TENDER MERCY AT THE TEMPLE

10 March, 2013

We are about ready to upload the filmed interviews of the UK saints to their newsroom site.  The Deseret News found the interviews on an unprotected U-Tube site and wants to do a story on this innovation in sharing the gospel.  Filming of French members occurred in Paris this weekend and Elaine and I will go Düsseldorf this next weekend for the German filming session. In the meantime the British Saints are getting ready for a big "I’m A Mormon" ad campaign to coincide with the opening of the Book of Mormon musical in April.  They are being prepped to be missionaries when their neighbors start asking questions about who the Mormons really are. Satan seems to have got it wrong as to its effect on missionary work.

Senior Missionary Zone Conference

Elaine and I had a tender mercy this week. Our November 12, 2012 blog speaks of Christian Terreaux, a young man I taught on my mission in Montpelier France in 1972.  I emailed the Bishop of the Nimes France Ward where Christian had been filmed as the Family History director back in about 2009, and I asked for Christian’s address - if he was still in the ward.  Two days later I received an email from Christian who had since moved to Rhoane just outside Paris.  He had actually been in the temple with the French Saints the day we were there and when I was thinking of him.  He wrote that he would be back in Frankfurt for French week the first week of March and we agreed to get together for dinner on Thursday evening of the week.  Well Wednesday we had our zone conference at the chapel by the temple and went to the temple as a group afterward.  As Elaine and I walked in, there was Christian, waiting in line to go on a session with the other French Saints.  I walked up and introduced myself and gave him a hug and introduced Elaine.  We visited for a minute in the temple then met for dinner the next night.  Christian is 65, retired from IBM and serving a Family History Mission in Paris.  His wife was not well and did not accompany him to the temple.  They have 6 children, two boys and 4 girls, all grown now of course. His sons served missions to Italy and to Germany.  He has been a branch president three times, and was a sealer in the Swiss Temple until the Fredrichsdorf temple was built and became the temple for their district.  He spoke slowly so I could translate his experience of being called and set apart in the Swiss Temple by Gordon Hinckley, then counselor to President Benson.  Well, don’t we sometimes wonder if our missions were worth it?  I am sure Christian would have joined the church and been a faithful servant no matter who taught him, but I am comforted have had some small part in helping him onto the Gospel path.  Also made me wish I had kept my French up. I understood him well enough but I must have sounded like an aborigine to him.  He was a good sport though and we had a wonderful evening together, reminiscing about the Saints in the early days of the Church in France and how it has changed so much now, with real chapels and wards and third generation members getting ready to enjoy the blessing of a temple.

A tender mercy to finally meet up with Christian after 40 years and have him meet my dear Elaine

From the home of the BMW and other precision engineering marvels
Surprisingly these brooms of sticks work very well.

Our cute and powerful sister missionaries - key to fulfillment of prophecy
Sister Heindel, Sister Tuschling and Taylor Street, BYU intern