21-28 Juni 2015

Frankly, as far as work goes, this week has been uneventful with one special exception. On Sunday, 28 June, Elaine and I celebrated our 47th wedding anniversary (Hochzeittag). We did not do anything special for the actual day except attend our normal church meetings and be together. Saturday we took a nice walk together. However, this coming week we will go to the Schwarzwald (Black Forest) in southern Germany near Lake Constance with other senior couples and spend an overnight enjoying beautiful scenery. That will be our celebration.

 

Wai Ling (Alias Ling Ling)

   Work with missionaries has dropped off for the time being. We've received only a couple of new missionaries to help, but I have completed and closed out nearly 20 missionaries. Mission presidents returning home after 3 years have pretty much done all they are going to do with missionaries, and will leave it to the new incoming ones to take action. So, we're not surprise in the lull in the action. We close missionary files when they no longer need any help and can go it on their own. Our goal is to help them be independent and not reliant on our phone calls. For the most part, they are grateful but also don't want to hold someone's hand forever. They are good, strong missionaries for the most part.

     On Tuesday evening we had a long but good ward council (Gemeinderat) in Offenbach. I didn't get out of there until after 10 p.m. and got home after 10:30 p.m. The council is beginning to catch the spirit of reactivation and fellowship and missionary work. One can feel it and see it in their faces and hear it in the comments they make. This makes us happy. Sister Biddulph and I continue to visit a young Burmese woman and her 18-month old son, Jon, who live just across the street from the church building Gemeindehaus. Her name is Judith. She had an operation this past week and we stopped in during Sunday School hour to see her and drop off a box of chocolate. Happily, she is doing better, although her little Jon was a bit feverish.

     We have two new senior couples assigned to our Offenbach branch: the Walkers and the Galbraiths. Elder Galbraith was also in the Marine Corps and flew helicopters. We found several connections, including Byron Galbraith with whom I grew up in Rexburg, Idaho, and Jackson Howard with whom I was commissioned into the Marines out of BYU and who was killed in an air-to-air collision of helicopters many years ago.

Monument in Hauptfriedhof

     We enjoy talking with many of our children each week by telephone and sometimes receiving pictures and emails about their doings. We love our family and pray for them. We are concerned for things that are happening back in our home in the United States and also things here in Europe. Surely the world is in commotion. Surely the signs are more clear than ever. Could it be any different than what happened in the Book of Mormon as the signs prophesied by Samuel the Lamanite regarding the birth and death of Jesus Christ? And yet, many people refused to believe the signs until it was too late. We remain profoundly grateful to belong to a church with the restored truth, and to have the sure confidence that we are led by prophets, seers, and revelators, speaking in the name of Jesus Christ. We have supreme confidence in the Lord, and we are determined to follow them through this minefield of a time in our history. I feel absolutely no inclination to push them for women holding the priesthood or same-sex changes in church doctrine. The Lord knows what he is doing, and we are determined to follow him. Follow the Prophet, in this there is safety and peace!!!