Repentance, Prayer and on to Thanksgiving!

It has been a very special holiday week. We have seen pictures of many of your Thanksgiving celebrations in a variety of places around the country. We celebrated our Thanksgiving on our P day on Monday with the other temple missionaries and the temple presidency. Included is a picture of all of the sisters who helped including our new arrivals. On the left is Sister Stapley who just arrived with her husband from Arizona this past week, followed by Sister Linford, Grammy and Sister Thornock who was really responsible for the lovely decorations as well as providing real turkey! Next to her are the two new assistant matrons, Sister Bartsch and Dzierzon, then Sister Lindsay and finally our temple matron, Sister Wadosch. In the second picture with the feast laid out is Grammy’s wonderful sweet potato casserole just above the dressing using a wonderful recipe that she’s hung onto from Aunt Laurel Rohlfing who picked it up down south when serving on the Relief Society General Board. I was probably biased, but I thought it was the hit of the meal😊.

Although Thursday wasn’t a holiday here in Germany, Wednesday was, known as Repentance and Prayer Day and hence the title of our letter today. It turned out to be a very busy day in the temple because everyone was off work and hence they followed President Nelson’s advice to arrange their schedules to spend more time in the temple. Although temples are closed for most holidays in the states, that doesn’t seem to be the case here in Germany other than two days for Christmas and New Year’s Day. It’s actually pretty special because we do get a big attendance on holidays and a lot of saving ordinances are performed.

We do have a lot of fun in the baptistry and although the big groups are generally made up of youth with their leaders, it’s not unusual to have older folks come in as well wanting to do ordinances on their own family members. We had two elderly sisters come in early in the week when we didn’t have any other baptisms scheduled and Bro. Linford was gracious enough to become the baptist and help them both get their ordinances performed. Friday nights tend to be busy, again because everyone is free and this week one of our local temple workers, Brother Kux, was happy to welcome members from his ward in a little city known as Mittweida. So, we had his help but Saturday was the really busy day with three different groups coming in. The first group at 8:00 was from Prague and they were very organized and were followed by the rest of their people at 10:30. Then a very large group came in at 1:00 PM from Berlin. We were just finishing up the confirmations on each group as the next ones arrived, so it was kind of like a fast day as we didn’t have a chance to get to eat until about 3:30. We took the opportunity to take the Stapleys out to dinner that afternoon to a restaurant owned by one of the members of our branch and he was very gracious in attending to us. We didn’t realize it previously, but she is a Type 1 diabetic and was following some proper eating guidelines. They have three children, the last of whom was delivered 5 weeks early of necessity and only weighed in at 11 pounds! One of the other mothers in the newborn ICU wondered why such a large baby was there with the preemies and was surprised to find out that the baby was a preemie as well.

The weather here has really turned cold and most of the week was quite overcast and although mostly drizzly it did snow just a little bit. I’m apparently still subscribed to emergency weather alerts in Utah and have been getting numerous warnings about the snow fall that was expected over the Thanksgiving weekend.  Hopefully you all survived. As we came home from the restaurant with the Stapleys last night and were walking in from the parking lot we saw a first-time interesting sight: Images of the Angel Moroni shadowed on the low hanging clouds by the illuminating  lights. We’ll be showing these pictures off to the other missionaries as no one else but the Stapleys saw it. (Late addition, we just found out that Sister Stapley’s father just passed away unexpectedly, last evening. We’re waiting to discover their plans.)

 
Yesterday evening our temple matron hurriedly rang all of our doorbells and told us to bring pots and pans over to the church cultural hall where they had lots of leftovers from a dinner they provided to a group not identified to us. We got lots of great food that we consumed today for our Sunday dinner (including a bit of Mom’s leftover sweet potato casserole). Today at church we found out what it was all about. They held a correlation counsel last night and we found ourselves sitting next to the Polish Mission President and his wife.  In the congregation were the presidents of the Czech Republic mission as well as the Berlin mission president and their wives. The latter spoke to us along with our Dresden Stake President and our Area 70 representative who presided at the meeting. All of the speakers were quite wonderful and we had a very spiritual meeting.

I can’t believe that this is already letter number 45. Apparently, we missed the first Sunday we were here and didn’t start up until January 21, a week before Mom’s birthday. We definitely only have five more weeks in December and one in January, so I guess we’ll be cut short at 51 but time is really flying by. We’ll be celebrating First Advent next Sunday and plan to put up a tree sometime this week to keep in tradition.

      Mom: It was fun to start out the week with sort of a Thanksgiving Day Holiday, we even had a fun little trip with the Lindsay’s to help celebrate Gordon’s (Br. Lindsay) birthday which was also Monday. We went over to Dresden to a museum featuring “Life in the DDR”. It was quite interesting to see how controlled and deprived they were on one hand, but on the other, they tried to make copies of various items that were available in other parts of the modern world. It was unbelievable what their cars were made out of and how they could be crumpled into a big kind of lump. Yet, they kept on living the best they could and looked forward to days of freedom and were more than ready for the wall to come down. They rushed across all the borders and the guards just stood back. The third picture is Dad standing in front of a delivery table.

           

 Apparently, the kids were mostly raised by the state while moms went to work. We enjoyed these two pictures shown below.

 

I enjoyed our missionary Thanksgiving feast. It turned out to be quite a big group. Somehow, we came up with most of the traditional feast items and a few that were creative like pumpkin pies made with honey and guava. Yummy, but they tasted ok, just not like the real ones at home.  We seem to have a few people who are sugar free. I tell them that I don’t eat anything unless it has real sugar in it. Ha, Ha.

      As I thought about Thanksgiving at home, I was so thankful for families coming together to support one another and it made me a little homesick for all of you. I missed all the fun and games, sitting by the fireplace and gathering around the piano to sing and also putting up the Christmas tree to begin the Christmas season.

        May the Lords blessings be upon you. We also send out prayers for all of you from the temple.   

Love, and big Hugs,
Grammy, Grampa, Mom, Dad, Elder and Sister Parker

November 18, 2018

Baptisms and Confirmations Start the Process of Salvation

Well, we are now down to less than two months left on this mission and even though that’s still a little bit of time away, it seems that everything we do seems to reflect on how short the time is becoming.  When we arrived, we attempted to get a lot of our supplies set up so they’d be good for a year. That’s not too tough for clothing and things than really don’t get used up for many things, especially medications that we both take, they do have a tendency to get lower and lower.  I was taking a few meds that only needed to go for a few months and so they ran out fast. I’m now down to just 4 medications that I take daily and their containers are getting lower and lower, a very visual demonstration that our time is running out. I have a tendency when we travel to save up on the soaps and shampoos from various hotels that we haven’t used when we leave and the shampoos all ran out long ago. But I probably had 20 or 30 small bars of soap that I actually brought with me and we’re now on the very last one which won’t last out more than a final week. Sigh. I guess I’ll actually have to go out and buy a bar! My white ties are getting just a bit worn around the tips but I think I can encourage them to hang in there for the last two months.

This week it was the Czechoslovakians who were our visitors. Most of them we have gotten to know quite well but now that we’re assigned to the baptistry, it seems that we hadn’t had a lot of experience with them in that department. Many of the groups that come have registered well in advance and have all of the necessary positions assigned and ready to go. Most of the time, it’s the youth who are being baptized and their names all get filled out on the available forms. For groups really well organized, there are also brethren and sisters assigned to be recorders, baptizers, witnesses and confirmers and all we have to do is supervise a bit and make sure the dressing rooms are cleaned up when they’re finished. But every so often, I think language difficulties play a role, they simply appear to perform the ordinances and it’s a real scramble to get everything organized. We have to write the names of those who will be representing the deceased on little slips of paper so the baptizer can  read them on the TV screen and recite their names before performing the ordinance. Invariably, when a group is here, there are always others who would like to join in and they are always welcome but occasionally we’re dealing with more than one or two languages and so we have to be certain that the baptizer can read Czech as well as German or occasionally English and that gets to be lots of fun. I have sat in on numerous Czech confirmations with the responsibility to change the name of the person being confirmed.  Even though the prayer is written down in front of me, Czech has no easy-to-figure-out pronunciation guide and I have to really be paying attention to change the name card if I can figure out when the actual name is being pronounced. The Spirit is there and things usually work out pretty well.

Yesterday was a very interesting day as four different baptismal groups were scheduled to appear. The first was a Czech group that we had worked with during the week and we knew them pretty well, but they had no assigned witnesses and not enough priesthood holders to confirm while the baptisms were still going on. We got done barely in time to greet the next group, a father, mother and two teenage children. We had to find two witnesses and an extra brother to help with confirmations, but it wasn’t as hard as the day before when a father and mother appeared with two daughters. Our good assistant, Bro. Linford, with whom we share our car, volunteered to be the extra baptist, so the father could baptize his wife and two daughters, and then in turn was baptized by Bro. Linford. We were able to find two brethren to be witnesses and kept one to help with the confirmations.  It all went smoothly. But yesterday, as soon as we finished with the family, we had to be ready for the next group who came in a bus from the Berlin Stake. They were well organized and we simply had to greet them and give them a little support with their baptismal clothing.

The last group came right on the heels from the Berlin group, from a city known as Coburg. Apparently, they had been disappointed on their last visit a few months ago that the temple was not heavily supplied with names. Most of our temple ordinance cards may only have three or four names each and they felt a little shortchanged after having travelled for several hours to get here.  So this time they came really prepared with 15-25 names each to do and a few extra people joined in because we were organized and read to go. All in all, it was a wonderful day, all 4 groups felt rewarded and each even received a little message from a member of the temple presidency before beginning their service. We had had breakfast, as usual, at around 6:30 that morning and by the time we had any respite at all, it was the end of our usual day at 3 PM. It keeps us trim and fit. Have we mentioned before that temple service is more strenuous than we anticipated?

Next week promises to be a little easier as no groups are scheduled for the entire week. We’ll wait and see. We are planning on a Thanksgiving celebration tomorrow, our only day off for the week but it should be special with everyone contributing something to the feast.

We very much enjoy getting the emails from Myles, Kyle and Tim each week as well as our grand-niece Elle Broughton who’s speaking Spanish down in Alabama. You guys are always in our prayers and we love hearing about your experiences. We’re losing Sister Strong today, a sister missionary who has been here in our branch about six months but leaves for home tomorrow. She gave a wonderful departure testimony today in sacrament meeting as well as sang a lovely solo for our musical number. We also greeted the Stapleys, our new next-door neighbors, who arrived yesterday. He served in Hamburg in the early 70’s and has a pretty good German. His wife has been learning German for the past 3-6 months, so we’ll see how she does. They are welcome arrivals while we’re down three couples. The Fiedlers arrive next week, a senior couple from Berlin, and that will pretty much bring us back to full speed. That makes us the senior Senior couple now until we leave in January.

Cold weather has finally arrived. We had a few temps in the high 30’s all last week but the fountains in front of the temple we’re still going strong. Yesterday the frost hit strong and we noted the fountains have finally been turned off. It’s predicted we’ll get snow most of next week but so far nothing has developed to bring out the shovels. We did note a snow shovel has been placed strategically by the front door into our apartment house so we’ll see.

We had the opportunity of going to dinner a while back at a restaurant owned by a member of our branch. We had never been there before but there were six of us there and he really fussed over us with a delightful meal. I think we’ll have to frequent his place more often. However, although he is located right next to the St. Petri Church very near to the central square in Freiburg, we just had never taken the occasion to walk down a narrow street and look at it up close.  We were informed that it originally dated back into the 1100’s but has been restored several times having been burned down at least three times.  

Its steeple is the highest in the city and we were told that it’s permissible to walk all the way up it’s entire 230 meters—that’s only 2 ½ footballs fields! We tried it out last Monday and felt rewarded to have a personal guide escort us. He spoke a pretty heavy Platt German, so I only understood about half of what he said (Mom said she only got about a third of it) but it was well worth the climb. Above are a few shots of what we saw. The first picture of the exterior shows a balcony way up high below the bells that we were allowed to walk upon. The next picture is a shot from that balcony looking down upon the white city hall or Rathaus which has had scaffolding around it all year until this month when it finally came down. The last shot out one of the windows demonstrates that they’re already celebrating the Christmas season here and we’re looking forward to the special Christmas market that will be set up this next week in the square by the Rathaus.

Mom: Working in the baptistry is enjoyable as there is usually time to talk with the various patrons as I fit them for baptismal clothing and have them help with the clean up and handing out towels. I had to smile as one young lady clearly let me know that she was the “Betreurerin” or ministering sister for her group. I was glad she was excited to hand out towels. The sweet times are when I observe the mothers get tears in their eyes, as they watch the fathers baptizing their son or daughter who has just turned 12, coming to the temple for the first time. Other times are observing very spiritual moments as someone older is being baptized for their, mother, sister, brother or grandparents. Then you know that these spirits, who have passed on, are present to witness the ordinance being performed for them. It seems a joy to work anywhere in the temple. It is a wonderful privilege to feel the presence of the Spirit of the Lord and the spirits of our ancestors. They feel such joy and gladness. This week, I also had a sweet experience as I did some initiatories for a couple of Parker family names. Then, I took the names personally to have them scanned and stamped. Afterwards I felt as though someone was saying, “thank you,  thank you for doing my work. It was a feeling that just stayed with me for quite a while afterwards.

  Since tomorrow is our Thanksgiving, I’ll say “Happy Thanksgiving” to you all. We’re grateful for all of you and the opportunity to serve the Lord. May you find your own way to serve Him.

Love, Hugs, and prayers,

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

November 11, 2018

Leaves Down, Temple Workers Down But Poles Up

Another busy week has flown by, this time with temple visitors out of Poland, Leipzig, Annaberg and Freiberg with the last three all German cities.The last two are within our stake boundaries and it just so happens that this weekend is stake conference, perfectly matching our home stake in Highland which also has stake conference today.

Perhaps I’ll start with stake conference because it’s fresh in my mind. This was the first stake conference since our new stake presidency was installed 6 months ago and they were the primary speakers as we had no general authority reps. Highland, we noted had Elder Robert Gay from the Presidency of the Seventies as well as a special Saturday night presentation to the Priests and Laurels offered by Elder David Bednar. I’ll bet that was special as we remember his visit to our mission when we were serving in Vienna.

The Saturday evening session was more like a Saturday afternoon session which started at 4 PM. Our stake center is in Dresden, about 45 minutes away and there is a great deal of street construction going on there, (as there was 6 months ago but it’s worse now.) They recommended we all get there an hour early as the stake center only has parking places for about 10-12 cars and everyone else parks on a big street on which the church is located.  Because of the construction it was predicted that we might have to walk a while to arrive there, so they recommended we try and get there by 3 PM. That was pretty tough for the temple workers as our last session starts at 1 PM, goes about an hour and a half plus time to work everyone through their ordinances and get them home which usually lasts about another 45 minutes or until 3:15.  I’ll go into more detail about our specific assignment below but suffice it to say that we decided, along with only one other couple, to make the attempt to catch as much of the session as we could. We left about 3:25 which was really making good time and arrived about 4:15. We lucked out with an open parking spot on the street only about 5 minutes away and came in, having missed the first two speakers, one of whom was Sister Dzierzon, one of our new temple matrons who was being released as the stake primary president. Just beginning to speak as we arrived was President Wadosch, our new temple president and previous counselor in the temple presidency as well as a previous stake president in Vienna.  But the rest of the meeting was worth the effort and they featured a lovely stake choir that had practiced well.

Today, with no departure delays, we got away around 8:00, arrived there about 8:45 and found a spot again within about a 5-minute walk and so had plenty of time to visit with the various members, missionaries and many we knew from their temple visits. They had a youth/young adult choir practicing in the chapel and wouldn’t let anyone in to listen, even though we could hear the choir easily through the curtain dividers to the cultural hall. But we decided we’d sit in the cultural hall anyway and had a whole row of 10 of us which pretty much makes up all of the temple missionaries. The talks were all wonderful and the entire stake presidency provided the concluding talks which were pretty easy to understand, especially because I didn’t have to worry about translating them, my usual assignment in the ward sacrament meeting. They did have two different translations available, however, for those who didn’t speak German and a few people took advantage of the headsets provided. They spent about 10 minutes on releases and confirmations of various stake officers, of which there were many, one of which was a member of our branch presidency who was called as a high councilor, so I guess we’ll expect some changes there next Sunday. After the meeting a young sister noticed the badge which I wear on my lapel indicating I had served in the Alpine German Speaking Mission. Apparently, she had served at about the same time but because she was a European citizen, she spent a great deal of her mission in Switzerland which doesn’t allow “foreign” missionaries in to preach and proselytize. I didn’t recognize her, but Mom thought she remembered her from a mission conference or two.

So back to the rest of the week. Although we started at the end of last week, this was our first full week back in the baptistry and it was very busy as well as interesting. Our first group on Tuesday came up from Stuttgart and were extremely well organized. They had a group of about 20 people with their own researched names, witnesses to serve at the baptistry, brethren to serve at confirmations and our only responsibilities were just to get them into baptismal clothing, show them where everything was and help them get all the people needing baptisms and confirmations accommodated. The rest of the week was made quite interesting because of the involvement of our Polish brothers and sisters. We think there is probably a basic communication barrier in speaking with people whose primary language isn’t German because although they are very faithful, they usually don’t present with a nice list of baptists, baptizees, witnesses etc. and so we have to work hard to put it all together when they get there. While eating lunch on Wednesday, we got a phone call that two people were there wondering if they could do some baptisms. So we responded quickly and by the time others recognized that we were setting up, the group expanded to about 8 or 10. We did have the baptismal and confirmation prayers available in Polish and proceeded to do a number of people whose names they had brought with them. This same process happened another two or three times and we got to know the Polish members pretty well.

I had gotten a reputation for being able to perform on the veil in Hungarian, Spanish and Italian so the coordinators made the assumption that I might be able to do it in Polish as well. The first time they asked me it was a very sudden request and I hadn’t even had a chance to look over the language cards before I was serving at the veil and the Polish members were very gracious as I shook their hands later. They may have understood what I was trying to say but as far as I was concerned, “it was Greek to me!” A portion of what we say is repeated back to us and it always seemed very different to listen to what they said to what I had said to them😊. I helped with several score of Polish confirmations as well and in spite of the fact that I could read along with the brother who was confirming, I still don’t think I could have even come close to pronouncing things the way he did.

With our numbers down by two couples, things were very busy this week and if we were found even trying to rest up, we were recruited to help wherever we were needed which seemed to be everywhere! I ended up working on the veil doing Polish 4 times, English and German at the same session and we really felt multi-lingual. This Tuesday we lose the Ashbys and replacements don’t come until the week after that so it’s not going to get better very quickly. This next week we get the Czechs who are old friends and I don’t think I have any reputation for being able to speak Czechish!

Our last baptismal group for the week was yesterday afternoon starting at 1:00 and was the group referenced above that was our last prior to trying to get away for the Saturday session of stake conference. They came from the Warsaw Poland Mission, they did have a prepared list of people who would be baptizers and baptizees, and as we looked the list over, it was obvious that these people had English sounding names. As it turned out, they were all Americans or English with two exceptions, one Polish and the other Russian, but these last two did speak pretty good English. So we had a delightful time performing baptisms and confirmations and the Bishop who accompanied the group was pretty good with his Polish which we used on those two.

The temple president always likes to speak with each new baptismal group and his English is pretty good, so he spoke with the group before we got started. Afterwards, they frequently all wait in the baptistry area until everyone has completed all of their ordinances and it’s a time when I frequently take the opportunity to speak with them about some of the symbolism of baptism, the covenants we make and how we renew those covenants when we partake of the sacrament. We speak of the symbolism of being buried and then brought forth, of being cleansed and purified and the preceding requirements of faith and baptism prior to baptism with the following promise of receiving the Holy Ghost which each had reviewed several times. Even though we were in a bit of a hurry, I don’t think they sensed it and many expressed appreciation for being able to talk about things while they were still in the temple.

        Mom: I always enjoy stake conference, the Saturday evening meeting and the Sunday morning meeting. There is usually a spirit of expectation, among the members, that we will receive spiritual upliftment and support for trying to be faithful in our daily lives. This conference was full of testimonies telling of the love and ever-present hand of the Savior in our lives. I just feel so much love and goodness coming from all the families and members. I also loved the youth choir and was delighted that I recognized so many of them from helping them in the baptistry this week and some returned the recognition with greeting. It’s sweet that, even, little children will shake your hand and say, “Guten Tag.” Here in our meetings the choir will sing a pre-meeting song and a post meeting song, after the prayer is said. The post song was “Hallelujah” the popular song from “Shrek” but with words about Christ. They sang it with great enthusiasm and I loved it.

Autumn came slowly here in Freiberg and is slowly coming to a close.  Many leaves have fallen but still there are leaves on some trees that have taken longer to change. It is “Herrlich” or glorious and I love walking out in front of the temple, the streets around the temple, and driving into the countryside and into the little villages where it is still beautiful. It’s like being in the canyons everywhere. I could be exaggerating but truly it has been and still is a beautiful autumn. Hope it holds until Thanksgiving, but it is getting a bit colder. It seems Utah is all ready into the cold, so stay warm.

Above is a view of our temple grounds, Grammy wandering in all the leaves, and Grampa thankful he doesn’t have to rake them all up. Look how varied the trees are in the last picture.

Love you all, may you all feel the love of the Savior in your lives.

Hugs and Prayers,

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

November 4, 2018

Farewells and New Beginnings

As we predicted, our past week has been full of reorganization and change. Even though we had already said goodbye to the Mosses and Bonners as well as the Ashbys on Saturday evening, another dinner was organized on Monday night for the Bonners and Mosses and attended by us and the Linfords.

 

Then Tuesday night was a very special farewell dinner for President and Sister Erlacher and his counselor, President Wagner with his wife. This event was held at the church and not only the temple missionaries but also all of the local temple workers and staff were invited.  A special power point presentation was prepared by Sister Lindsay, seated behind her husband at the left in the second picture which included pictures of the temple workers and their families along with special music and given to the Erlachers as a departing gift. 4 of the 7 couples sat together that night including the Ashbys and Mosses on the right. Included as our third picture are the entire presidency and the six missionary couples as we existed at the beginning of the week, dressed in our whites and ready to serve.

Wednesday, the 31st, was the last day of the old presidency and both Tuesday and Wednesday were very busy at the temple. We felt it was probably a dual response to President Nelson’s encouragement at General Conference to arrange one’s time to spend more of it at the temple, as well as many there to wish the outgoing presidency well and express their love to them. It was also Halloween which we discovered is also celebrated by the Germans. We decided just to take a little walk through our adjoining neighborhood and sure enough, saw many families out with their children doing some trick or treating. We enjoyed the many photos posted by the family showing our grandchildren doing the same thing.  We also had the opportunity earlier that day to welcome back our new temple president and matron, the Wadosches, along with the just arrived new first counselor and his wife, President and Sister Bartsch. They live reasonably close, in Berlin, but will be living just down the hall from us. The other counsellor and his wife, President and Sister Dzierzon, are already members of the Freiberg Branch and he has been serving as a sealer for quite some time. They will remain in their own home and not move into the apartments with the rest of us. So it was a big day of anticipation, waiting for the first of the month the next day.

November first saw not only the new presidency take charge, but we also got our new assignments for the next month. We are back in the baptistry again and was it ever busy! Most of the holidays here in Europe originate with religious events and although we tend to think about Halloween, the protestant Germans celebrate Reformation Day and it was a real holiday with all of the stores closed. With no one needing to work, it seems like everyone came to the temple. We were still coordinating the endowment sessions on Wednesday, but we were setting up extra chairs in the rooms and striving to find 12 different brethren to cover all of our veils. That wasn’t always easy as we had to pull them away from their other assignments which were also busy.

One event Wednesday was kind of interesting. It was the last day for the Lindsays in the baptistry and quite some time ago they had purchased tickets to attend a performance of the Messiah in Leipzig. They were doing the whole thing and it started at 5 PM. Sister Lindsay, a previous Tabernacle Choir member, loved the Messiah and was really looking forward to it. It takes about 45 minutes to drive to Leipzig which meant they needed to get away by 3:30 or 4:00 at the latest. Normally the baptistry is finished by around 2:30 or 3 but on Wednesday they had a late session scheduled which started around 2 PM. There was no way they were going to make their scheduled performance but we were done in plenty of time so told them we would take over so they could get out of there. We did, and they got away in plenty of time to make it. They were very gracious and helped us out the next day by arriving for a very early group at 6:30 AM which allowed us to sleep in until our normal prayer meeting at 7 AM and we then took over our normal assignment at 7:30.  So it was a very gracious opportunity to help each other out and we all felt rewarded and blessed.

So, again, Thursday the 1st turned out to not only be the first day of the new presidency but it was also a Catholic holiday, celebrated in Austria as All Saints Day and it seemed like we had lots of people celebrating that holiday by also coming to the temple to serve. We had groups out of Stuttgart (which is Germany) but also many familiar faces who were here from Vienna. We loved seeing them all and even though it was busy, it was a wonderful week. The new temple counsellors are being trained in their responsibilities and it will probably take them a while to get a bit of competence and familiarity with all that must take place. We always get pretty comfortable if we are presented with complicated situations by just turning it over to a member of the presidency, but everyone is now in a learning and training mode, so it keeps us all on our toes.

The Mosses took off on Wednesday morning with President Erlacher driving them to the airport as one of the last of his official functions. Saturday, the Bonners left and so we are down four couples which put a little stress on completing all of our assignments. The middle of next week, the Ashbys depart and we’ll be down for about a week until our new couple, the Stapleys, arrive. And then it will be another two weeks before our last couple, the Fiedlers, who live in Berlin, arrive. Hopefully, if all of the holidays are now finished, it won’t be quite as busy until we’re back up to full strength. But we’re absolutely certain that the Lord will provide, and we’ll make it through no matter what!  We feel like we had two fast days this week, today being our normal Fast Day but Thursday we were scheduled so tightly between the baptistry sessions that there really wasn’t any time for lunch. We’d finish one group and the next was waiting and ready to go. On the other hand, I only lost 5 pounds this week which really wasn’t that bad!

One final thing to mention. Our day off on Monday, we decided to follow up on a recommendation from the Linfords and check out a cemetery associated with a church near the old city wall that was unique for some really old graves.

We have truly enjoyed our time here in Freiberg and it has been especially significant to us as we say goodbye to old friends and welcome new ones. There is such a great feeling of love and kindness amongst the workers and patrons here that it just can’t compare with our other assignments.

    Mom: There just isn’t much to add to this week’s letter. Grampa has really covered the ins and outs of running the temple, of saying goodbyes with we’ll really miss you and looking forward to making new friendships. Needless to say, we were extremely busy and sometimes a bit stressed, but the patrons rarely ever saw it. They come for the peace, comfort and uplifting spirit which they receive. We, however, are like the swan’s gliding gracefully through the water, all the while paddling their feet like crazy. It is so wonderful to be part of the great work of the Lord’s church where ever you serve. It is so fun to see just about every sister sitting in the lobby or foyer reading the Book of Mormon, some even with pencils, if they have their own books. I sense this excitement, and enthusiasm for the new programs and for seeking to be closer to the Lord and the influence of the Spirit. What a great time to be a member of the church. We are like one huge family, here to help each other back to heaven, to our Heavenly Father.

     I hope you feel Heavenly Father’s blessings pouring down on you.

Love, prayers and hugs,

Grammy, Grampa,

Mom, Dad,

Elder and Sister Parker