September 2, 2018

Getting Lost on the way to Poland

Another special week has come and gone. We had the opportunity of enjoying our first visitors from Romania. They had a reasonable group but only one couple were set apart as temple workers and they had some small children so neither of them was present at the same time as the other was responsible for the kids. We found out that a couple we have known that we first became acquainted with several months ago, the Kiefers, found a home here within the branch boundaries and moved in after having been previously in the ward with which we share the chapel. Sister Kiefer is a temple worker, speaks great English, works in the temple laundry, and little did we know but she is a native Romanian.

I had a little bit of a reputation for being able to read Hungarian but found myself behind the veil on one session with a Romanian card posted. So, I decided, hey, why not, and decided to see how I’d do in attempting to read it. I had literally never even seen the card before but even though my pronunciation was probably terrible, they seemed to understand what I was trying to say and hopefully it added to their temple experience.

So back to the above-mentioned temple workers. Sister Geambusu presented a very lovely and sweet musical program on Wednesday entitled “Finding Peace through Christ.” Even though her German isn’t too bad, her English was excellent and she presented a lovely musical/video program. One of the counselors in the branch performed all the technical details of arranging the videos and the background music as she sang songs in both German and English that were just impressively sweet and uplifting. Even though we thanked her after the program, I had the opportunity to tell her in the temple waiting room on Saturday what a sweet and shining example she was to all of us. Today in Priesthood meeting where we normally don’t provide any translation, I sat next to her husband who was sitting behind two of his Romanian brethren. I would summarize the discussion for him in English and he would then provide the summary to the two sitting in front of him in Romanian. I guess it was a bit of the gift of tongues. They’ll still be with us in the coming week until Friday when they’ll all be returning home.

Today was a wonderful Fast and Testimony service. Brother Apel, whose family are prominent members of the branch and stake (past member of the Stake Presidency, his father a past temple president, patriarch and now a sealer, his daughters serving as Relief Society President and wife of the temple recorder) and who, by the way, is the one from whom we rent our car, had a son who just returned home from his mission in the Germany Frankfurt mission this past week. We presume he’ll give his report next week or soon, but in the meantime, he bore a wonderful and strong testimony today, followed by his father, grandfather, aunt and many other members of the ward and for whom it was my privilege to translate what they said into English.  

The temple closes two weeks from yesterday for the last part of September and we have finally finalized most of the details of what we’ll be doing. We received permission from the temple department to leave the temple district and our plans are to visit two of our old mission locations, Berlin-Dahlem where we first interacted, and then Kiel where Rusty served for several months. Then we’re moving on to Copenhagen, Stockholm and then Helsinki to visit those temples and enjoy Scandinavia again. We’ve been to all of those locations once before on our Baltic cruise with Tom and Laurel, and in my case Copenhagen twice before. But this time we’re actually going to attend the temples and enjoy the spirit that will be there, likely not too much different from what we experience here on a regular basis.  

There is apparently a very interesting old salt mine in Poland in the region of Krakow that several of the couples here have decided they’d like to see. Our car partners, the Linfords, apparently were familiar with a Polish man who speaks reasonable English and is the owner of a restaurant not too far from where we live, about a 20-30-minute walk. So about 8 of us decided we would walk over to his little guest house, have dinner and see if he’d be willing to share some information about how to get to the mine and what other things might be of interest along the way. Plans are still in the works. After eating, it was decided to take a different path home than the one that we followed to get there. We ended up walking quite a bit further and actually got lost for a while but found our way by getting directions from passersby.  Hence the following picture:

 

Have a great Labor Day. It’s nice to get a little break right after starting back to school.

Mom: It was great fun getting a little lost in the forest on our way back from the restaurant. You can just imagine how it is working with all these fun senior missionaries in the temple. It was supposed to be a short cut and had convinced one sister who wasn’t wanting a long walk to come along. Oh well, she was a good sport.

Most of my week in the temple has been working with six Romanian sisters each morning in initiatories about 7:45am. Included in the picture above on the right is Sister Kiefer mentioned above. I expect them again this week. We communicate in a little German, English and some Romanish and in whatever my workers can speak. Somehow, we always make it work and it is a sweet experience for all. We have all become good friends. After this week, they probably won’t be back until next year. So, for many the next time we meet will probably, be literally at Jesus’ feet.

The weather seems to be changing. We’ve had rain for the past two days and temperatures have come down from the eighties to the lower sixties and even into the upper fifties. Great for walking. Hope you’re having a fun Labor Day weekend. Two of our senior missionary couples live in Midway and are missing “Swiss Days.”

Love you all, keep on being faithful.  

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