August 19, 2018

Die Gabe der Zungenrede, bitte (the gift of tongues, please)

Another exciting week with lots of activities to report on. Although we were expecting some Hungarian members to be present (and I kept receiving ordinance cards with the Hungarian translations upon them) they didn’t seem to be present. I guess there may have been one or two sisters around, but they never made it over to the male initiatory area. On the other hand, we had a few from Rumania, Nigeria and even Russia. I had the assignment this week bringing people through the veil where I received the opportunity to speak Italian, Spanish, English and German. I, of course, don’t know any Italian or Spanish, but those languages follow good pronunciation rules so if you can read, most seemed to be able to understand what I was saying. Actually, the Spanish sister I worked with wanted Portuguese, but she handled Spanish OK. A great many people accepted English for their ordinances and that made it a little easier for us. I think it’s become the universal language in many instances, but I guess you can’t always count on that as a possibility.

The main challenge this week was in performing the initiatory ordinances. Unless one is a sealer, the initiatories require the most non-stop talking. Mom indicated they seldom did more then half hour stretches when she was working at Mt. Timpanogos Temple, but we find that we frequently can continue for an hour or longer and that gets to be really stressful on the voice, and in my case, the back when you’re standing up with your hands laid on someone’s head over and over for a long time. But our food prayers frequently ask the Lord to give us health and strength and He seems to comply with our humble request.

We have a daily work schedule that we attempt to follow but there weren’t really a lot of extra temple workers who came this week, so the load really fell on the six missionary couples to get everything done.  As we coordinate the initiatories, one must have at least two temple workers for one patron and if there are two or more patrons then at least three are necessary to move along efficiently. This week, with three potential sessions a day, seldom did I have more than one worker assigned and often no one at all. It really wasn’t uncommon to have two or three people appear wanting to have ordinances performed for their deceased ancestors, so I had to really scramble to find available brethren who could pitch in and help. Mom seemed to have more sisters available on her end, but I was often recruiting from the baptistry or the office if I could see someone who might have an extra 20 or 30 minutes available. Occasionally someone would need to be on the recommend desk or serve at the veil at a specific time, so we really had to keep our eye on the clock.

One truly special occurrence this week was a total of 6 brethren and 1 sister who were going through the temple for their own endowments. Usually the temple presidency handles those persons on an individual basis, but we are missing a member of our temple presidency who went home for a little vacation before becoming the next president at the end of October. So, I was asked to help out on their initiatory ordinances. I always try and remember that even when we are working for the deceased, it is very possible that they will be present as their ordinances are performed. But in the case of a living endowment, there is no question about their being present and it is wonderful to pronounce the wonderful blessings on their heads that are part of the temple experience.

At the very end of the day yesterday, I had a brother who had several ancestors for whom he needed to have the initiatories performed. It turned out he was from St. Petersburg but because very few of us can handle Russian, he indicated it would be fine to do it in English. All of the Cyrillic names on his cards had already been converted over to a Latin alphabet but it was kind of fun to bone up a little on my English. When I had my 4 days of training at Mt. Timpanogos Temple under the hand of Brother Ralph Kmetzsch, the initiatory ordinance was one area I never worked in. So it was always just a little tricky to have everything well memorized if English ever came up. German was long ago memorized but I actually very much enjoyed the opportunity of repeating everything ten times as I and another brother had the opportunity of switching our assignments every go around.

As you might surmise, coming from St. Petersburg, I asked him if he happened to know President and Sister Clark and of course, he did. I noted that all of the names on his cards had been baptized and confirmed in the Helsinki Temple where we hope to go on our break the fourth week of September. His name was Brother Ilina and of course he turned out to be the father of the young sister, Tanya, we met a few months ago (see our April 29th letter)  who is scheduled to be married and sealed next week to Brother Welleke. They were spending today up in Braunschweig where her fiancé lives, but they’ll be back for the ceremony next Wednesday. We’re going to see if we can work it out to be present for the ceremony. We had a chance to talk for almost a half hour after we were all finished, and I found out he’s worked in three different branch 0  Apparently, there are now 8 different wards in St. Petersburg Stake plus 4 branches. He couldn’t help us with where the new temple in Russia will be built😊

As we walk about in our apartment building and in the tunnel that leads from there to the temple there are a number of paintings hanging on the walls. A couple of weeks ago I decided I really wanted to study them a little closer and took the opportunity to wander about during any free time I had. I quickly realized how many unique things could be found in each painting and eventually decided it would be a fun game to present to the other couples. I really started paying attention and walking about in the hallways and offices to see how many pictures I found. Would you believe an even 100! Actually, initially I hand somewhere in the 80’s but I kept finding new places with pictures to add to my list. So I have now come up with a game that will be presented to the group tomorrow night. There are several duplicates. For instance, there are four pictures of Christ appearing to Mary Magdalene and although one of them is found twice, there are actually three different paintings. There are two different pictures of Christ calling apostles, one calling Peter and Andrew and another calling James and John. My favorite question is of a picture of the sermon on the mount in which a young boy is pointing at something. I’m going to ask if anyone can tell me what he’s pointing at. The answer: a butterfly! In all of the pictures there are a total of scores of angels. Would you believe that not a single one is wearing a beard. We have pictures of all of the presidents of the church. How many are photos and how many are paintings? You get the idea. We’re going to have a contest over a couple of weeks to see who can answer the most questions correctly. We’ll take the winners out to dinner as a grand prize.

This past week we went up to a pretty castle in the city of Moritzburg. It was at one time the abode of King August the Strong and is surrounded by a beautiful lake. We spent a couple of hours wandering the grounds and I’ll just submit a few photos to give you a bit of an idea how pretty it all was.

Mom: It’s been another good week organizing initiatories. It’s fun to become acquainted with the sisters from so many different places. They are so grateful to be able to read a card in their own language, even though we say the majority in German or English. This week we added cards with, Italian, Romanian, Hungarian, and Chinese with characters, instead of Romanized letters. As Dad said we are expecting Czechish this week and they come well prepared to take over with sisters in their own language.

   Interesting that school just started last week over here and that most of you have or will start school this week. I loved seeing pictures of Amy and Alex on their first day. I hope I get to see pictures of all the grandchildren. It’s the delight of the day to see all their cute faces, and I’m excited for Kenna’s first day. With school starting autumn and cooler days or nights can’t be far away and I’m ready, although I have adjusted to having fans blow on me all night.

    Enjoy the last couple of weeks of summer and Education Week, if you get a chance to go. I hate to miss it.

Love, hugs and prayers,

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