June 24, 2018

I wonder if a seer stone would help?

Another special week has passed as we continue to do our best to fill the assignments the Lord has given us. This was our second week in a row with saints from Hungary and we understand there will yet be another third week coming up. It has given me a chance to improve my pronunciation of Hungarian or Magyar as they say it. Several months ago, I mentioned that we received a visit from a young adult we had known in Vienna who originated from Hungary and he sat down with me and helped me learn a few of the words and how to say them. Then that was repeated by our lovely Sister Dospil who speaks three languages pretty fluently, her native Hungarian, English (she lived in England for several years) as well, of course, German. We knew her son a little bit when we worked in Vienna which is their current home, but she has been working here as a temple missionary for the past several months and has helped me as well to learn to speak the language a little bit. I have a card to read as we work on the veil and I’m always humbled as they pass through and give me a smile which acknowledges their patience with me and my efforts. So anytime there are Hungarians in a session, I am now the one the coordinators pick to help them hear things in their own language. I also have the responsibility to translate German into English for our morning devotionals as well as now in Sacrament Meeting on Sunday. I had to smile as Sister Dospil was asked to translate our morning proceedings into Hungarian for the several temple workers who were present. I get to speak quietly into a microphone which they pick up on earphones they wear, however Sister Dospil stood up next to the person speaking and translated sentence by sentence. When she first stood up to translate a German brother’s spiritual thought into Hungarian, she started out saying it again in Hungarian which gave us all a good chuckle. At any rate, while she was translating into German, I had then to translate what was being said in German into English. The hymns we sing are not translated but they do have several hymnals in the various languages that attend, and they always pick songs that are found in both books. The melodies are the same, but the words are different. We blend pretty well. It will be nice when the church has reorganized all the hymnbooks, as they recently announced, such that all the hymns will be uniform and numbered the same in all  languages!

I had a special opportunity in translating this Sunday to see the talk that was being given in advance because your mother/Grammy was asked to give a talk and it was decided she could do it in German. Her topic was “Being a Friend” and much of what she said was first written in German. She talked about how happy she was to be here in Freiberg and the many friends she had found. She said she always felt very well in the branch, except when she had to speak. She had a few good things that are worth passing on. “Aren’t we something less than a friend if we have the gospel of Jesus Christ and are unwilling to share it by word and example with a family, a member, neighbor, or the stranger? Aren’t we something less than a friend if we have a testimony of the gospel of Jesus Christ and are unwilling to share it?” “President Abraham Lincoln was once criticized for his attitude toward his enemies. ‘Why do you try to make friends of them?’ asked an associate. "You should try to destroy them. Am I not destroying my enemies," Lincoln gently replied, "when I make them my friends?" Someone has said, “A friend is a person who is willing to take me the way I am. Accepting this as one definition of the word, may I quickly suggest that we are something less than a real friend it we leave a person the same way we find him.” Talking about the experience of Peter and John as they approached the beggar at the Gate Beautiful in Jerusalem as reported in Acts 3:6-7. “And he took him by the right hand and lifted him up.” Peter was a friend. He told the beggar, “Rise and walk; I’m going to help you.” We too must take the friend by the hand until he sees and find that he has enough strength to go on his own. Is it not appropriate to conclude that Peter was willing to take the friend the way he was but left him improved? She was asked to give a 5-minute talk, but I think it went for almost 10 minutes. The members indicated they really liked what she had to say.

This week was the annual city celebration here in Freiberg, kind of like the Highland Fling at home. They call it the Stadtbergfest Freiberg. We went up to the city center on Saturday with the Lindsay’s to check things out. There was a very loud band playing which we didn’t find too impressive for our kind of music, but we did find a good place to eat which was broadcasting the current game of the World Cup which is a really big deal here in Germany. I guess Germany is hanging in there but one of our temple visitors this week, not local, said very few people in their ward were at church as everyone was at home watching the game last Sunday. I guess we have to teach them how to hit record for later viewing. We did enjoy a squad of men dressed up in fancy uniforms walking around with a young fellow in their midst. See the photo below along with one of Sister Dospil before she left.

Thought we’d also include two other pictures.  One is found on most of the police cars we see around here—“Gute Jobs” If anyone is looking for a new job as a policeman, they’re hiring. I think Brian is probably happy as a new member of the SLCPD. The other is a recent picture we had taken at the farewell for Sister Dospil which shows each of the temple missionary couples as well as the temple presidency. Left to right, the Thornocks, Lindsays, Ashbys, Mosses, Sister Dospil wedged in there with the Parkers, the presidency—Wagners, Wadosches (the newly named next president), Erlachers and the Linfords.

MOM:  This week has brought a little change in the weather. We have gone from hot in the 80”s to very cool down in the 50’s and up to the lower 60’s. Aaaaah it is great. I can take this summer weather if it keeps coming this way. It was also a little sad this week as Sister Dospil’s chronic illness in her lungs has been getting worse and she decided she had to go back to Vienna and to see her Pulmonologist. She will be sorely missed as she is very dear to all of us. Thank goodness for FaceBook, where we can stay connected. When you spend every day with the same people they become family, especially when you live most of the time in the temple.

I heard a great quote in Sunday school class when we talked about Hanna spending so much time petitioning the Lord in the Temple. It’s from Elder John A. Widtsoe.

“I believe that the busy person … who has his worries and troubles, can solve his problems better and more quickly in the house of the Lord than anywhere else. If he will do the temple work for himself and for his dead, he will confer a mighty blessing upon those who have gone before and…a blessing will come to him, for at the most unexpected moments, in or out of the temple will come to him, as a revelation, the solution of the problems that vex his life. That is the gift that comes to those who enter the temple properly.”

          Love the pictures of your fun summer activities, maybe when you all get together you can find some time to go to the temple, especially to do baptisms for the dead with the teenagers or almost teenagers. Keep the pictures coming.

Hugs and Prayers,

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

June 17, 2018

Hungarians In Saxony Switzerland

As much as we love being here in Germany, there is definitely a deficiency that was evident today. They don’t celebrate Father’s Day! Mother’s Day is celebrated on the same day as in the States, but I guess fathers just haven’t made it here yet. Nonetheless we enjoyed listening to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir’s special today which was wonderful, Mom made a scrumptious dinner that we thoroughly enjoyed, and we even had a chance to join the Primary in Sacrament Meeting today as the Temple Missionaries joined in with them singing “Called to Serve”.  

It has been another wonderful week, this time with loads of Hungarian Saints to keep us on our toes. You may remember that I had a couple of members run me through how to pronounce their language a little bit from written cards we use. I had forgotten a great deal of what they taught me but nonetheless I was given the opportunity to take several of them through the ordinances in their own language. They were very tolerant of my terrible pronunciation but at least it was an attempt to let them hear everything in “Magyar”. We’re back as veil coordinators, as you may remember and of our five sessions each day, last week we had 2 and 4 which were the designated Hungarian language sessions.  So we thought we’d have it easy this week with 1, 3, and 5 which were all in German. Both ended up being challenging as our sessions were pretty small and we were striving to come up with enough veil workers but it seemed to work out well.

I actually had some fun in my service as the translator from German into English as several of the spiritual thoughts in our morning devotionals were offered by the Hungarian brothers and sisters and so there was plenty of time to figure out what was being said. A Hungarian translator stood up with the speaker while I had a microphone to use with all who wanted it in English using headphones. First the thought was expressed in Hungarian, then translated into German and then I got to whisper my end of the translation while the talk went on again in Hungarian.  Occasionally they ask me to translate into German if one of the missionaries gives their spiritual thought in English, but we don’t use the headsets for that and I’m always thankful that there are plenty of others around to help me when I’m lacking a good German word. They all left yesterday to return home and we thought we would be done for a while but now we understand there is another group from Hungary coming next week and also a third group the week after that. I think there must be a strong band of the lost 10 tribes there in Hungary.

Other than that, we’ve had the opportunity to finally get back out to explore more of the Saxony Switzerland National Park. We were there after many went on the bike ride from a couple of weeks ago but none of us wanted to hike way up on top to really enjoy the great scenery which I likened to Bryce Canyon but with lots of greenery. So we found a route that let’s us drive to the area and then hike down instead of up. Three couples went and thoroughly enjoyed what was there for us including a site that used to be occupied by a big well-defended castle back in the 1300’s. It was truly a wonderful tour and we ended it all by having a late lunch at a hotel restaurant in the area.  It’s apparently one of the big sight-seeing attractions here in Saxony. I took over a hundred pictures only a very few of which we’ll share. You’ll get all the rest when we get home.

Finally, just a few days ago we took a walk along the fortress wall which used to protect the old city of Freiberg back in the middle ages. It has truly become an important city to the members here in eastern Europe.

Another of the things that we have really enjoyed here, with the sun rising before 5 AM and  around 9:30, is the wonderful songs of all the birds that inhabit the trees outside our open windows. They start chirping at the earliest sign of dawn before the sun has even come up and they really know how to let us know that they’re there.

MOM:  It’s been a good week again, with all the Hungarian brothers and sisters (one nice thing in German is you can use one word for brother and sister, “Geschwister).  They are very nice people and are so committed that they keep going to 2 or 3 sessions, one after another. There is also this loving bond between the visiting people and the temple missionaries. I saw a very sweet thing this week, which you don’t get to see often. One of our missionary sisters grew up in Hungary and ended up marrying an Austrian. Well, of course, she felt close to these Hungarian families, so it was very touching to see her opening the front temple door, while still dressed in white, and waving good-by to them. We will see them again in October or November, but the sister who waved will be home from her mission by then. Sometimes these relationships will have to begin again in Heaven. It is such a privilege to work in the House of the Lord and to help others make special covenants with Him. I can’t encourage all of you enough to go to the temple and to partake of the peace and comfort that is there.

Love you all, especially the fathers this week.

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

June 10, 2018

Be One

There are several significant events to report on this week.  The special group that arrived for several different aspects of their temple work came from Poland. Although we had seen a couple of the brethren before, this was a very large group that came in by bus. There were probably about 9 or 10 brothers, most of whom were set apart temple workers and a good 12 or 13 sisters. They were mostly interested in endowment sessions although they did a number of initiatory ordinances as well and even a lot of baptisms on their last day. Last week we had the assignment to do the first, third and fifth sessions and so that rotated this week, being responsible for the second and fourth sessions. It just turned out that those were the sessions which were designated for the Polish members. We can handle German and English with no problem whatsoever but don’t have anybody that can really speak Polish.  Our temple recorder and one of the temple presidency counselors can read the language a little bit but we really had to rely on the temple workers they brought with them. Frequently they were on the Polish sessions and so we had to make arrangements to bring them through the veil first and then assign them to their particular stations thereafter. We had several German brothers and sisters who went through the same sessions and occasionally a few of them got frustrated because the language in the room was Polish so they all had to wear headsets and earphones. Boy did we use up a bunch of them! So as we came to the end of each session, we had to arrange for Polish and German members as well as always a few English speakers. Then, just to keep things interesting, we also had a sister who desired to speak Russian when it was her turn. We became quite close to three of the Polish brethren who were set apart as temple workers because we really used them a lot. Fortunately, two of them, Brother Vhovha and Brother Galecki (pronounced Geletschki) spoke English well enough to communicate and I became quite close to both of them as we gave them training on special aspects of the work which they had never done before. Brother Vhovha in particular had been here before. He originated from the Barbary Coast in Africa and had been forced to leave his country for reasons that we never fully understood. He emigrated to Poland where he had joined the church and we became great friends.

We had the opportunity of listening to the “Be One” celebration which was held in the Conference Center, celebrating the 40th anniversary of the revelation which extended the priesthood to all brethren.  It starred Gladys Knight and her choir along with Alex Boye and the wonderful Bonner family.  Many of you probably saw it or participated in it. At any rate, afterwards I told Brother Vhovha that I wanted to get a picture of him because he had helped us so much in our work with the Polish saints.

He was glad to accommodate us, and we look forward to his return later in the year.

Friday is our usual day with six sessions including a 7 PM session and often if there are a sufficient number in attendance we start a 7:30 session as well.  So several of the Poles stayed for the 7PM session, their bus not leaving until 10 PM that evening. But they decided they had more Germans than Poles in the session, so it was broadcast in German. The temple presidency waited until the final count was in to see who was in the majority and when it was determined, the headphones were passed out to the minority group, in this case, the Poles. It kept us on our toes to make sure everyone was having a great spiritual experience. Meanwhile there were still several participating in other ordinances including initiatories and even baptisms, so we felt like we were back at Mt. Timpanogos in our backyard.

Friday, already a long day was even more interesting because President Fingerle, the Berlin Mission president, came with several elders and sisters who were scheduled to be released. They were involved in an endowment session and then had a sealing session as well to culminate their mission experience. President Fingerle is scheduled to be released at the end of this month so it was especially significant for him. We think we have previously mentioned that it was his desire to have all new arriving missionaries participate in baptisms for the dead as soon as they got off the plane. Departing missionaries then have this final experience, thus beginning and ending their missions with temple experiences. But they are also allowed to attend the temple at other times depending upon their assignments and so it was this week. They have a solid group of elders and sisters who are assigned to Persian and Arabic nationalities and they came to perform baptisms, most staying over until Saturday. In fact, we greeted President Fingerle and two sisters this morning as we were walking over to church and they were walking to our apartment building, probably to the missionary room which is down in the basement floor across from where we all do our laundry. (I don’t know if we’ve ever mentioned that our assigned laundry day is Friday afternoon.  We get out of the day sessions at the temple around 3 to 3:30 usually and have to be back by 6:15 for the evening sessions. So that gives us the three hours in between to get all of our clothes washed, dried and ready to go for the next week.)

Because of the multi-stake West German conference that was broadcast last week from Salt Lake City, today was a delayed Fast and Testimony meeting. Not only do I get to be the official translator from German into English every morning at our preparation meetings, but I’ve also received the assignment to translate into English for our sacrament meetings during the last month. Sister Ashby, who previously translated, has been assigned as the ward chorister, so it came to me by default. There’s no question that I pay a lot more attention to what is being said when I have to translate it and it’s always special at Testimony Meeting because there were so many wonderful testimonies offered today which lifted me up more than usual. Testimonies were offered amongst others, by two sealers, our Elders Quorum President, the Branch President, and even Sister Lindsay who gave me a break because she spoke in English and was translated into German by a member of the Branch Presidency😊.

Saturday evening, our outside doorbell rang, and we found Sister Peterson and her companion standing at the door, looking to find us. She is the granddaughter of Kent and Sandy Johnston who live up the street from us in Highland. We had heard that she had been called to the mission, has been here for about three transfers and was here along with many of the other missionaries who came for a special  meeting with President Fingerle before he leaves at the end of the month. We were so happy to greet her and spent a good hour or more visiting with them, even providing a lift home at the end of their visit so they could get to the apartment they were sharing with the local sisters before their curfew was up. There normal assignment is in Erfurt, the Martin Luther monastery city we visited last March. They even impressed us with their ability to say “I’m a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints” in Arabic!

Just as an aside, many of you are aware of the conversation held many years ago between me and Sister Rita Nelson and then Elders Nelson and Oaks regarding church teachings on stillborn babies. I have had numerous opportunities over the years to talk about that conversation and its implications. There was a wonderful article in LDS Living this past Wednesday titled “What We Know About the Lives and Spirits of Unborn Children that contained many references I had not previously been aware of. It was an excerpt from a book by Sherri Wittwer entitled “Gone Too Soon: The Life and Loss of Infants and Unborn Children.” It contained quotes from Elder Bruce R. McConkie, President Joseph F. Smith, Brigham Young and even the Prophet Joseph Smith along with several scriptural citations that I found very enlightening.  Look it up, particularly any of you that may have had miscarriages or other pregnancy losses.

           Mom: Since Grampa shares all the details of our doings in the temple and new friends we meet, I guess that leaves me room to talk about the weather and such. It has been very warm lately, so warm that we want to have the fans going night and day. It does help quite a bit, but it’s hard to get rid of the high humidity. Summer could be a long time if this keeps up, however, some members from here say that they have more wind and rain than surrounding cities. Rain does seem to cool things off a bit. It’s been raining this afternoon, maybe we can still get in a little walk late this evening, when it passes.

           The weeks seem to pass by quickly, we hardly have much down time on Sunday and Monday before we’re going to bed early at 9:30pm and getting back up at 5am on Tuesday morning. We truly feel like missionaries. It’s frustrating that the time differences make it hard to call anyone, except those who are home in the middle of the day. But I really do enjoy seeing pictures of the grandkids that you post, keep sending more, now that they’re out for summer and doing lots of fun things.  Hope the older ones are finding temple names and going to the temple to do baptisms for the dead. Enjoy the extended day light. The sun rises at 4:52am and sets at 9:20 over here. It’s light when you wake up and when you go to sleep. Take time to love someone.

Hugs, and prayers,

Grammy, Grampa,

Mom, Dad,

Elder and Sister Parker   

June 3, 2018

What a great week we have had. We started the week out with a trip to the city of Pirna and a small village on the other side of the river Elbe named Rathen. The trip had been in the planning stages for a while but was really organized by our temple recorder, Brother Schönherr. He was also our previous High Priest Group Leader and now has been recalled as the Elders Quorum President. He thought it might be a lot of fun to organize a bicycle excursion in the first city which was about 30 minutes away from Freiberg and then cycle over to the village which was expected to take about another 45 minutes. There were several of us who hadn’t been on bikes for years or who had other health problems who decided to make the entire trip by car and then meet at Rathen where a delicious luncheon was prepared at a restaurant near a beautiful national park in the area.  

It was a wise decision. We were a little surprised at some who decided to attempt the bike ride, especially one sister who can’t even climb the steps up to the temple foyer and always takes an elevator. She did have some problems and had to stop about half way along with another brother who developed some serious shortness of breath and also had to be helped over the final distance. But all of that aside, it was a beautiful trip through the countryside to see some of the lovely sights in the county of Saxony, Germany.

 

Pirna had this cute little fountain right outside the city hall and advised us that there were about 12 total fountains in the city. We saw three of them as we wandered about the city. Most were just normal water sources, but I did like Billy’s Old English Pub for a quick photo. Then it was on to what is called the Saxony Switzerland National Park. It was a little bit of a hike to see the truly beautiful mountains and trails and so we’ve saved that for another time but the pictures we saw reminded us somewhat of Bryce Canyon if it was all decked out with a true forest. Apparently, there’s another approach where you don’t have to climb 900 steps to get to a fantastic bridge but can walk along a level path, so we’ll show you that later in the summer.  But we did hike up to a beautiful little lake with a hint of the mountains up behind it.

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We’re standing in front of the “locomotive” with the nest and the beehive not visible in the picture.

This week finished up our assignment as baptismal coordinators. We had a number of sweet experiences as always. I have the opportunity to finish up with all of the groups as they are finished with the confirmations, a member of the temple presidency usually greeting each new group as they first start. I guess it’s my background delivering babies that always leads me to make some comments about what the Savior said to Nicodemus, “Unless a man be born again, he cannot enter the kingdom of heaven.” We then talk about birth and our clean and pure state as we are infants and the fact that when we are baptized, we can again receive the assurance that we can become clean again, just like newborn children. I then usually discuss the covenants that we make at baptism and hint that these covenants are renewed each week. Someone in the group then invariably realizes that the sacrament brings those covenants back in our memories every week. It’s a nice opportunity to make something memorable out of an experience that for many is just too repetitive to have the significance it should. It was special to participate in Alex’s baptism.

So, with the beginning of the new month, our assignment has been changed again and we are back coordinating the endowment sessions. Thursday, Friday and Saturday were very memorable as the Relief Society seemed to have the upper hand. We had a busload of sisters arrive and our usually quiet sessions filled up with 30 or more women each time, on one occasion with only a couple of brethren but usually never more than 8. We had groups come in from Berlin, Frankfurt and Prague and especially the latter made things interesting as we sometimes had 6 or 7 veils where we needed people who could speak Czechoslovakian. It kept the entire temple busy as we were not only doing endowments, but also baptisms, initiatories and sealings. Felt like we were right back at Mt. Timpanogos Temple though we had far fewer workers available to us. Friday and Saturday both we had extra endowment sessions scheduled that are not on the normal daily routine, so we were kept hopping from 7 in the morning until 4 in the afternoon. Friday’s late schedule went until 10 PM.

Mom and I did have a chance to take a walk around an area pretty close to our apartment and enjoyed the little robot in one of the neighbor’s front yards as well as the pretty pond filled with lily pads. Unfortunately, no frogs could be seen or heard.

                 Mom: Today instead of Fast Day, we had a multiple stake conference which was broad cast from somewhere in Salt Lake to all of Western Europe. Elder Uchtdorf was presiding and talks were given also by Elder D. Hallstrom, Joy D. Jones, and Elder P. Kearon. The focus was of course on our ministering by increasing family togetherness in studying scriptures, building testimonies in Christ, following Him, serving as He did, and choosing to do good for someone else. The underlying theme was “choosing to be on the Lord’s side and not the world’s”.

          As Grampa said we are back to Endowment coordinators. We will miss the baptisms, especially, first time 12 yr. old’s, and the sweet spirit of those people who choose to participate. It’s a wonderful place to serve. But I also enjoy working in the endowment rooms, lining up all the languages and serving with all the brothers and sisters who come from various cities in Germany, Hungary, Czech Republic, etc.

           The highlight, of course this week was Alex’s baptism and that we were able to watch the whole meeting on “FaceTime”.  We love you Alex and are glad that you chose to follow Jesus and to be baptized and to receive the Holy Ghost. What a wonderful day to remember, always. I hope we all think back on that day in our own lives and remember those special feelings we had.

   Love, Hugs, and Prayers,

Grammy, Grampa, Mom, Dad,

Elder and Sister Parker