March 11, 2018

As always, another busy week but at least we didn’t lose an hour of sleep last night like most of you. I am happy to report, however, that we have finally solved the crisis of not having enough time to eat. I was not really afraid that we’d lose weight, in fact I was hoping that might be an unexpected benefit of the long hours working here with no cafeteria available. But it turns out that as we are getting a little better trained and know what we’re doing, we have found where there might be 20 or 30 minutes available to sneak back to our apartment and grab lunch. That was part of our regular work schedule when we were working at Mt. Timpanogos. Lunch might have still been short and sweet but at least it was on the work schedule. Not so, here! But I suspect we have succeeded in overcoming the schedule sufficiently to allow us the needed insulation factor while we’ve been enduring very cold weather.

This past week had several very busy events that kept things at a record-setting pace. We had a group come in from the Czech Republic for the second time since we’ve been here. Many were thus very familiar faces to us and it was nice to recognize them and be recognized as well. One of our “ace” translators and his wife, the Fillmores, finished their missions and departed this past Thursday. He was able to at least read Czech, Polish, Hungarian, Russian, and even a little Spanish. As you can imagine, he will be greatly missed. The other unique thing is that they were the last missionaries to depart who had been here when the temple was rededicated in 2016. Naturally, the Presidency were here then and still remain, but of the missionaries, the rest of us all arrived after things were again in full swing.
  

So this week, having enjoyed a little time doing nothing but German, we got to amplify our skills with not only German but also Czech, a couple of Polish members, even a French and a Spanish speaker. But we were able to handle the few without too much difficulty. The real challenges came on Friday night and Saturday. The temple will be closed for two weeks for maintenance and so there were an unusual number of patrons who came before they were going to be deprived for a while. Friday is the only day we have an evening session at 7 PM. The Fillmore’s replacements are the Lindsays, about whom we talked last week.  Sister Lindsay is the good friend of Aunt Kate as they sang together in the Tabernacle Choir and even attended Highland High when Great Grandfather Parker was the principal there. (The photo below shows the Lindsays and the Fillmores representing the newies and the oldies.) 

The Lindsays were also assigned to be veil coordinators and we have been helping to train them. Generally, of the normal five sessions a day, one team gets two sessions and the other three, all alternating. So this week we had sessions one, three, and five and the Lindsays had two and four. That’s good for Tuesday-Thursday and Saturday but on Friday the team with two sessions also gets the late session. That’s when we had our largest number of patrons since we’ve been here. Should the 7 PM session fill up, which has never happened since we’ve been here in two months, then there is an option to start another session a half hour later. So we ended up with a record of 77 patrons wishing to do an endowment session that Friday evening.  Several of these were from the Prague, Czechoslovakia stake so the temple presidency attempted to keep them all in one session.  The Lindsays ended up with 34 in their session, (the room will hold 40) and we got 43 with some extra chairs added in the aisles.

The session got interesting when we realized that we only had a limited number of veil workers and our two endowment rooms are side by side, using the same veil. So we had to make sure that the first session was far enough along before we started the later session so we could readjust all of our temple workers and be prepared again. We’re normally done by about 9 PM on a Friday but this time it went much later. We didn’t really get finished until almost 10 PM and still had to be up by 5 AM the next morning for the routine Saturday schedule. We have several times made the comment that temple work can really be physically exhausting at times with long hours. Fortunately, it’s still spiritually very refreshing. Things got really interesting, however on Saturday.  Our local congregation here is the Freiberg 2nd Branch and today was the Branch Conference. They chose Saturday for a Branch Temple Day and we had 35 patrons for our last session at 1 PM. They all fit in one room but about 9 of the brethren are temple workers and we were really short for people to work on the veil. So we just applied good old American standards and had all the temple workers go through first and start filling up their positions with the others waiting patiently until we could get them all taken care o
.

Today’s Branch Conference was really wonderful with the Dresden Stake Presidency all speaking in Sacrament Meeting. We had never met President Menzel before but knew his mother from her attendance at the temple. 
His first counselor, Pres. Apel, is the Nissan car dealer from whom we rented our car.  See the picture below of the car we’ll be driving for the rest of our time here. It was an excellent conference and Pres. Menzel taught a combined priesthood/relief society group the third hour 
on how we can become closer to Christ.

So the next big event begins tomorrow. The temple is closed for two weeks and everyone is taking off to various points near and far. We’re going to be slightly delayed in our departure as we finally got a bill from the hospital for Grammy’s hospitalization, but the business office was closed when we tried to pay it Friday afternoon. They’re not open on Saturday’s either and they want the bill taken care of by the 20th or we’ll start paying interest. So we’ll stop by there tomorrow morning to get it paid and then we can apply for 100% reimbursement from our insurance company. Then we’re off, hopefully by 8:30 or earlier to see some of Western Europe

Our plans right now are to head initially to Leipzig and do a trial run to Marcus Wiese’s home in preparation for going there in April for his son, Heinrich’s, confirmation. Then we’re off on the Luther trail to the monastery where he was ordained, then the castle where he hid out from the Catholics while he translated the New Testament into German. Then we’re heading to Frankfurt to observe progress on the renewal of the Frankfurt Temple. Next, we’ll head down the Rhine Valley for a good sightseeing trip, ending up in Cologne. From there we’ll head to Brussels to see how they’re doing with the European Union and see the sights of Belgium including Dunkirk which some of you may be familiar with if you’ve seen the movie. From there we’re heading to Rotterdam and then The Hague where we have reservations to attend their temple. Next, it’s off to Amsterdam to see some Rembrandt and try and break in to the Anne Frank house which requires reservations two months in advance. From there the plans are to head back through Hamlin, the Pied Piper city, and Hannover where Grammy served as a young missionary. Then we’re planning on finishing up back on the Luther trail at Wittenberg where he nailed up his famous 95 Theses on the door of the church, really starting the Protestant Reformation. If we’re still alive, we’ll then head back to Freiberg and get ready to take up serving the Lord again. We understand there are 60 youth coming to do baptisms for the dead and they’re going to open the temple early on Monday to accommodate them all

  Mom: I, really don’t think there is much more to write. Dad has covered most of the details in our lives except what food we eat and how we prepare to go to bed. However, I do seem to enjoy the sisters from other countries and helping them learn the temple procedures. We have so much fun using a few English words mixed with a few German and many hand signs to get the point across. They are so sweet and put so much effort into everything they do. In the end or at the end of their day we share hugs, smiles and a spiritual communication that overcomes that “darn” Tower of Babel. We also enjoy the missionaries as they come to go on sessions or help with baptisms. They have just set up a wonderful art display in the Missionary room in the bottom of our housing building. It comprises pictures drawn and painted by missionaries in our mission. We will include photos of their efforts as well as a photo of a few of those on hand.

Have a good week. It looks like spring is coming closer.

HUGS AND PRAYERS, 

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