debt free!"  Well, I'm yelling out, "I AM STRESS FREE!!!"