WEEK 1 IN THE "FIELD"

At the Public Affairs office with Sister Sirtl

Trying to look busy and productive

Martin and I are not feeling very useful yet but we are slowly getting to know what our responsibilities will be.  Our assignment is to be the first contact points for the National Public Affairs Directors in Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden.  This means we will help them with any questions they have regarding public affairs in their respective countries and help with on-going training and support.  There is no National Public Affairs Director for Iceland as we only have a couple hundred members there but the other countries are well established and we have been told they are wonderful people to work with.

This is an exciting time to be here.  Next week our boss, Sister Sirtl, and her assistant, Francesco di Lillo, will be in Italy for the official press conference announcement that the government is recognizing the Church in Italy by issuing an “intesa”.  Few faiths have successfully negotiated an intesa – or enhanced – status with the Italian government. In 1993, the government formally recognized the Church as a legal entity, but only as a charitable institution. This recognition enables the Church to own and inherit property and allows bishops to perform marriage ceremonies subject to Italian law concerning civil marriages. So this new status moves us from a charity to a church and is a BIG deal. The Church will hold a thank you dinner in Rome on November 8^th for about 50 Italian officials who helped the Church reach this status.  

Yesterday the Area Office was reviewed by Elder Russell  M. Nelson. He met with the Area Seventy, Elder Teixeira and his counselors, whose offices are upstairs.  88 year-old Elder Nelson meet briefly with us Senior Missionaries next door at the stake center chapel before heading off to Milan for meetings and then to London to visit with the temple president before heading home from a 12 day trip across Europe.  He told us that revelation is alive and well in the Church and that we should listen closely in our upcoming general conference as last Thursday President Monson received revelation that will "shape the future of the Church."  We get General Conference over the course of a couple Sundays by listening to a recording in the chapel.

We were involved in training a family history senior missionary couple and the local Family History staff who will be interviewed Monday by Tonya Papanikolas of KSL.  This training involves everything from what to wear to being sure you get YOUR message across regardless of what questions you are asked.  They were very nervous but we assured them she would be a kind interviewer.

We were taught and practiced writing press releases this week, not that we will be writing many but we will help our national directors do so. Sister Sirtl says to give ourselves a few months before we know enough to be useful.  In the mean time we're doing the best we can.

Saturday morning the kind Bradleys (Bob and Lonnie) were so good to invite us to go castle touring with them.  We drove south about 235 kilometers to below Stuttgart to see the castle of Kaiser Wilhelm Hohenzollern, built in the middle 1800’s and the castle in Lichtenstein, also of fairly recent vintage.  Wilhelm the Great was famous for uniting the various regions of Germany.  Both on tops of small mountains with excellent views.  So we now are practiced tourists and autobahn drivers.  Apparently you get your speeding tickets by mail after the camera has snapped a photo, so since all their traffic signs are not so clear, I will be anxiously watching the mail this week.

Burg Hohenzollern 

Us with Lonnie and Bob Bradley

View of Southern Germany from Burg Hohenzollern

Lichtenstein Castle