Week 47

Gisela Metzner--translator extraordinaire

We have had an interesting Sunday.  John was assigned to play the organ in sacrament meeting and I always go up to sit near him so he doesn’t fall off the organ bench or down the stairs at the end of the meeting. 

While sitting there, minding my own business, the main speaker—a counselor in the stake presidency—asked if I would be willing to bear my testimony about the blessings of our missionary service in the temple before he would speak. I was happy to do it, as long as he didn’t mind my doing so in English, since I had no time to employ John in translating something I could read. He was happy to have me speak auf Englisch and Sis Metzner, was asked to translate for me. (She is one of the current assistants to the matron and is a marvelous simultaneous translator. She always helped me when I was doing the sisters’ training in the temple). It felt very comfortable to have her by my side again. I spoke of the blessing John’s dad has been in our life, of his funeral this last Monday, and the legacy of service and love he left us as well as  the blessing being here has been for us.

After our meetings, we spent the afternoon in a very German fashion, having been invited to Brother and Sister Dzierzon’s home for dinner. Their home was quiet and peaceful, the visiting pleasant (though the usual challenge for me trying to grasp all the Deutsch), and the food delicious. Theirs is a wonderful family of four married sons and one married daughter. Three of their sons have married American girls--and all of them and their families, plus their sister's family, live in our Freiberg ward. Their one other son is inactive right now. 

Dzierzons

When we get invited to dinner, we always let our hosts know in advance that we don’t eat sugar, so that they don’t go to the trouble of making something elaborate that we can’t eat. After a yummy dinner of chicken with zucchini and paprika peppers in an herbed sauce (a little like a cooked version of Chinese haystacks), we enjoyed a wonderfully light dessert of fresh blueberries and strawberries in homemade black berry sauce with pudding and whipped cream—everything sweetened with Stevia. It was just perfect.

Out for our walk between desserts!

After dinner we were shown their garden and then went for a walk together (John on his Nordic sticks that I had brought along) around their wonderful area with its green paths. We had delightfully cool weather with a hint of fall in the air. We returned to their home planning to tell them goodbye and walk home, when we learned we still had Kuchen and Caffee (“Pero” for those who know it) to enjoy together before our visit was over. Sis Dzierzon brought out a stunning yogurt/peach Kuchen (sweetened again with Stevia) and so we sat down to have our second dessert in the same afternoon, proceeded by a second blessing of thanks.

Dessert #2. Yummy!

The dessert tasted just as good as it looked and was beautifully presented on lovely plates. Now fuller than we had been in some time, even skipping the encouraged second helpings, we headed out, accompanied once more by our hosts, on the 25-minute walk back home.  We enjoyed everything about our visit. Arriving home, we promptly went to bed for an hour to recover! I can see that our style of having someone come to dinner must seem very rushed to a European since it doesn't generally last 5 hours! 

The rest of our week has been memorable with the 90+ Hungarian Saints keeping us busy at the temple from Tuesday through Friday evening. Many of these folks will not come again until November, so we once more felt a tug of loss as we hugged them goodbye, knowing we wouldn’t see them again. After the groups leave, generally late on Friday, Saturday can feel really quiet with only a handful of local patrons but this week was an exception. The Berlin Stake had scheduled a Relief Society conference and brought a bus with more than 80 sisters and a handful of brethren for the second and third sessions. Wow! Were we busy!

John with the Huszes

In addition to overflowing endowment sessions, we held multiple initiatories and sealing sessions and the baptistry was equally busy with those unendowed. Everywhere in the temple was hummin!  Many of those who came were older sisters who can no longer manage to get to the temple on their own. It was a wonderful—though a very busy day. John and I came home happy but exhausted and had just lain down for a much needed nap when the phone rang at 4:00 with Pres. Husz on the other end of the line saying “Come dine with us. We leave in 10 minutes.” John dragged himself out of bed, took two Excedrin (instead of his nap), got dressed again, and went with them to Himmel and Hölle once more (Sis Husz’s favorite restaurant!). We enjoyed their company and the wonderful light dinner. Having revived, we came home to catch up on emails.

One of those emails was from a couple from our Chinese branch in Xi’an announcing that they would be sealed in the Salt Lake Temple the end of September. We are so excited for them.  Ning Ning’s was the one Chinese-national’s baptism we had in our little branch. She and her beloved, much older, husband have waited over a year to have the way paved for them to be sealed. Though we would love to join them on this wonderful upcoming occasion, we will miss it, but at their request, John arranged with a friend of ours, Gary Garff, to perform their special sealing. We also enjoyed a phone visit with Julie Monson, our RS president in the branch in Xi'an, now home in SLC, to try to coordinate things for the Judds.

We continue to walk daily and are so grateful that John’s legs are strengthening a little as we do so. He wobbles a lot without his sticks but with them gets along fairly well. We like keeping track of our progress with my pedometer and some days have gone as far as 3+ miles.

We have also begun figuring what we are going to ship home, give away, or carry back with us. It may seem a little early, but it is our way to think forward so we are not rushed in preparing. Br. Hauck was here from Hungary for part of this week—he is our one Hungarian sealer. He kept very busy with sealings on the two days he was here. We had one session where one sister was sealed to her deceased husband, then her son to her and his father, then two couples, each with a child made sacred covenants together.  

Br. Hauck--Hungarian sealer

Before he headed home, we arranged to leave get him our massage table and other equipment. He is a dear, dear man. So many in Hungary are very poor (as are those in the other Eastern European countries) so we are very happy to leave anything we don’t need for him to distribute.

In three weeks our temple will close for its semi-annual maintenance, we will lose both counselors in the temple presidency, and, immediately after, have two new ones come. We have been asked to help train the ones coming.

As I write today, we are snug in our little apartment, listening to an early-fall rainstorm this evening. This next week ends with the arrival of September! Where has this summer gone?!