And So The End Arrives!

Wow, what an amazing and revelatory week!  We will start with the last day of 2018 as we celebrated New Year’s Eve. We spent the morning helping Grammy look for a few special items that she really never found but went to a few shops and the mall in Dresden to see if she could find anything exciting. That evening we all gathered together at a restaurant, the Döner Kebap, owned by one of the members in our branch who hails from the Middle East. We have been there a few times and it turned out to be one of the few places where we could find reservations for 12 of us.  He is a very sweet man and always bends over backwards to attend to our culinary needs. We got there about 6 PM and then returned to our “missionary room” where several supplied us with cookies and sweets and then we sat around and watched “Saving Mr. Banks”. We had the option of watching it in German with English subtitles, but the majority spoke English, so we opted for English with German subtitles. There was an offer to gather at a high hilltop and watch the fireworks which erupt all over the city, but we all elected to return to our rooms where we could hear them all going off in the neighborhood, especially at the midnight hour. Pictured to help our memories in the future are the Lindsays, us, Sister Brosch, the Fiedlers, Linfords, Stapleys, Brother Urrasch (the restaurant owner), and Sister Kiefer. The Stapleys were the ones who had left when her father died and had now returned and the Fiedlers are native Germans who are our newest missionaries. Sister Brosch is a temple worker who lives in our building and Sister Kiefer works in the temple laundry with her husband serving in our branch presidency. He couldn’t make it that night suffering from a migraine.



We didn’t do too much to start the New Year other than sleep in which was very welcome. We actually started organizing a bit to see what we needed to throw or give away and what we would need to pack. Tuesday was a complete surprise. The temple presidency took all of the temple workers, after our prayer meeting, into the endowment room for an endowment session where I was actually able to complete the last name I had not been able to get to. When we finished the day and returned to our apartment, I discovered a message from the First Presidency which said among other things, “…details associated with temple work have been adjusted periodically….Prophets have taught that there will be no end to such adjustments as directed by the Lord to His servants.” I shared this message on my page on Facebook along with the comment, “If you haven’t been to the temple this year, you ought to go.” One of the interesting answers I received was from Elder Helmut Wondra, stake president in Vienna while we were there and now an Area Authority 70. He and his wife have been here to the temple a few times last year and he wrote me asking if I could give him any hints about new things in the temple. I replied that we had been told not to say anything and he responded, “I thought you would say something like that!” I have seen remarks from several of you that went to the temple on the 2nd or 3rd and know what we are talking about.

The rest of the week was very pleasant. Tuesday, we got a picture of everyone in white in the missionary room, pictured on the left. On Wednesday we were very happy to receive a visit from Gary and Karen Sell who are young adult missionaries in Hamburg and had permission during the break to come to the temple. At one time they were in our ward and I had delivered three of her children. They are pictured below. We also were invited to dinner with the entire temple presidency at the home of President and Sister Wadosch, adjacent to our apartment building. They are pictured on the right in the next picture with President and Sister Bartsch in front and President and Sister Dzierzon behind. It was a lovely opportunity to reminisce on our temple experiences as they prepared to say goodbye to us. We also received visits from old friends out of Vienna as well as a young couple, the Lipke’s, who invited us to their sealing a few months back. I took him through the booth prior to our last session yesterday and took his wife through the veil as the session ended. We had to memorize a few things that took place in German on some of the ordinances though not much changed in English. At the end of the day yesterday, President and Sister Wadosch invited us into his office and we had a very pleasant conversation prior to being officially released as Freiberg Temple missionaries. We plan on still doing some work on a few family names on Tuesday, but we will be strictly patrons that day.



 


Yesterday evening we were hosted by the other missionaries, a few of the temple presidency and other temple workers at one of our favorite restaurants, “Zur Orgelpfeife” or “At the organ pipes” for a lovely farewell dinner and today, Grammy had the opportunity to bear her farewell testimony and even though I had spoken last week, was also asked to bear mine. It was our first experience with two-hour church meetings and the Relief Society all got together afterwards for a picture. Here are a few pictures from the farewell dinner and then the Relief Society.

We are mostly packed allowing for a few days clothing but will really be pretty much done by tomorrow getting ready for our flight out on Wednesday morning. President and Sister Wadosch will drive us to the airport and we should be coming into Salt Lake by 8:09 PM on United Airlines 5625 operated by SkyWest dba United Express. We have about a 2 ½ layover in Denver which hopefully will be enough time to get through customs and the possible TSA delay if they’re short people due to the government shutdown. We’re praying that we don’t have a repeat of our homecoming in Vienna where we missed the flight.

Mom: If we had to choose a week to end with it would have been this week. What a great time to be a member of the Church of Jesus Christ. Everything feels right and beautiful in the temple and it was a joy to share with the temple patrons as they learned what the changes meant for them. With the business of the temple and few temple workers or temple missionaries, we were even given little miracles to help the work go forward. Serving daily in the temple has been some of the sweetest times of my life and I am going to miss being there. As our apartment connects to the temple and we go through a tunnel to get there already dressed in white, it is as though we live in the temple. We have a relatively serene and protected environment. On one side it is difficult to leave but on the other hand I am ready to be with my family and grandchildren. Looking forward to seeing you all at the airport if you can make it. Tucking in Temple prayers before we leave. Hope I can get everything in my suitcases.

 Love, hugs and prayers,
Grammy, Grampa, Mom, Dad, Elder and Sister Parker

2018 ends with a Czech

It has been a wonderful holiday week both at the outset as well as throughout the rest of the week. It is truly being impressed upon us how short our time is getting as so much of our normal work week has been replaced by the celebrations going on.  

Let’s start back a week ago as we left Freiberg after church and getting all packed up to spend 4 days and 3 nights with Markus and Cathleen Wiese at their home in Freiberg. We arrived in the late afternoon of the 23rd and were again placed in the master bedroom of their home. They have expanded a bit since we were there in 2014 with extra bedrooms. Their oldest son Ferdinand, 19, who spent a year with Robert and Kyndel Marcroft as a foreign exchange student, still lives in their home, speaks excellent English and is doing quite well since his accident. Their next daughter, Leonie, 18, spent a year as a foreign exchange student in Japan and presumptively speaks Japanese but was thrilled to try out her English while she was there. It was very good. She lives in her own apartment but occasionally will spend a night at the family homestead and was there most of the time we were. Their youngest, Heinrich, 16, was an amazing helper and was active in cooking, cleaning up and just helping out. Although we spoke German a lot, a great deal of the conversation took place in English. Markus’ father was also there from his home in Wolgast and participated in most of the meals and partying that went on. Markus’ brother Stefan lives next door and the father spent some time with them as well.

There was a lot of wonderful conversation that went on, so much so that we never got to one of their traditions which was to watch The Grinch which they only have in English. I had been given a couple of interesting stories by one of our local temple workers here in Freiberg that I took along and read, one of which was about twins still in the womb making some analogous comments that we might make about whether there is really life after birth. Monday, Christmas Eve, was spent with more conversation and we also helped to decorate the Christmas tree. Many of you have apparently seen the Facebook post that Markus placed showing us doing all of that. We had a delicious breakfast and lunch which was the main meal and consisted of quail (pictured below) as well as venison which Markus himself had shot and prepared. We then went to the Lutheran church for their Christmas Eve service where we viewed a presentation which included young adults and a theme of how we should look out for all those we meet and help minister to their needs. Sound familiar? We then returned home for a wonderful Abendbrot prior to the Christmas Eve festivities.  Everyone got out their musical instruments with Cathleen and Markus on the violin and cello, singing Christmas carols and reading more stories.



 



Then the special chair was set up in the center of the room next to the tree and a gift was selected from under the tree. The recipient sat on the chair, opened their present and then selected another gift and was replaced by the person opening that one. This went on for a couple of hours. We gave the Wiese family the game of Telestrations which we had a fun time with the next day. We actually gave them two games so there would be enough to go around for both Markus’ and Stefan’s families. In turn we received a tin of Leipzig chocolates, homemade wurst, homemade baked apple marmalade, a lovely apron stating “Bake the World a Better Place”, lovely smelling bath soap, a book about the “Saga of Saxony”, next year’s calendar that Markus always gives us every year consisting of pictures of the past year and two more wonderful Christmas stockings that are even more decorative than the ones they gave us in 2014.



 





 

 

The traditional Christmas for them really takes place on Christmas Eve but there was still much more to go. We received wonderful breakfasts each morning, generally being allowed to sleep in until 9 AM and meals consisted of other specialties such as rabbit. Festivities on the 25th were at Stefan’s next door, the middle picture above, and then with the Jentzsch’s, Cathleen’s parents in the third picture above, on the 26th. We have gotten to know Cathleen’s father well as he has been our temple engineer, pictured in front of the white door above. However, he is retiring at the end of the year, in 2 days, and is talking about possibly going on a mission with his wife. Also pictured bending over near the piano is Grandma Richter who, with her husband was very instrumental in helping get the Freiberg Temple built and running and who used to get a birthday card from President Monson every year. We see her often in the temple, a very sweet lady.

We came home straight from the Jentzsch’s and picked up our duties in the temple on Thursday morning with a wonderful group of people that we know well from the Czech Republic. We were truly impressed with how well organized they were. We participated and helped with baptisms, initiatory ordinances and a number of endowment sessions. Unfortunately, I don’t think we were very good at mastering the Czech language, but they had a number of set apart temple workers to help out where our talents were wanting.

The week ended today with yours truly being asked to speak in Sacrament Meeting about the spiritual highlights of my life. The general theme was an end of the year summary of what we have learned in the past and I spoke for 10-12 minutes on things like my own baptism, the spiritual impressions I had upon meeting my wife, and the first truly spiritual experience I remember riding the Streetcar #55 through Ernst Reuter Platz and reading Mark E Peterson’s pamphlet on “Which Church is Right?” I talked about the spiritual experiences of delivering 7800 babies and the special experiences of having our own 10. I talked about meeting with Elders Nelson and Oaks and discussing church teachings about stillborn babies and the fact that I had two stillborn brothers. It was often difficult for me to keep talking as I was so spiritually caught up in what I was saying and many indicated afterwards that they appreciated the things that I talked about.

Lots of things still happening over the next couple of days and this coming week appears to be the last one in which we will be assigned to work. We have to deregister next week and will likely not have anything to do on the Tuesday before we leave other than perhaps complete a few of our leftover ordinances. I still have 7 sons that need to be sealed to their parents and one endowment not yet completed that perhaps can be finished on that last day. We’ll see how it all goes.

Mom: It was wonderful to spend the 4th Sunday Advents and the Christmas days with Markus, Cathleen and their family. We all feel like one big extended family and we appreciate them for taking us in and letting us be a part of the family festivities. It helped us not miss home so much. It looks like you’ve had a lot more snow than us, but we did have our beautiful snow storm about a week and a half ago and drove through some beautiful snowy forests. I expect we’ll find more snow in the coming January at home.

The three days we spent in the temple were sweet, very busy and not so busy. As Grampa said the Czechs were here and were delightful to accommodate. A lot of them do speak a little English, so we can communicate with those who don’t as to how to work in the temple. These people have a wonderful spirit about them as they seek to be truly faithful in serving the Lord. One young couple was allowed a few special moments in the Celestial room as the young man asked the young woman to marry him. The next couple of days wherever they went, you could see this special little sparkle about them. I was kept busy at the veils with Czechish, Russian, English and also some German and at the initiatories when I had so many patrons but so few workers. Some how it always seemed to work out just right. We always seem tired, but the temple experiences are sweet and spiritual.

It is hard to believe that our time is so short, and so filled with last time activities. We’re trying not to get over excited about seeing everyone again.  

Still sending our love, prayers and hugs,
Grammy, Grampa, Mom, Dad, Elder and Sister Parker

Happy 4th Advent!

Happy 4th Advent!  It has been a very unique week as we have approached the big holiday as most of our usual visitors have obviously been getting ready for their family functions and the temple was significantly less busy. Nonetheless, we continued to run all of our offerings and it kept us hopping to accommodate those who were there. Toward the end of the week we really started to wind down in a big way. Our temple president and his wife left on Saturday to return to their home in Vienna and the first counselor also left for their home in Berlin. Our new German couple, the Fiedlers, also were given permission to spend the holidays with their family and left leaving only two couples in our hallway of six apartments. During the week we found ourselves moving from the baptistry to initiatories to working on the veil and back again. Even though most of the sessions were small, they all took place and we found ourselves able to meet all the necessities of serving our patrons as they requested.

Sunday was a very busy day but only Sacrament Meeting was held, and I had the opportunity of singing in a combined ward/branch choir as both units met together for a special Christmas program. That afternoon, as you can see, we were invited to spend the next few days with Markus and Cathleen Wiese and their family at their home in Leipzig. We packed a few things and drove up where we have visited a few times before. They had a special dinner prepared for us and we are looking forward to the Christmas activities of the next few days. We will report on all of that next week.

There were a lot of other celebratory events in this past week. On Monday we returned with the Lindsays to Chemnitz, the old Karl Marx Stadt to visit Brother Preissler and enjoy his personal tour through their city’s Weihnachtsmarkt. We got a few cute pictures of their offerings as well as enjoyed a good Christmas lunch. They had beautiful decoration we thoroughly appreciated. Then on Tuesday, a Sister Teubner invited all of the temple missionaries and the temple presidency to a wonderful evening offering of German cookies, cakes and drinks. That amounted to 16 people all of whom she served graciously and with a wonderful spirit. Her husband has been hospitalized in a rest home for the past five years, but she has graciously continues to show her gratitude through her service to all of us. That’s her in the fifth photo with the Lindsays.

On Wednesday the special event was offered by the temple presidency to all of the assigned temple workers including not only the missionary couples, but two other full-time temple workers who live in our apartment house, Sister Brosch and Brother Kux. So again, there were 14 of us and we met in a room dedicated to special events in our building known simply as the missionary room. Again, a wonderful offering of evening snacks was provided, and they asked several of us to report on our special Christmas traditions. We were among those who were asked, and Grammy reported on our usual Christmas Eve festivities including acting out the Christmas story (and trying to capture videos for posterity).

Saturday, the Dresden Stake had a special Christmas offering consisting of a choir, orchestra and three soloists in a program that is apparently well known to the Germans but which we had never witnessed.  The orchestra had several interesting instruments we had never seen before, especially the “Zinken” which look a bit like oboes or clarinets, but which sound like trumpets. It was unique and added to our celebration. You may notice in our first photo above how many additional little gifts we have received.  Almost every day there are little presents that appear on our doorstep. I especially enjoyed the little chimney sweep man up front on the left holding his ladder and made out of dried prunes.

So we are looking forward to a lovely Christmas Eve at Markus', Christmas Day at his brother Stefan’s, and then we will again go back to Chemnitz on the 2nd day of Christmas with Cathleen and Christiana’s (Stefan’s wife) parents, the Jentzsches.  Again, Brother Jentzsch has been our temple engineer and he is officially retiring at the end of the year. So I guess he’ll get home just a little bit before we do. Mom is still contemplating buying a few special souvenirs which I guess we’ll just have to ship home because they won’t fit in our luggage. The plans for January are already proposed and we notice they haven’t given us an assignment for the 8th of January. So I guess we’ll have one full day to finish our packing.

I have been asked to speak in Sacrament Meeting next week on the spiritual highlights of my life. I guess it will be my farewell talk, but we’ll still have the opportunity to bear our testimonies on our last Sunday for Fast Day. I have already written it in English but am now working on translating it into German. Maybe I can get Markus to listen to and correct my translation where it needs it.

Mom:  Christmas has been an exciting time with all the festive activities, concerts and sweet little gifts left at our door. It seems like most of our concerts and programs have centered on the Savior as well as the Christ child. It has also been interesting to see who has still scheduled time to come to the temple. Somehow we always seem blessed to have our temple activities work out even where we are running with very few people. The spirit is sweet and a great place to be just a few days before Christmas.

 My mind keeps thinking of how things will be back home, and seeing all the family. We enjoy seeing the Christmas programs of the kids when they are posted. We’ll miss sharing Christmas Eve and Day with you but hope that everyone will have some kind of happy celebration. We’ll try to FaceTime if we can find the right times of day.

 Have a Bright and Merry Christmas!
Sending all our love, hugs and prayers to be with you,
Grammy, Grampa, Mom, Dad, Elder, and Sister Parker

Happy 3rd Advent!

Happy 3rd Advent!  Since last week we discovered there is a special topic to each Advent day. Mom will discuss those in her part of the letter below. Winter has truly arrived, and we actually got quite a bit of snow last week. I braved the storm a little bit and went out and shoveled the walks a bit leading from the chapel up to our hostel. Then I saw a couple coming out of the door that leads to the temple clothing store and although it wasn’t open, decided I should shovel that walk as well. It didn’t take a lot of time with only about 5 inches on the walks, but I guess it made me feel like I was doing a little something to help others outside of the temple assignment.

We decided we haven’t been out walking around as much so we bundled up warmly and headed out on a day when we got out of the temple just a little bit earlier than usual. Days are very short as we head up to the official first day of Winter this coming Friday. Our sun comes up just about 8 AM now and is already sinking at 3:59 PM so we figured we had about a half hour of daylight left on the day we decided to give it a try. The pictured paths are ones we have walked on a lot in warmer weather, but we decided we needed to record them with Old Man Frost around. One of the pictures shows the train tracks we often walk by, but we’ve never felt the need to capture a photo of one until this day.  Our little Advents table is filling up with small presents we seem to receive virtually every day from an unknown giver. They include goodies, candles, hearts, trees and lately we’ve been getting great little quotes emphasizing the Light of the World.

 

 

It has been a very interesting week in the temple as the number of patrons has really decreased. Most are now from the immediate area though we had a few who were still coming in from locations within an hour or so, but it seems that everyone is paying attention to the holiday at this point if they have further to drive.  As such it meant that our team of missionaries were asked to be quite flexible in helping out in all areas. We worked in the baptistry, initiatories and on the veil as people were active in all areas but just didn’t have a lot of their own temple workers to augment out what needed to be done. We’re still short one pair of missionaries with Elder and Sister Stapley having to return home after her father unexpectedly passed away. They are concerned about her mother being taken care of and apparently will return again shortly after Christmas but before the New Year.

We’re continually being reminded of how short our time is here as many people who have been visiting for the past year now and again have indicated they won’t be back until after we’re gone so we’re giving them a heartfelt goodbye. There are so many special events scheduled in the next two weeks that there really isn’t a lot of idle time. Today we’re invited to the home of the Schiebolts, one of our former branch presidency counselors who’s now on the high council and will return tonight to participate in the First Presidency Christmas Devotional which we’ve always intended to view online but have never been able to get to. Tomorrow all of the missionaries have been invited to another sister’s home for a celebration and that conflicted with a second invite from a couple in Chemnitz who wanted to show us their Weihnachtsmarkt. They’ve decided we can still do it tomorrow morning during our day off, enjoy lunch with them and then return for the invitation in the evening. Tuesday night is a choir rehearsal for the special Christmas program on the 23rd, which will be the only meeting for the day and which we’ll hold with the other ward that meets in our building. Thanks to Aaron’s efforts to encourage me to sing a different part on each verse of the hymns, I have become a little bit experienced in singing tenor and they really need tenors in the choir so I’m helping out there. Wednesday will be a special evening sponsored by the temple presidency for all of the assigned temple workers. Thursday and Friday are a little bit free though we don’t have much extra time on Friday because of evening sessions and it’s also our wash day. Saturday is a special presentation at the stake center in Dresden and then the choir presentation on Sunday. After that we’re off to Leipzig to spend Sunday evening, Christmas Eve and Christmas Day with Markus and his family with an invitation to Cathleen’s family on the 26th, still part of Christmas here in Germany. We understand that President Wadosch and President Bartsch are both joining their families for the holidays and won’t be back until the new year leaving President Dzierzon, a local resident in charge for that time. Our German missionaries, the Fiedlers, will also be joining their family in Frankfurt at the same time so we’ll really be short handed during our next to last week. But we think we’ll have the Stapleys back by then. The final event of the holidays will be a talk I’ve been asked to give on the 30th, the last day of three-hour church meetings, on the spiritual highpoints of my life.  Our last Sunday, the 6th, will be Fast Day along with a Stake Priesthood meeting in Dresden that afternoon. We’ll see if they give us anything to do on our last day, the 8th, before we leave the next morning.

I thought I’d add an extra paragraph here now that we’ve finished all of the events of the day. We loved the Christmas devotional and will remember President Nelson’s five gifts of the Savior, love, forgiveness, repentance and eternal life. But what we found additionally fascinating was the wonderful conversation we had with the Schiebolts who will be celebrating their 41st wedding anniversary on the 23rd.  They were both raised under the Communist German Democratic Republic and had some amazing events in their life. He first met his future wife when she was only 14 and subsequently got engaged to someone else. However, he received a patriarchal blessing that told him he would recognize his future wife by the fact that she had been praying for him for several years. Their first meeting had been at a youth event and she was very impressed with him. He later decided for some reason to end his engagement and then found out she had been praying for him for the past three and a half years, literally. She was then 18 and they ended up getting married very soon thereafter. This was all pre-temple and they had many wonderful experiences being heavily involved with the volunteers and visitors who worked on and attended the open house and dedication of the temple. They had over 90,000 attend the temple open houses on two separate dedications. He was responsible to arrange for housing for the youth who would participate In the pre-dedication celebration as well as for all the church authorities who would be coming to the dedication. He told the brethren that he needed to know names of the latter in order to reserve their hotel rooms and was simply told to reserve an entire floor of the hotel. He ended up setting up rooms for 310 youth and 300 showed up. He arranged for 151 other visitors and 150 appeared. They are now fairly recently retired but live in a nice apartment which is amazingly stocked with their emergency supplies that would make most of us envious, not a common thing by any means here in Europe. We had a lovely pre-devotional snack with them of cookies and cakes and then returned afterwards for a lovely and very tasty offering of “Russian Stew”. It was a very delightful evening.

 Mom: Wow, lining everything up does sound like we are busy, but there is still time to reflect on what we are doing or participating in. I’m just not so sure we’ll be needed so much at home, which of course is good perhaps and not so good. At home they see us as someone whose family has already grown up and we’re not needed as much to man the sails. It should be interesting to see how the new programs function.

The members, Branches, Wards and Stakes are so caught up in the celebration of Advents that I thought I would look it up on the computer and see what it is really all about. I found it very interesting and very Christ centered, so I thought I would share a bit. The history of the Advents is very much tied up with religion both in the Protestant and Catholic churches and has become part of the German culture. Advent is the period of four Sundays and weeks before Christmas. Advent means “Coming” in Latin. This is the coming of Jesus into the world. Christians use the four Sundays and weeks of Advent to prepare and to remember the real meaning of Christmas. Martin Luther encouraged families to observe Advent as a time for them to teach their children about the coming of Christ. Their teachings come from the Old and New Testament and each candle represents a theme. 1. Hope  2. Peace 3. Love 4. Joy. Included in their teachings is also, that if Christ came once as prophesied, He will come again. Sometimes there is a 5th candle representing the birth of Christ and the flame reminds us that Christ is the true light of life.  It seems like a worth while tradition that we will continue to celebrate. Only one more Sunday until Christmas Eve. We hope you will all find some time this week to go to the manger to visit with the Savior.

   Sending snowy hugs and kisses and prayers,

Grammy, Grampa, Mom, Dad, Elder and Sister Parker

Happy 2nd Advent!

Happy 2nd Advent to one and all! We are really into the Christmas season now in a big way. For years we have loved the tradition of hanging up Advents calendars and each day from the 1st through the 25th. of opening that day’s special tag to see what surprise awaits. Most of our grandchildren remember the Advents Christmas tree which we hang up in the kitchen and each day place a special figure on the tree leading up to the special angel at the top of the tree on the 24th. But I guess we really need to be in Europe to actually set up our Advents wreath, light the appropriate number of candles and enjoy the season and the great Spirit that goes along with it. It seems we have received several gifts at our doorstep this past week of goodies, home baked cookies and other remembrances from other temple missionaries, temple patrons and members of the temple presidency. Some of these are depicted around our 2nd Advents wreath below such as the cute little paper Christmas tree with a lit candle beneath, the nutcracker which was filled with cookies and the little lighted bottle which came with a delicious package of nuts. We spent this past week really celebrating the season, starting with a special presentation at the Dresden Opera House of the Nutcracker Ballet which was very well done with a lot of young dancers portraying the children at Herr Drosselmeyer’s home. The Christmas tree grew a bit, but we thought that Ballet West did a much better job in the productions we have attended several times there. They didn’t allow pictures to be taken during the performance, but I did catch a shot of the concert hall where it was performed.

Then two days later we went to the local concert house here in Freiberg whereBeethoven’s Ninth Symphony was presented. I memorized the Ode to Joy by Schiller many years ago and it has always been one of my favorites. At both events, we accompanied the Lindsays who have a much nicer car than ours and even went to a beautifully decorated restaurant in Dresden prior to the ballet. But the real high point of the week was a superb Christmas Advents program shown in the third picture and put on by the Freiberg Branch/Ward yesterday evening. The program was entitled “Das ist Weihnachten für Mich.” or “This is Christmas for Me.” It was essentially put on by our Branch President’s family, the Dzierzons and they had apparently been working on it since September. They are very musically talented and President Dzierzon sings a beautiful tenor. But he also led a wonderful choir of Primary kids out of both wards. A group of young men and women also participated in a choir but what was really special was that Grandpa and Grandma Dzierzon were celebrating the season with their grandchildren in a living room set up at the front of the chapel. Grandpa Dzierzon is sitting in the chair at the right, his wife is clad in black in the center and our Branch President is directing the choir on the left. They had about four of their grandchildren ranging in age from 4-11 who had parts in the program and the 11-year-old sang a wonderful solo as did his father. Grandpa and Grandma are special to us because they’re in our new temple presidency. But the thing that really brought it all together was a wonderful audio-visual program they had prepared to accompany the singers with pictures projected behind them at the front of the chapel. We thought it was a wonderful highlight to the season and very spiritually done emphasizing the birth of the Savior and its significance in each of our lives.

Unbeknownst to us in advance was a beautiful prelude performance by Sister Lindsay playing a very special version of Silent Night which had glorious piano runs and which is a tradition for her at Christmastime. She was accompanied by a wonderful violinist from Switzerland and it wasn’t until after the program, as we were congratulating them and thanking them for their contribution on the program that we learned that Sister Lindsay had been praying for a violinist to accompany her. Sure enough, that week, our lovely Swiss sister appeared at the temple, accompanying a friend who was taking out her first endowment. While she was working in the baptistry, Sister Lindsay learned of her talents only on Thursday, two days before the program. Together it was a wonderful performance obviously the result of heartfelt prayer.

We didn’t have much time last week to talk about one little trip we made to a nearby castle in the town of Kriebstein. It turns out it was closed for the entire month of December but we thought it was pretty enough to visit being just 30 minutes away. As we arrived we could see it through the barren trees that would have prevented a view just a few weeks ago. But it was a very pretty environment and typical of the things that surround us here in Saxony. Below you can see the beautiful little waterfall and river than runs by it along with a picture of Grammy just a little farther away. And then we thought the next picture was fun, just across the street.  

We also visited a fun furniture house, the largest in the whole state here where they had a huge room full of moving toy trains. And guess what we found, finally: a manger scene! Unfortunately, it wasn’t for sale. (:

Our temple work has been interesting this past week as many of our normal patrons are caught up in the season and there weren’t as many  attendees as we’re used to. We have a daily plan that lists out our responsibilities over the day with each person taking up a row. The whole bottom of the plan was completely empty which meant we had to do a little innovation to find workers to help us with our assignments. Because we’re currently assigned to the initiatory ordinances it takes at least two workers to officiate for one patron and three can take care of either two or three patrons at the same time. The sisters seem to do pretty well in covering their assignments but it’s a bit harder with the brethren who have the sole responsibility for witnessing at baptisms, baptizing and confirming,  and working behind the veil. I found that I was assigned workers for the first shift at 8:00 in the morning but seldom anyone else for the other sessions at 11:00 and 1PM. Still, when I had someone who had a few names they needed to do, I was always able to find someone who could volunteer 15 or 20 minutes to help out. I was asked to help out in the baptistry and twice got to help out with sealings. We have had several of our own family names to do but didn’t get many opportunities to do them personally. But this week was great as I had the opportunity to take care of about 17 sons being sealed to their parents, many of whom have been sitting in our files for a few months. Grammy and I even had the chance to take care of 4 or 5 couple sealings at one session. I’m now left with only 5 endowments to take care of and may have to pass them to others if the opportunity doesn’t present itself.

I’ve had to smile a little bit as we have been involved in the initiatory ordinances which specifically blesses the health of our bodies. As I was kneeling at the altar doing sealings, my knees started feeling my weight a bit more than I have remembered in the past. As I thought about our initiatories, I remembered that we pay attention to the legs and feet and after the sealings I thought it might be nice to include the knees as well! The initiatories mention some of the most significant blessings we receive in the temple and despite repetitions over and over again, I never seem to get tired of reflecting on what special blessings are mentioned thereby. Apparently, according to my understanding, the ordinances performed in the Kirtland Temple may have only been what we now recognize as the initiatories, as the endowment ordinances as we now recognize them were not revealed until preparations were begun for the Nauvoo Temple. Nonetheless, they all represented an endowment from on high. They are all very sacred and it’s a real blessing to be involved with them on a daily basis.

I have thought about the covenants that we make when we are baptized and which I often discuss with the patrons who come to be baptized for the dead. They are not mentioned at all in the baptismal prayers but when I mention that we hear about them almost every week, most realize that they are mentioned in the sacrament prayers. I have reflected often on how difficult it can be to remember Him always (translated in German as “think about Him always”) and have appreciated how much easier that is to do while working every day in the temple. It has been a special experience that will perpetuate itself long after we have been released.

Speaking of that, after pestering the church travel office for almost a month, they finally communicated to us our flight plans home, corrected from leaving from Berlin and now officially having us departing from Dresden exactly one month from today, on January 9. We leave here at 10:50 AM and arrive in Salt Lake City the same day at 8:09 PM on United Airlines flight 5625  (operated by SkyWest doing business as United Express). We’ll be flying through Frankfurt and then coming in from Denver on the last leg of the flight. On our return from Vienna we had a big delay in Denver which caused us to miss our scheduled flight but this time we have about 2 hours and 40 minutes to get through customs so hopefully we’ll be on time. It’s been kind of fun to contemplate this, our last month. I have enough medication to last me until we leave but the bottles get emptier and emptier and I have exactly enough blood sugar test strips to use the last one on our day of departure. It’s easy to see exactly how many days we have left as I use one each morning. The schedule makes it look like we’re only underway for 9 hours and 19 minutes, a piece of cake, right? But after we add in our 8-hour time difference, I guess it’ll be about 17+ hours.  Still not too bad but we’ll get there at 4:09 AM on the 10th, German time. Hopefully we’ll get a little sack time on the way.

Mom: It is so delightful to be here in Germany at Christmas time. In every little town and city is a Weinachtsmarkt, another name for the Christkindlmarkt. As we were up in Dresden for the Nutcracker, we were able to visit the Markt at night with all its lights and festivities. Even when its cold outside its still fun to walk through all the little booths and see what they are offering. I hope to visit  a few more before we get to Christmas. But the best thing by far has been and will be this wonderful musical presentation of the birth of Christ by our Branch and Ward. The light and spirit were so strong that you could almost touch it. I certainly do love the Christmas music and activities, but it does make missing the family harder. There are so many sweet, family memories.

We’re hoping the temple work will still be continued adequately through the season. As the weather gets bad, it is not a great time for traveling to the temple from the outer edges of our temple district. Like Grampa has said, even our local members are a bit caught up in the season. We’ll see what happens in the next couple of weeks, somehow things always seem to work out.

      The weather predicts snow the next few days, so I’m hoping for it. It’s better than icy rain. Take time to enjoy the season and send pictures. We’re wishing you a Merry and Blessed Season.

Love, Hugs and Prayers,

Grammy, Grampa, Mom, Dad, Elder and Sister Parker

Happy 1st Advent!

I guess we can say that we have officially arrived at the beginning of the Christmas season. I think most of you are aware of the Advents calendars we put up every year starting with the first of December and continuing on through Christmas day. What is probably less celebrated in the states are the 4 Sundays preceding Christmas, known respectively as First, Second, Third and Fourth Advents. They are great introductions to the season and are big parts of the celebration here in Europe. Happy First Advent to everyone! It’s very common here in Germany to purchase or make Advents Wreaths, usually using evergreen boughs of one kind or another in a circle with 4 candles placed every 90 degrees. We loved our opportunities to make these and use our creative energies while we were in Vienna at our Young Adult Center. Here, we were a little less creative and satisfied ourselves with purchasing a wreath but definitely had to mark the day by lighting our first candle. Of course, at home it’s traditional to get our Christmas tree up on the first weekend after Thanksgiving and celebrate the season with our own displays. We are thankful to the Mosses, who when they left back at Halloween, gifted us with their Christmas tree which they didn’t feel the need to take with them. So, we have purchased a string of lights and put a few ornaments on the tree as well to give it a proper traditional welcome to the holiday season as you can see in the pictures below.

Certainly not as fancy as home but definitely gives us a sense of what we’re celebrating. It was very interesting as we were out shopping to see how difficult it was to pick up anything faintly significant of the reason for the season. A lot of snowmen and Santa Clauses, reindeer and ornaments but we looked in vain for shepherds, wisemen or a child in a manger. Here’s our door display and the decorations we set up in the hallway reserved for us. Can you see that we couldn’t find any shepherds, wise men or babies in a manger?

 

Nonetheless, we had a wonderful Sabbath day today beginning with a superb Testimony Meeting, I still find it very difficult to focus on the Spirit and the messages being delivered when I have to translate them all. It is very frustrating to be speaking at the same time you’re listening and pick up the great subtleties that really can make a testimony, but we had a number of wonderful testimonies given today with no break in between. We started off with our two new missionaries, Elder and Sister Fiedler who don’t hail from Berlin as I may have indicated earlier but actually come from a place called Neumünster. But it is north of here. The other big topic in todays comments referred to one of our sealers, Bro. Apel, whose name is really a significant emblem in the history of the church here. He is not only a temple sealer but was previously a president of the temple. His daughters are married to our temple recorder and one of the maintenance brethren here on the temple staff. She is our hair dresser as well and has kept us well trimmed for the past year. His son was in the stake presidency and owns the dealership from whom we rent our car. In any event, Friday night was a big evening as one of his granddaughters and her fiancé were receiving their endowments in preparation for being sealed together in a couple of weeks. We have had bitter cold weather in the past week and the streets have been icy and slippery. On his way to the temple to lead the session they were in, he slipped on the ice and fell, apparently fracturing his hip or one of the pelvic bones. There were apparently many accidents that evening, and the report was that he had to wait five hours in the emergency room before he was able to be seen. At any rate, he missed leading the session and it’s very doubtful he’ll be in a position to seal them together two weeks from now. So many of the testimonies offered today, expressed their appreciation for him and their prayers for his recovery.

Following the services, we and the Lindsays drove together to a family’s home in Chemnitz where we were invited for dinner.  The plan was to eat together and then drive to a special First Advents Christmas concert at the local New Apostolic Church. The meal was lovely but we didn’t have the address for the church and as we followed our host to the event we got stopped by a red light which he didn’t see and drove on without us. We saw him turn left ahead of us but by the time we got there and turned he was nowhere to be found. We looked for a local New Apostolic Church on our GPS and the only one we could find was about 20 miles away in a city called Zwickau. We decided to drive there and see if we could reunite but found the church dark and empty when we arrived and so had to return home. He later called and apologized for not realizing that we had lost him. We salvaged the evening by getting together with the Lindsays, Fiedlers and the Bartsches, the latter a counselor in our new temple presidency who IS from Berlin. It was Elder Fiedler’s birthday today and so we celebrated as the eight of us sang Christmas carols accompanied by him on a guitar. It was interesting because 7 of us spoke German well enough (4 being native Germans) and the only one struggling and speaking mostly English, was our hostess, Sister Lindsay.  But it was fun singing Christmas carols in their language with Mom contributing apfelkuchen. We felt that we had a great celebration of First Advent.

So on to the other events of the week. Up through Friday, we were still coordinating the baptistry and our visitors were all from Hungary. They were devoted and had a group of five or six people here every morning to perform baptisms. The rest of the day, we were fairly free and so kept ourselves busy with initiatories and assignments given us to work on the veil. I had the opportunity to bring a dozen or so people through the veil by reading a Hungarian language card. Most of what I say that seems difficult is repeated by the patron so after a while I think I really started getting my pronunciation down a little better. That’s the one language where I got a little tutoring many months back and it’s really starting to pay off. Unfortunately, no such luck with Polish or Czechoslovakian yet. Maybe next week.

As part of the beginning of the Christmas season, we have all been eagerly awaiting the opening of our local Freiberg Weihnachtsmarkt or Christmas Market. They have a similarity for any of you who have ever gone to the Christkindlmarkt at the This is the Place Monument in Salt Lake. The whole central square in front of the City Hall or Rathaus has been taken over by 40 or 50 booths offering mostly goodies to eat but many other handcrafts, hats, decorations and what have you. We went up with the Linfords because we needed to do some grocery shopping afterwards but met the Thornocks and Lindsays while we were there. Unfortunately, we saw many uniformed miners, actually musicians who were leaving even though we got there fairly quickly after our temple work was done, so we missed a few of the musical presentations that were offered but perhaps we’ll have another opportunity later in the month. Pictured below are Rusty and Sister Lindsay in front of a big pyramid which was turning around, and me in front of a cute little kiddie display which we didn’t picture too well because of the fence in the way. All told it was a fun event and we did find some yummy things to eat.

As of December 1st, we are no longer assigned to the baptistry but are back coordinating the initiatory ordinances. According to some of the reading I’ve been doing, it appears that they may have comprised the basis of the temple work done in the Kirtland Temple as the endowment as we now  recognize it probably didn’t get started until Nauvoo and was probably further refined by President Woodruff when he was president of the St. George Temple. I love the blessings that are mentioned in these ordinances and recognize therein the promised power from on high that the Lord has promised the saints throughout the Doctrine and Covenants.

We have been communicating with the church travel department for about three weeks now trying to get them to refine our travel plans home.  The official departure date is still the 9th January but up until now they still have us leaving from Berlin instead of Dresden. I guess we’ll just have to keep pestering them until they get it all straightened out. Just a month and a week from today and we should be heading home!

Mom: I have really enjoyed the Baptistry this past month having gotten all the details down to a fine art of knowing exactly what to do in any given situation. I have also developed a few fine muscles from helping with the clean- up and throwing very wet towels into the laundry chute. It seems when you reach this stage, you are moved on to somewhere else to serve. I am going to really miss the little families that come together, especially for the first time 12 yr. olds.

The magic of Christmas time has begun. It seems that in every window is the light from a Schwibbogen or a colorful lighted star with many points. A Schwibbogen is a decorative candle-holder from the Ore Mountains region of Saxony, Germany. (Erzgebirge mountains of which Freiberg is a part) The first metal Schwibbogen was made in 1740 in Johanngeorgenstadt. The early candle  arches always consisted of black ore. They were made out of one single forged piece and could be painted. Most we see today are made out of wood. Another name for them is Christmas Arches and refers to a type of arch constructed in gothic times when an arch between two walls was called “Schwebebogen” or floating arch. These two are significant for the mining history of Freiberg.

Candles are a big deal in Germany and we enjoy taking part in the lighting of the Advent Candles. It’s kind of like a part of lighting the world with the light of Christ. Candles send out a soft warm glow of welcoming light and it could only be to the love of the Savior they call. You just can’t but want to fill the world with His light.

 Hope you, all find many places in this Christmas season to share His light.  

Love, prayers and hugs,

Grammy, Grandpa, Mom, Dad, Elder and Sister Parker