Happy 3rd Advent!

Happy 3rd Advent!  Since last week we discovered there is a special topic to each Advent day. Mom will discuss those in her part of the letter below. Winter has truly arrived, and we actually got quite a bit of snow last week. I braved the storm a little bit and went out and shoveled the walks a bit leading from the chapel up to our hostel. Then I saw a couple coming out of the door that leads to the temple clothing store and although it wasn’t open, decided I should shovel that walk as well. It didn’t take a lot of time with only about 5 inches on the walks, but I guess it made me feel like I was doing a little something to help others outside of the temple assignment.

We decided we haven’t been out walking around as much so we bundled up warmly and headed out on a day when we got out of the temple just a little bit earlier than usual. Days are very short as we head up to the official first day of Winter this coming Friday. Our sun comes up just about 8 AM now and is already sinking at 3:59 PM so we figured we had about a half hour of daylight left on the day we decided to give it a try. The pictured paths are ones we have walked on a lot in warmer weather, but we decided we needed to record them with Old Man Frost around. One of the pictures shows the train tracks we often walk by, but we’ve never felt the need to capture a photo of one until this day.  Our little Advents table is filling up with small presents we seem to receive virtually every day from an unknown giver. They include goodies, candles, hearts, trees and lately we’ve been getting great little quotes emphasizing the Light of the World.

 

 

It has been a very interesting week in the temple as the number of patrons has really decreased. Most are now from the immediate area though we had a few who were still coming in from locations within an hour or so, but it seems that everyone is paying attention to the holiday at this point if they have further to drive.  As such it meant that our team of missionaries were asked to be quite flexible in helping out in all areas. We worked in the baptistry, initiatories and on the veil as people were active in all areas but just didn’t have a lot of their own temple workers to augment out what needed to be done. We’re still short one pair of missionaries with Elder and Sister Stapley having to return home after her father unexpectedly passed away. They are concerned about her mother being taken care of and apparently will return again shortly after Christmas but before the New Year.

We’re continually being reminded of how short our time is here as many people who have been visiting for the past year now and again have indicated they won’t be back until after we’re gone so we’re giving them a heartfelt goodbye. There are so many special events scheduled in the next two weeks that there really isn’t a lot of idle time. Today we’re invited to the home of the Schiebolts, one of our former branch presidency counselors who’s now on the high council and will return tonight to participate in the First Presidency Christmas Devotional which we’ve always intended to view online but have never been able to get to. Tomorrow all of the missionaries have been invited to another sister’s home for a celebration and that conflicted with a second invite from a couple in Chemnitz who wanted to show us their Weihnachtsmarkt. They’ve decided we can still do it tomorrow morning during our day off, enjoy lunch with them and then return for the invitation in the evening. Tuesday night is a choir rehearsal for the special Christmas program on the 23rd, which will be the only meeting for the day and which we’ll hold with the other ward that meets in our building. Thanks to Aaron’s efforts to encourage me to sing a different part on each verse of the hymns, I have become a little bit experienced in singing tenor and they really need tenors in the choir so I’m helping out there. Wednesday will be a special evening sponsored by the temple presidency for all of the assigned temple workers. Thursday and Friday are a little bit free though we don’t have much extra time on Friday because of evening sessions and it’s also our wash day. Saturday is a special presentation at the stake center in Dresden and then the choir presentation on Sunday. After that we’re off to Leipzig to spend Sunday evening, Christmas Eve and Christmas Day with Markus and his family with an invitation to Cathleen’s family on the 26th, still part of Christmas here in Germany. We understand that President Wadosch and President Bartsch are both joining their families for the holidays and won’t be back until the new year leaving President Dzierzon, a local resident in charge for that time. Our German missionaries, the Fiedlers, will also be joining their family in Frankfurt at the same time so we’ll really be short handed during our next to last week. But we think we’ll have the Stapleys back by then. The final event of the holidays will be a talk I’ve been asked to give on the 30th, the last day of three-hour church meetings, on the spiritual highpoints of my life.  Our last Sunday, the 6th, will be Fast Day along with a Stake Priesthood meeting in Dresden that afternoon. We’ll see if they give us anything to do on our last day, the 8th, before we leave the next morning.

I thought I’d add an extra paragraph here now that we’ve finished all of the events of the day. We loved the Christmas devotional and will remember President Nelson’s five gifts of the Savior, love, forgiveness, repentance and eternal life. But what we found additionally fascinating was the wonderful conversation we had with the Schiebolts who will be celebrating their 41st wedding anniversary on the 23rd.  They were both raised under the Communist German Democratic Republic and had some amazing events in their life. He first met his future wife when she was only 14 and subsequently got engaged to someone else. However, he received a patriarchal blessing that told him he would recognize his future wife by the fact that she had been praying for him for several years. Their first meeting had been at a youth event and she was very impressed with him. He later decided for some reason to end his engagement and then found out she had been praying for him for the past three and a half years, literally. She was then 18 and they ended up getting married very soon thereafter. This was all pre-temple and they had many wonderful experiences being heavily involved with the volunteers and visitors who worked on and attended the open house and dedication of the temple. They had over 90,000 attend the temple open houses on two separate dedications. He was responsible to arrange for housing for the youth who would participate In the pre-dedication celebration as well as for all the church authorities who would be coming to the dedication. He told the brethren that he needed to know names of the latter in order to reserve their hotel rooms and was simply told to reserve an entire floor of the hotel. He ended up setting up rooms for 310 youth and 300 showed up. He arranged for 151 other visitors and 150 appeared. They are now fairly recently retired but live in a nice apartment which is amazingly stocked with their emergency supplies that would make most of us envious, not a common thing by any means here in Europe. We had a lovely pre-devotional snack with them of cookies and cakes and then returned afterwards for a lovely and very tasty offering of “Russian Stew”. It was a very delightful evening.

 Mom: Wow, lining everything up does sound like we are busy, but there is still time to reflect on what we are doing or participating in. I’m just not so sure we’ll be needed so much at home, which of course is good perhaps and not so good. At home they see us as someone whose family has already grown up and we’re not needed as much to man the sails. It should be interesting to see how the new programs function.

The members, Branches, Wards and Stakes are so caught up in the celebration of Advents that I thought I would look it up on the computer and see what it is really all about. I found it very interesting and very Christ centered, so I thought I would share a bit. The history of the Advents is very much tied up with religion both in the Protestant and Catholic churches and has become part of the German culture. Advent is the period of four Sundays and weeks before Christmas. Advent means “Coming” in Latin. This is the coming of Jesus into the world. Christians use the four Sundays and weeks of Advent to prepare and to remember the real meaning of Christmas. Martin Luther encouraged families to observe Advent as a time for them to teach their children about the coming of Christ. Their teachings come from the Old and New Testament and each candle represents a theme. 1. Hope  2. Peace 3. Love 4. Joy. Included in their teachings is also, that if Christ came once as prophesied, He will come again. Sometimes there is a 5th candle representing the birth of Christ and the flame reminds us that Christ is the true light of life.  It seems like a worth while tradition that we will continue to celebrate. Only one more Sunday until Christmas Eve. We hope you will all find some time this week to go to the manger to visit with the Savior.

   Sending snowy hugs and kisses and prayers,

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