Week 17

Our Temple District is in pink. Kaliningrad is in the far northeast portion.

Well the Russians came and the Russians went, but they left behind for us a wonderful appreciation for their commitment.  The Kaliningrad Saints drove for some 18 hours to get to the temple in Freiberg. They faced snowy roads and waited hours at the border before getting permission to enter Germany. With them were a small group of teens who spent every day in the baptistry—asking if they could have two sessions a day.  A handful of younger children came too and parents traded off caring for them and attending temple sessions. The oldest among those who came were the Rumyantsevs who were 54, bringing with them their handicapped son who was thrilled to be able to participate in being confirmed for names for whom others had been baptized. The Chernovs and the Kartashovs looked to be in their early 30s, if that. Among them there were two women and three men who were set apart temple workers. They led sessions in Russian and the German Saints who attended willing donned hearing devices to join with them. Only a couple of the Russian sisters (and none of the men) spoke a little English, but we loved them all.  Sacrificing for the gospel is just part of their lives. I think they are lucky to have it so. Sacrifice hones and polishes character and that shines from their faces. 

Saturday morning three of the young adults were still here, though the others had left late Friday—it was easy to see they were finding it very hard to pull themselves away. We hugged them all and wishes them a safe return journey and sent with them our hope that they would find it possible to come back soon.

This week was also temple review for our new temple presidency. Blake Rosenval, from the Temple Department in Salt Lake City, was to have come but with the sudden death of his mother-in-law he was called home in a hurry and Graham Dunn, recorder of the Preston, England Temple (whom we had met some 15 years ago when we were in England) was sent in Blake’s stead. It was delightful to see him again. Amazingly he immediately remembered John and visited with him briefly, later inviting us to come and visit Preston again, to stay at his home.

It was clear that the presidency was under some pressure as they prepared for the meetings, luncheons, and observations that went on for the two days he was with us.  Our direction, in planning the schedules while Br. Dunn was there was to avoid making any Fehler (mistake)–no pressure there. Making no mistakes in planning is almost an impossibility we find. We make the plans a day ahead of their being used and almost daily when we arrive there are changes that have to be figured out—someone shows up to work who wasn’t in the book, someone else ends up being unable to come at the last minute, little complications—such is the "fun" of our assignment.

It all worked out well though and we all survived this important step for our new presidency and matron.  They do a wonderful job so I had no worries for them, but it was still a stressful time for them, I’m sure.

We continue to plow forward on our Laing genealogical project. We have been greatly blessed to have Helen Follmer, John’s cousin in Montana (isn't the Internet wonderful?), participating with us doing a fabulous job extracting documents so that I can add them to our Laing Family chronology we are preparing. She is so fast it is just terrific. John is continuing to work on the organization of his systems while also numbering and sending me items either to put right into Roots Magic or to send out for extraction among family volunteers. We are so grateful for what Helen is able to do.

Happiness is having Dad make it home to be with me!

We were happy to talk with our kids this week. That always makes our day when we hear from one of them and hear of their activities and the good things they are doing as they grapple with their busy lives.

It was fun to hear that Patrick, who travels with his work, flew home for Anderson's Pinewood Derby event and was there to cheer on his little guys. With Anderson he helped build an elaborate design and wanted  him to wait until he got home to set the wheels but Christian and Anderson couldn't wait so did it themselves. His car didn't win for speed but did for design and, besides, they had a great time trying.

Patrick's happy five

We are very grateful that despite Patrick and Emily going their separate ways this fall, they are maintaining a good communication and putting the happiness of the kids at the top of both their priorities. 

We love this picture Emily sent him of the five in a moment of hilarity.

Chi and David report that Mejai is in the school play this year, A High School Musical, and is more motivated to get his grades up (a requirement of participating). He is one handsome young man, though this shot of his "Nerd Day" look makes it just a little tough to see that.

Adam's foursome!

Adam sent us a wonderful audio clip of Nya playing the guitar and singing to her own accompaniment. She is really showing great talent. Her dad was teaching her but now she is taking lessons, having surpassed him. Kamryn is taking violin as well as piano and we are anxious to hear her perform for us as well. We love our kids and grandkids and are so grateful they are all trying to do things that matter.  

We are very grateful for the Lord's many blessings in our lives. We continue to love serving daily in dem Haus des Herrn.  May your week sparkle!

Week 16

Our week has been a delightful blend of personal mile markers reached and a celebration of dedication and commitment.

Because our temple service doesn’t begin until Tuesday, that day always feels like the first day of the week for us. Sunday? Well, Sunday is our day of joy each week, where we get to talk with one or more of our kids occasionally if it works out with their busy schedules. Then Monday arrives and always feels like a holiday from our normal routines. This last Monday I did the laundry and cleaned our tiny apartment before heading downtown on my bike. Though winter, I didn’t have snow to plow through, though the flakes began falling as I headed up Hainichener Straße’s hill home.  I love it when I am able to get out and ride and this has been a perfect winter for me, though later this week the snows fell and actually stayed on the ground for a couple of days.

Looking forward to John’s birthday on Wednesday, we had rented a movie through I-Tunes, ordered a cable to connect my computer to the HDMI port in the TV, and invited our across-the-hall neighbors to join us. Unfortunately, the cable didn’t work so we postponed our evening.

Tuesday the Chidesters took me to a large electronics store to try to purchase a cable that worked.  I bought the cable and it worked just great in projecting the images but did not convey sound too, so that will be a problem to solve on my next outing. Everything takes extra time but we appreciate those who give us the rides we need when something is beyond my bike access.

Wednesday morning, January 18, we celebrated John’s 67^th birthday, ever grateful that we have been given these marvelous bonus years together.  Overall, his health holds steady and we take each day as it comes, happy to be able to continue to perform our assignments and spend time together working on family history in our spare hours.

We were greeted by our “surprise” gathering outside our door at 6:30 am, a birthday ritual with all the missionaries and presidency. They sang to John and brought him a large temple card, on which each had written a message, as well as a bag of fresh fruit (in lieu of the usual b-day cake) before we all went to the temple to go to work.

Wednesday afternoon we finished up the last session and dashed home to change to Sunday best for the all-temple-worker area meeting at our chapel next door with our Area President, Elder Kopischke, and his wife. It was wonderful to be there together with so many people who serve in our temple whom we have come to love.

Pres and Sister Husz spoke and then the Kopischkes—wonderful happy and enthusiastic people—I was pleased to be able to gather the general idea of what they were talking about. I certainly couldn’t do a translation but I got the drift and felt the Spirit. One of the important focuses of this meeting was to honor four sealers who were each part of the Church during the last decades when they faced enormous challenges leading the Church in the DDR, long before the wall came down. Three of the four were able to attend the meeting. One was in the hospital. We had read many, many stories about one in particular—Brother Henry Burkhardt, whose name is mentioned in nearly every account of the early Church in East Germany and Eastern Europe. Tall and slender still, he is now widowed and nearly blind but we felt the power of his spirit just being in the meeting with him.

From Left: Sis Husz, President, Elder Kopischke, Sis K, Peter Schönherr (our recorder and bishop)

Three of four released sealers--Henry Burkhardt is center

Unique among sealers who often want to continue to serve despite diminishing ability to perform those sacred duties, each of these four had requested they be released since they recognized in themselves their limitations for continued service.  Outstanding in their devotion and endurance, we were honored to be there to observe this monumental day. (John, having been so involved in temple administration for many years, says he had never seen a sealer willingly ask to be released and that having to release a sealer who does not so ask is the hardest thing any temple president ever has to do.) Even in this way these men are remarkable for their service and their devotion to the Church and to the Lord. Brother Burkhardt also served as the first temple president of this temple.  After the meetings we enjoyed a wonderful buffet prepared for the occasion.

A perfect working set up. We love it!

Always trying to use our space in our tiny apartment more effectively, we had a brainstorm to turn our wall-mounted TV into a large monitor to do double duty in order to watch movies and so John could avoid having to lean over to work on his little laptop. Friday morning we talked with the temple engineer to see if it was possible to take the TV (which we never watch anyway) off the wall and mount it on a table stand to use as a monitor. He came that very afternoon and got us all set up. It is wonderful! We are so pleased to have found such a great use for it.

Saturday after our shift our neighbors came for taco salad and a movie. We began at 5:30 and finished up before 8:00 pm. We haven’t worked out the sound problem yet so we had to listen carefully using just my computer speakers but we had a good time anyway. 

After they left I worked on my Gospel Doctrine class on Lehi’s dream for a while before heading for bed, planning to get up early Sunday to finish my preparations. 

We enjoyed our meetings and my Sunday School class went well. We are now meeting at the chapel in a little room the bishop assigned to us and we had three additional folks in the class today—a Romanian sister, who speaks a little English, the second counselor in the bishopric, and his American wife. He speaks wonderful English and they are really a great couple. We enjoyed having them join us. Our small group of nine sat around the table and had a wonderful discussion. I never get over how delightful it is to be able to speak English in a Church meeting!

We were pleased to see Pres. and Sis. Husz in Church since they left Friday midday for a quick trip to Vienna for medical treatments for her. They faced difficult weather conditions going and coming so we were particularly happy they made it back safely after their seven-and-a-half hour drive each way.

Saturday we had done our usual planning for Tuesday’s work but didn’t feel good about printing it since Pres. Husz was the presidency member responsible that day. John called to see if we could connect with them to look over the draft.  Since we had had a couple of people at Church tell us they would not be there for the full day Tuesday, we were glad we had held off. At his invitation we took the plans up and spent a delightful hour with them talking about options on not only the plan but on other temple subjects. They are so delightful. We always enjoy being with them.

We came home, finished and enjoyed dinner and the yummy low-sugar lebkuchen cupcakes Jean Harper had made and delivered to John for a birthday gift.

Next week will be interesting since “The Russians are Coming!” Tuesday evening and will be with us all week. We are hoping a couple of them speak some English!

May your week be as busy and interesting as ours is sure to be.

Week 15

Another week has flown by and brought with it some interesting developments in my assignments at the temple.  

Under Sis Husz’s direction, I put together a systemized program for the sisters and then every Tuesday and Thursday, I stood up and presented the subjects we felt were most important, presenting scriptures, and giving directions on procedures relevant to those topics.

I have been willing to do what I was asked, but admit to feeling awkward in having to an assistant to the matron—our wonderful Sis. Metzner—have to stand by my side and translate for me as I did the training.  Since President Husz called me we have twice been through a full training sequence with the workers.

From the first, Sis Husz had confided in me that it was her plan, once the time was right,  to put her assistants up in front instead of me. This week we talked about it and, with my encouragement, made the shift. They begin doing the training before the sisters next week, moving me into a coaching role. I am delighted. It feels right to put that alignment into its proper place. Now I work with them to help keep the training uniform while also working with them as a support in preparing materials, scheduling new workers for them to teach.  

John is still handling the brethren’s training. He does a really good job.  

Family Home Evening

We enjoyed getting together with the missionaries for a monthly Family Home Evening this week to study the Beatitudes and also having our second English Sunday School class just today, which John taught. The class was announced for the first time in Sacrament Meeting and we had one Romanian sister attend with us, in addition to us two missionary couples—the Chidesters were out of town. John did a great job on the lesson. I am up next week. It is a delight to discuss the gospel in English.

President Husz and our Oberin!

This week John and I had our annual mission interviews with President Husz, It was wonderful to have that hour in the temple with him. We focused together on how we were doing and what we were experiencing and were told how much we were appreciated. It was a very nice experience. We focused on the miracles of our lives that we are very much aware of and grateful for and for the ongoing blessings that come to us and our family because of our missionary service. He also asked us to consider extending our service for six to twelve months. He loses all eight couples within the next eight months. We are the last of those. It takes some five months to process a new missionary couple so he is looking ahead. We agreed to consider six months but do not yet know what would be best. We appreciate his inviting without pushing.  My passport expires by April 13, 2013, so we have to be home by then or I won't get back into the USA. We are thinking about what is best.

Speaking of miracles, we were happy to learn from Adam this week that he had been promoted to the position of sales manager for his company. We are very grateful that each of our sons and son-in-law has good employment in this day of economic challenge. 

Freiberg Temple in its blanket of snow.

We have had snow this week that actually stayed on the ground so it looks and feels like winter. We are very far north and so it is dark by 5:00 PM so we have little or no impetus to go outside, except for an occasional trip for groceries.


We haven’t been out to dinner for ages and don’t miss it. We frankly like our own cooking best. My “unwind” from the temple is to cook and this week I got in the mood to make up a pile of cauliflower pizza crusts, since a favorite of our dinners is pizza—our way.

In case you want to try something delightfully yummy and surprising, I’ll include the recipe and pictures below.

Cauliflower Pizza Crust  (Gluten-free and low-carbohydrate)

       Put pizza stone into cold oven. Preheat oven to 450.  

Cook a cauliflower in florets until just barely tender. Cool and then shred with a grater.  (One head will make 6 round or 12 rectangular crusts, about 5x12 inches each)

 

In a medium bowls, combine

1 cup cooked, riced cauliflower  (Do not pack it in. Just spoon in.)  1 egg 1 cup mozzarella cheese 1 tsp oregano 2 tsp parsley flakes 1/2 tsp ground fennel (opt. I never have it but it would be yummy—adds pizza taste.)

      Press evenly onto parchment paper until very thin but even. (I do this in the two rectangle shapes mentioned since my stone is a rectangle and holds two at once. Make round or rectangle—dependent on the shape of your stone).    

Put pizza stone in oven and let it heat up as the oven heats to 450 degrees.  Slide the parchment paper with the uncooked pizza crusts onto the stone. Bake for 10 minutes then flip the parchment over, putting the pizza onto the stone to brown the underside. Remove paper. When browned, lift the “pizza” crusts off the stone with a pizza paddle and slide onto a cooling rake. Slide in another parchment with the next crust(s) and continue the process until all are baked.  (Once cooled the crusts freeze beautifully until needed.)

To bake a pizza:

Place pizza stone in oven and pre heat oven to 450 degrees.

Top crust with any kind of pizza sauce you want or make your own

2 cans (8 oz.) tomato sauce.

Finished product cooling. Yummy!

1 tsp. oregano

1 tsp. garlic salt 1 T. green chilies, chopped dash of pepper. Spread sauce evenly over crusts. (Freeze leftover sauce for other crusts) Top baked crust with pepperoni slices, browned sausage, hamburger,

olives, mushrooms, vegetables of choice

A lot of grated mozzarella or combination of grated cheeses.

Place in heated oven until cheese is melted and beginning to brown.  

It sounds like a process but it is easy and delicious. Enjoy!

Have a wonderful week. We plan to. (I have no idea how this entry ended up with such a big font and I don't know how to reduce it so it will just need to stand out as an ugly duckling among the trimmer entries. Sigh. Have a good week anyway.)

Week 14

With the New Year well under way, this month is flying by! Our week was super busy but also rewarding in several ways. We have loved hearing from our kids and even receiving emailed movie clips from Patrick so we can see our fast-growing Portland grandkids. We finally received our delayed gifts from home and appreciate each thoughtful item. We love spreading out a holiday and this one certainly was. 

The other day I was talking with Sister Husz, our matron, about Christmas traditions and she described their Christmases with their children and they sounded really appealing. Gift giving was spread out over several days--beginning Christmas Eve when each child received one gift. The next day there was another gift, a process that went on for a couple of more days. The focus each day was on enjoying that item rather than getting caught up in the sense of "is this all?" It was interesting to hear about it. In good German tradition, they don't set up their tree until Christmas Eve but then leave it up until after January 6th--the day they call "Three Kings Day." 

The temple, as always, was at the center of our week and we enjoy serving there as we continue in our assignments of scheduling the work done and planning and training the temple workers. John does a great job with presenting in German and I continue to use the assistant to the matron as my interpreter each time. She is an amazing translator and a wonderful person.  She and her husband are from Darmstadt and are good friends with President and Sister Uchtdorf.  We are also busy writing and editing the training guides.

The president and matron are in the center, flanked by counselors and assistants

Thursday evening all the missionaries went to the president’s apartment to have a group photo taken, which is very nice to have. Elder AJ Kingsford, who used to be in the family history mission and is here serving as the assistant recorder, used to do all the missionary photo shoots in SLC, hauled his camera along with him and we are happy he did. Nice to have skillful people here. While in the Family History Mission he also served as the leader of the British zone, so he is a good one to have around as we work on our own family history.

And that is exactly what we have been doing, every minute we can squeeze into our schedule. We have received such a load of documents via email and flash drive from John’s distant cousin, Hugh Laing, with whom we toured the Puslinch, Wellington, Ontario, Canada, area on our way home from China, and we are finally making some really headway in controlling and organizing the deluge.

John has been busy cataloging all the items according to record type and then passing them along to me to begin inputting them into our Laing chronology or directly into Roots Magic—whenever we can tell where they fit.  Often we work side by side with John reading from his laptop while I enter the information—much more effective than my having to toggle back and forth. My memory is a sieve and by the time I look up something and go to type it in, I can’t remember anything! We miss our extra monitors but manage OK for now, working together. We are trying to get to the point in the next couple of days to ship off copies of documents to cousins and others who are interested in helping with extraction.

It has been particularly satisfying to have found a number of little lost souls—information about babies who died and who have never shown up in our family records. We know that as we continue to work there will be other exciting discoveries in building these families. It was exciting for us to also actually have cards to take to the temple for once.

For the last several years, John and I have not given each other Christmas gifts—there just isn’t much in the way of things that either of us wants. Instead we enjoy experiences together. This year was like that too. No gifts for each other but we enjoyed our trip to Munich. But we have now given each other a belated gift we are really enjoying—a subscription to Ancestry.com. From it we are finding a wealth of information to support our research project. This scribbled document may not look like Christmas to you but it sure feels like it to us!

The other interesting part of our week has been the launch of our English Gospel Doctrine class, which began yesterday. We got permission to hold it, taking turns teaching, so that we can enjoy actually discussing the gospel, not just trying to guess at what the teacher is saying in Deutsch. It is amazing how much we have missed being able to do so. Thus far only six missionaries attended but next week the bishop will announce the class and we may even get some of the other ward members to attend as well—there are a number of American girls here who have married Germans. They speak German but perhaps would enjoy a taste of English too.  We go to sacrament meeting (in German, of course), then over to the missionary room for Sunday School, and back to Relief Society and priesthood in the church building. This new start has really brought a lift to our Sunday.

We hope you are enjoying this astonishing New Year. We are determined to make the most of it and savor every day.

Alles Gute.

Week 13--Happy New Year 2012

Resident's permit. Nope not me:)

I neglected to mention that the day before Christmas Eve, we became official residents of Germany having been fingerprinted, signe VISA d a stack of official documents I couldn’t read, paid out a steep 220 Euro tab for the two of us, and picked up our official cards that permit our staying in Europe past the 90 days any visitor is allowed. The cards arrived just in the nick of time for us to leave for Munich last week. The recorder had been told our visas weren’t there and we would need to come in to apply for an extension—our expiration date was the day after Christmas. One of the missionaries drove us out to the less-than-convenient office. When we got there, however, we were greeted with a Christmas miracle: between the time of the recorder’s call and our arrival, the mail had been delivered bringing a stack of visa cards, ours among them. We breathed a sigh of relief. We are now good for our year and beyond.

We were happy to find this week the temple was a little busier than last. It is, of course, wonderful to enjoy the peace and quiet that can be found there, but it has been a bit too quiet of late. We were delighted to welcome those who felt that being in the temple was a wonderful way to conclude their year. We couldn’t agree more.

We love the light of the temple spilling forth

John and I have managed to fit in a little time working on family history trying to organize and begin sifting through the hundreds of wonderful resources he has been receiving from his distant Canadian cousin Hugh Laing who inherited a tin-box of documents triggering a hunger to know more and find more. Though he may not fully understand it, there is no doubt he is experiencing the Spirit of Elijah and the whole Laing family is benefiting from it. John and I decided working together on the deluge was more fun and will lead to our accomplishing more. Several Laing cousins have expressed interest in being part of working on the tasks at hand.

Our week’s service was supposed to have been shortened with the temple closed on New Year’s Eve. Instead Freiberg became host to a youth conference of some 80+ young people from all over Germany, Austria, and a few beyond those borders. The Herberge was crowded with beds in every corner, even the children’s room.

Beds, beds, everywhere!

President Husz had made the temple available to them for both baptisms, for those who were unendowed, and an endowment session for those eligible. It was marvelous to have so many young people anxious to spend their New Year’s Eve in such sacred service. Their enthusiasm for the gospel and the temple was a delight.

Following the Saturday temple activities we joined the other missionary couples for a soup and salad supper, a movie, for those capable of staying awake and those who could follow the German. Unable to do either, John and I in our usual way came home and turned in for the night early. But, those who know us well, will be surprised to hear that we didn’t stay in bed for the night. After a good two hour “nap” we turned out of our warm covers, got on our warm woolies and met the Chidesters for an outing to the area near Frauenstein for a Sylvester’s (what the German’s call NY Eve) celebration in an old, old church, to welcome in 2012.

In Freiberg we have little snow—not like last year’s three-foot drifts that stayed for months. We have had only a skiff or two. Our Sylvester’s drive, however, took us up the Erzgebirge mountains and the pines along the route were heavy with snow. Hallmark would have loved the scenes we drove through in the dark night with stars sparkling overhead of quaintly lighted villages below.

Nussen Church in the snow on Sylvester

Nussen with Candles glowing on New Years Eve

The little church that was our destination was a charming old building with light streaming from its bell tower above. We helped each other up the hill to enter and found ourselves in an old world. We were greeted by the padre, who wore Luther-like robes and cap, a real pine-bough advents wreath with candles glowing and a huge Christmas tree with real candles lit for the evening’s festivities.

Chidesters had warned us to dress warm since central heat would not be a part of this building but as we sat close to each other we felt warmth beneath us and found that a little glass-tube heating rod had been installed under the benches. We were pleasantly warm throughout.

After the preacher had greeted us, the organ with its flutes in glorious tone boomed forth and the organ master delighted us with his skills. We learned that we were listening to the organist from Frauenstein who had stepped in—the musician we came to hear had fallen and broken his arm at 4:00 that afternoon.  Though sorry to hear of his accident, we enjoyed the wonderful skills of his replacement.

The organ was behind and above us

I love the Moravian star above, the tree, and candles

After a short concert, we listened with delight to the enthusiastic vespers sermon from the Pfarrer. Though what he said was beyond my German ability, I loved the spirit he exuded and the whole atmosphere.  A couple of additional lively organ pieces followed until midnight, when the bells rang out overhead and fireworks that would have made our Chinese friends feel at home, exploded in the night air.

We bundled out of the building as the bells pealed and made our way through the clouds of firework smoke to climb back in Chidester’s little blue car and we all rode home happy. It has to be the first time we have been up until 1:00 am on New Years Eve in 20 years or more. We were happy to have made the effort to join in the outing.

Welcome 2012! May it be a wonderful year for you all.