PRESIDENT MONSON'S VISIT

President Monson addresses the Saints at a special meeting in Frankfurt on October 21, 2012



















He observes that speaking to the Craven's is like preaching to the choir

Elaine tells me someone read our blog last week and so we must keep it up.  She is so good to me that I must comply.  Today was a spiritual feast.  We were at Frankfurt’s Centennial Hall early this morning, about 8:15am, for one last choir practice before our special meeting with President Monson at 10am.  You would have thought it was 5 minutes before 10am as just about everyone was already there waiting for the doors to open.  Indeed by about 9am the hall was absolutely full of excited Saints, and we could have started if our speakers were there.  President Monson inspired us to reach out to the lonely, the forgotten and the friendless in love and compassion – to include them in our lives and invite them back to the faith if their step has faltered.  Elaine and I loved being in the choir, very fun to be on the stage and see the mass of faithful members, so small a group in their respective communities but a powerful strength when assembled to hear and honor their prophet.

After church we took a nice long walk in the beautiful fall weather, but came home to a note on our door from the neighbors below complaining that water was running down their kitchen and bathroom walls.  We were able to get the landlord over and she will call the plumber to figure out what is going on.  Repairs don’t seem to happen very fast around here so we are a bit anxious about prospects of having a torn up kitchen.

Yesterday we went with the Brandes to Rüdesheim on the Rhein River about an hour west of here.  The weather was beautiful. We rode a 2-person tram up the mountain, strolled through a forest on top to a chair lift that took us down to another town further down river.  After pleasant lunch of fresh trout and turkey curry schnitzle over spätzle noodles, we took a short boat ride up the Rhein to where we started the day.

Here are our tourist pictures for the week:

We drove up this street.  I don't know what we would have done if we had met a car coming down,

Above the fog on the mountain top

Our wonderful friends, Elder Jim and Carol Brande, also Public Affairs Missionaries

Grapes growing straight up the steep mountain side

People were shorter in the 1500's

Self-portrait on the chair lift

Rudesheim is a charming little berg - or is it a dorf?

In the forest on the mountain top

PS: For dinner today Elaine today made the most excellent Ratatouille Nicoise over couscous that I have ever tasted.  I should have taken a picture of it in honor of Scott Jacobson!

WE WITNESS THE MORMON MOMENT

I found Grenadine syrup – we may not ever come home. 

Just home from church and need to tell you about the International Ward in Frankfurt.  Its members have in common the Gospel and that German is not their native tongue.  Our bishop is from Spain and his counselors are Irish and American.  The sacrament was blessed by priests from Denmark and Ghana.  The cute family in from of us is from France and have their three boys in German schools.  We heard testimonies in fast meeting from all over Europe, but the spirit is still the same and the fellowship of the Gospel unites us in love.

This week we witnessed more Mormon Moment miracles in Europe as newspapers, radio and TV stations in many countries contact the church to make appointments to visit and photograph church services and interview members, then publish the stories in the local media.  These stories are increasingly positive and fair and are giving the church tremendously increased visibility.

This week we’ve been helping set up interviews for members in the United Kingdom for a project our office has undertaken to create “I’m a Mormon” style interviews with church youth and adult leadership. Members will be filmed answering typical questions being asked - our response to the B of M musical, missionary work, baptisms for the dead, blacks and the priesthood, temples, tithing, etc.  We will then post these interviews in the Newsroom section of the UK’s church website.  If it goes well, we’ll repeat the interviews in each of the countries where the church has substantial numbers.

At week’s end we got to sit in on training a new Public Affairs director for Macedonia, where we have 2 members.  (Where, you may ask, is Macedonia?) Klemintina is a returned missionary, living in Hiedleberg, who came to Germany when she was 6 and is sharp as they come. It was fun to sense her confidence and enthusiasm for the future of the church in Europe.  Through the web she will be the face of the Church in Macedonia even though she lives in Germany.  There are 2 elders there and one single couple and no one can proselyte. 

This week we also received an assignment from our zone leaders to organize periodic ward service opportunities for our senior missionary group.  The area seventy wants us to develop closer ties with our fellow ward members in the International Ward by serving them.  Any suggestions? Volunteering in Germany is not like the U.S.  You can't just get a group of people together and go clean up the park.  Everything is done through recognized organizations so this may be more difficult than it appears.

Most exciting news is our next assignment after sorting file pictures for 2 weeks.  Sister Sirtle learned Elaine is a photographer and wanted to see some of her work.  She was impressed with her talent and is sending us off to Sweden, Finland, Norway and Denmark to photograph members and church activities. This is so the Public Affairs directors will have local photos to accompany news releases and articles on the country websites.  Stay tuned to see how that unfolds. Busath Photography may have new competition!

The photos below continue along the theme of Stuff You Won’t See Back Home.

A trailing geranium tree

Robot lawn mower

The puppets are coming

Neat and tidy fields with no weeds

Forests, forests and more forests

Gate across the entry to the grocery store.  Closed by law on Sundays

STRANGE THINGS YOU DON'T GET TO SEE BACK HOME

There is a 90 acre cemetery near our offices where we go for  walks.  Quite a few headstones have  this sticker on them, notifying the family that if they don't pay their past due rental fee, their relative's bones will be removed and burned! In Germany it appears there is no certain rest for the dead.

 This week we continue to review photos and film footage taken by photographers across Europe. We are sorting these into files for each country so that they will have picture resources to use on their websites to accompany their news release stories.  Next we will go to the church website to search for pictures to augment a file we will eventually provide to each country.  We receive almost daily interesting multi-page articles from major media sites across Europe who are informing their readers about who these Mormons are that Mitt Romney belongs to.  Today we watched a recent excellent 8 minute British public television story from a reporter who had traveled to Utah to interview members, missionaries, welfare square managers and general authorities.  His concluding comment was "if the "end-of-days" comes, I want to be with the Mormons.”  We had a mid-week holiday this week commemorating the 1990 reunification of Germany.  It was a quiet day, no parades, flags or even people on the street. We used it to go for a bike ride around the 90 acre cemetery, a park and a huge gardening area near the offices.  We also participated in a 3-hour (not a typo my friend) German choir rehearsal for the Saints who will sing during President Monson’s visit on October 21^st.  We are singing his favorite songs, "Hark All Ye Nations" and "There is Sunshine In  My Soul Today" which are both great marching songs and a number from the old German hymn book that sounds like a polka with lots of eighth notes.  We have a couple more 2 hour practices before the meeting as these volks vant it to be perfeck!  Here are a few pictures for this week, whose theme is “Strange things you don’t get to see back home”

Cigarette vending machines on the sidewalk for easy access by all ages. Still a popular habit here.

Contact lenses without a prescription on the drug store shelf.

Ugliest wall sockets I have ever seen.

So called "Turk" piles, named by the missionaries, for the piles of recycle trash (?) made by the emigrants.  I am surprised the fastidious Germans would put up with this.

My favorite - notice how this toilet has a nifty shelf where things would normally be expected to drop into the water.  Good for people who want to review the final result of all their dietary choices and who enjoy cleaning the toilet every time they use it!!!

FRANKFURT PHOTOS

This week our assignment is to go through a stack of external hard drives that are loaded with photos of Europe - both church and secular.  We are to sort these out by location and subject to make them available for country websites and newsrooms.  I came across these of Frankfurt, including the Europe Area Office and the chapel door and wanted to get them on the site.

Europe Area Public Affairs Office - 11 Porthstrasse

Frankfurt Stake Center next to Area Office

Frankfurt from a bridge

Frankfurt from a park

Frankfurt from the aM Main River 

Yes, you guessed it - Frankfurt

Stop lights are really cool - you get a  yellow light
 (on your mark, get set..) just before it turns green (go!!)

GETTING TO WORK

WEBMASTER TRAINING AT THE MARRIOTT

Wie Geht’s! This week we actually began to do some stuff.  In preparation for a training session held yesterday, we got to photocopy and assemble training materials, put articles and pictures on USB drives and arrange taxis for the training participants.  On Friday evening we headed out to the Marriott Hotel in Weisbaden to meet 8 country public affairs directors and their webmaster assistants.  They were here to learn to use new software to put stories on new country websites in each country.  These new sites will give members and journalists full access to the church’s lds.org  internet site as well as continue to provide a native language web site in each country.  We met wonderful members from Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Austria, Hungary, Ireland, Belgium and the Netherlands.  These people have been given tremendous trust to be keepers of the electronic face of the church in each of their countries.  They are charged will keeping their websites current with interesting church news articles and teaser stories, photos, video clips and information for local media and interested searchers for truth.  We trained with them all day yesterday.

 In our continuing training this past week, the Brandes took us out to the our Europe shipping warehouse, where all the publications of the church in a bazillion languages are ordered in from various printers, then shipped to local units and missions.  We also got to go to Freidrichsdorf to see the temple grounds.  We got to see the restored home on the grounds where the temple presidency lives and enjoyed particularly the original wrought iron work on the front door of the house.  The owner of the house (and owner of the noodle factory that preceded the temple on the site) had his initials fashioned out of wrought iron and installed on the door – His initials were HLT which are the German initials for LDS (Heilegen der Letzen Tage). 

Not as easy as it looks when you only have 9 feet to make a 90 degree turn!

I took these random photos this week of some of the things around here to give you a feel for our surroundings.  It is much as John Kusterle said – the Germans are quite neat and tidy (except for lots of graffiti) and take good care of their land, homes and possessions.  The autobahn is just fine to drive on as long as you stay out of the far left lane.  A couple of times this week I thought I was dead as cars passed us fast enough to shake our car with “prop-wash” or vapor trail.  I think we are adjusting well although still a reasonable level of stress as we seek to get into a rhythm and find purpose here.  

EVERYTHING is recycled. These are for different colors of glass bottles.

Our store across the street.  Fresh bread every morning.

Living room/study

Hungry missionary on P-day

Basement with little toy washers and dryers

Bath (tub and shower behind door)

Our little toy diesel car with back doors that open backwards (notice handles)

We live up in the roof cable - laundry is in the basement.

German beds designed to control population growth

                                                    

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

THE MTC

Here we are here at the MTC with  a record group of 118 of our closest senior missionary friends and 2,750 energetic junior missionaries.  After the first day, it feels like a great big combined HP/Relief Society meeting with the most faithful people in the world. Some of these folks are going on their 5th mission and for many many it is their 2nd or 3rd. We meet in the room where we said goodbye to Bryce and Spencer, then we break out into our 4-couple districts and learn how to teach out of Preach My Gospel. Today we taught the first lesson to a fake investigator who believed everything about the restoration but was worried Joseph was a fallen prophet and we could be back in a state of apostasy and needed a new beginning. Lots of food and a bazillion people in the cafeteria but hard to find something on the celestial diet plan, so we do the best we can and they do have fat-free dream bars. We and the other missionaries drank 900 gallons of chocolate milk over the weekend. The junior missionaries all look so young and are bright-eyed and on fire. The future of the church is in good hands. We try to sit by them at lunch and get the inside scoop on their experience. Everything is great!

By the way, I like the mission rules for seniors way better than for juniors.  The weekend after the MTC, before we flew out on Monday, we took the boat out one last time with Bryce, the Jacksons and the Busaths.  This is my first time "surfing" - needs lots of work.  Also we got to be with our little red-hair precious bundle of grandson one last time - this is the thing that is killing me and we are better off not looking at pictures  of our grandchildren too often.

GOODBYES

Without a doubt we have the best friends and children in the universe.  We are overwhelmed by the kind words and warm embraces we have received these past couple of weeks at a fabulous open house evening at the Jacobsons, again after a sacrament meeting nonfarewell and at fun goodbye dinners, lunches and golf outings.  You wonderful people are who we want to be with in heaven and we are so glad we got to be friends here on earth. We are beginning to learn by experience that the capacity to love has no bounds.

Settiing apart with Presidents Buie, Jenson and Bailey with Benjamin

BLESSINGS ALREADY!

Our beautiful black-haired baby granddaughter, Madeline Jane Jackson, was born to Emily and Jesse last Thursday, August 2, 2012.  She is small but has a great set of lungs, a healthy appetite and is another incredible blessing to our family.  Spencer heads off to medical school in Rochester NY tomorrow, pulling a Uhaul trailer across the country.  Soon to be the newest member of our family, Xan Baker will go with Spence to keep him awake and check out the living situation  then fly back Sunday.  We have our tickets to return to Salt Lake for their Thanksgiving wedding.  We’ve had a few weeks of MTC language training via Skype with some darling returned missionary sisters and are now brushing up on computer skills, writing sacrament meeting talks and finishing up final purchases – will be interesting to see if we can fit our stuff  into a couple of suitcases and a carry-on.  MTC here we come.