A Hodge-Podge of Mixed Emotions

This is an interesting time in our mission. Things are supposed to be winding down in preparation to leave, but there has been in increase in activities and spiritual experiences.

We just went over calendars and they have never been so full. Literally, there is no more time to fit one more thing into our schedule.

The last two weeks demonstrate how busy we've been.  

Last weekend, we attended the baptism of Kris Sun who is from China. What a wonderful young man he is. I remember the first time he came over to our place for one of the missionary discussions. He expressed a strong desire to be baptized into the church and become a member. He wanted it so much that he would have agreed to be baptized that very day if allowed. However, I knew what the missionaries were thinking; "It's too early. We need to teach him more so that he can know for certain that he is making the right choice."  

Kris and Elder Graf (he is a German missionary)

Weeks later, his dream was fulfilled. I was invited to speak during his baptism. I  talked about the Gift of the Holy Ghost which he would receive in Church the next day. President Boyer, the mission president, also spoke during the baptismal service. The Spirit was certainly there the entire meeting. Sister van Hoff was the piano player. What a spiritual way to begin a Saturday.    

Later that afternoon, I took a bike ride. True, I reported a few months back that I was giving my bike away to someone who needed it more than I. After making several attempts to give it to him, he told me he had no where to park it where he was living. Now he no longer needs a bike. Anyway, I decided to visit a small nearby town, Nieder Eschbach.  At the beginning of our mission I remembered having visited that town. Sister van Hoff and I enjoyed walking through it. At that time we took a tram to get to that there. I just wanted to see it one more time.  

It was great visiting the places we walked on that summer day two years ago. Being on bike I was able to see other sites we didn't see before.  Here are some pictures of the town.

On the way home, I got a little lost coming out of the town and getting back to the Grüngürtel (a bike path that goes all the way around the city of Frankfurt). Surprisingly, just as I turned a corner to entered the Grüngürtel, I heard someone call out my name, "Elder van Hoff!"  It was Elder and Sister Conlin and Brother and Sister Maynes (he is the Director of Temporal Affairs of the Europe Area).  I was amazed at meeting anyone so far out of town. Had I been 30 seconds later, that meeting would not have occurred. It was wonderful to see a familiar face. A small tender mercy.

We ended the day by going to another missionary couple's apartment for dinner. They did such a good job preparing a meal that Diane could eat. The dinner discussions were enlightening and uplifting. It made for an enjoyable evening.

This past week we had an appointment to present a follow-up report to the Area Presidency. They were very pleased with the results of our work with the Technology Group rollout. Diane did the presentation.  She even mentioned some of the challenges we have had to deal with while forming the groups, yet the Area Presidency were not discouraged in the least by those problems.  

Interestingly, they made it a point to tell us that they didn't want us to go. We recognized that as being cordially polite with a hint of humor. But then, they surprised us when they told us that they were aware of our heavy involvement with the ward and other things not related to our assignment and thanked us in true sincerity. How did they know what we did? It isn't like we advertised what we did. They were right, we have done a lot, but it isn't anything more than what we would normally do anywhere else. We left the meeting expressing our appreciation for their support and thanks.

We had our exit interview with Elder Sabin. Walking out of that office made the thought of leaving here more of a reality. This has become our home. This life has become our life. It is a little scary not being familiar with our near future.

Thursday morning we had another wonderful experience, yet not for any reason we would like to repeat. Last weekend we got a phone call from a missionary couple. They asked us to come over to their apartment. We did and were surprised to learn what they told us. 

They had recently found out that the sister had a serious heath issue and was expected to return home for an operation. Recovery could take up to 3-6 months. Then they told us that they would be leaving for the U.S. this Thursday morning. They needed to talk to someone because they were concerned about the fight home. She was in extreme pain and didn't know how they could make it for the long flight and with a layover in the Netherlands.  

We weren't quite sure why we specifically picked us out from all the other missionary couples to share with us this information. We spent the next hour trying to give them comfort and told them that we would honor their request to keep this information confidential for a couple of days.  

Later in the week the other couples were notified and a fast was organized to pray that she could make the flight in comfort and have a successful surgery. I was asked to be the spokesperson. As the senior couples knelt on the floor of the church chapel for prayer to begin the fast the Spirit manifested itself in a major way and I was sure that the faith of the missionaries was felt in Heaven above.

Yesterday was another packed day.  

In the morning, Elder Conlin, Elder Peshell, and I drove together to help with a member move. We had so much fun working shoulder to shoulder with members of the ward.  I think the other two elders were tired like me, but we all had a great time.

Me demonstrating to the guys how to lift heavy objects.

Next up: we were invited to lunch at a member's home, the Fu family. This beautiful couple both came from China. They have 2 adorable boys, 5 and 3. They are the ones who joined the church a year ago and were just recently sealed in the temple with their two boys.

 

After lunch we opened up the new manual, Come Follow Me. We taught them how we have been studying it. We covered only two paragraphs, yet discussed things from those two paragraphs over the next 45 minutes. As much as they learned from us, we also learned from them.  

And still more: that evening we had been invited to dinner with the Jacobe family. They are from the Philippines. The young missionary elders were also invited along with a young couple, Brother and Sister Crucy. 

Sister Jacobe loves to cook and entertain. When it came time to eat, the entire table was filled with bowls, pans, and plates of food. There wasn't even enough room for us to eat at the table. There were only nine of us, yet there was enough food to generously fill 20-25 people. Large portions and trying everything was encouraged!

After dinner I was feeling full and was glad that the table was being cleared. But then, they began to fill up the table again with all sorts of desserts. I had planned to eat just a tiny portion of each one but Sister Jacobe grabbed my plate and piled on heaping portions of each dessert. "You've got to try this, and this, and you have to have this and this." The plate was filled full. 

I have to admit that all the food was wonderful, but I was in pain for having eaten so much.

The conversation changed from cultures, to personal life experiences from the past, to politics, to missionary work. Just before we had to leave, I asked each family to share how it was going with their study of Come Follow Me. It was heart warming to hear their experiences with their studies. They bore testimony of how it was changing them and how much they have gotten out of study with their respective families.  

Somewhere in the week we managed to almost finish our income taxes. Just a few more bits and pieces of information to gather up.

Today, Sunday, we went over calendars. There is so much going on between now and when we leave. I hope to have time to write another post in this blog, but can't guarantee it.  

We love you all.  Thank you for your prayers.  Rest assured that you are in ours.

Music From the Heart

To bring you up to date, we've been very busy with the 2nd rollout of the Technology Group program. We are now rolling it out to non-English speaking areas.  We have been fortunate to find facilitators who speak fair to excellent English. We ask the facilitators to conduct the meetings, under our guidance, with their group members in their native language. So far it has worked out beautifully.

For our 1st rollout, where we have fully established the technology groups, we measure success by the amount of communication going on between group members. Here is an example of different groups texting each other for answers to questions or just to discuss technology. Some of the texts are not English. These groups are not one of the five major languages, so we communicate with them in English and then encourage them to communicate with each other in their native language.

Now we want to share a special experience we just had. Mind you, the purpose of our blog has been to share our missionary experiences and present them in an uplifting way. What we want to share may seem to be gloating over something we did, but, really, we recognize that the Lord's hand was involved in making it happen.

Today was Ward Conference. For over a month now we had been practicing to play a special musical number for that conference -- "If You Could Hie To Kolob" -- with Diane on the piano and me on the tenor recorder. Just this past week, we made a couple of extra changes to the number. They just felt right. One of the changes was to play the recorder solo at the beginning before the piano comes in.

Last night the bishop called to ask if we would do the musical number on another Sunday. He was concerned that the Stake President would not have enough time to present his talk. We agreed.

This morning as we were preparing to go to church, I asked Diane if she felt we should take the recorder and music with us anyway. She said that she, too, had been thinking about doing just that. So we did.

We were standing out in the foyer, greeting people as they came in, when a councilor to the stake presidency walked up to us and said, "I've heard you are going to do a special musical number for us." I told him that the bishop asked us not to do it because he was concerned that that stake president wouldn't have enough time to talk.

Moments later, the bishop walked up to us and asked if we could still do our special musical number and asked how many verses we were going to sing. I told hem we would be using instruments and it would only be the equivalent of 2 verses.

Knowing that we were now expected to play, I began to get nervous. During sacrament, I prayed that we could do a good job so that we would not be embarrassed. Then it occurred to me that this was a poor reason to ask for help. I then prayed that it would be a delight for Him. And Sister van Hoff prayed that the Spirit would be felt.

It went amazingly well. Before I started, I could hear babies crying and children talking. At about the 3rd note, the entire building was quiet. I was told later by Elder Skoubye, who was sitting way in the back, about a child just in front of him. She was wiggling around standing in the aisle. As soon as she heard the recorder, she turned to look toward the podium at me playing and began to sway back and forth to the music.

We were told by numerous people that the music brought the Spirit into the sacrament service.

The Lord really did make it possible. Had He not inspired us to make some of the changes to the music, and prompted us to bring the instrument and music to church, and helped my thoughts to recognize the real reason for playing the music, then we wouldn't have had as spiritual an experience.

This was a small incident, yet the feelings we experience from being blessed like this, outweigh the sacrifice of being obedient and efforts we make to stay close to the Lord. If given a choice to have more freedom and not experience tender mercies like this or forgo some of the pleasures of life and exert our strength and energy in behalf of the Lord, we'd take the latter, hands down.

Just an extra note. We just got a call from the Stake President. He wanted to tell us how much he enjoyed the musical number. It meant a lot to him and we certainly appreciated his phone call!