Dear Family,
Wow, what a week this has been!! Dad is determined to work hard right up to the end of our mission and that’s what we’ve done this week. I think he forgets that we still have to pack and clean our apartment. I’ve threatened him with his life if he makes any appointments for next Friday and Saturday!! But the harder we work, the faster the time goes and the excitement for getting home and seeing all of you again grows more each day.
Tomorrow is Saturday again already. It’s a Saturday we’ve looked forward to for over a month as it’s the day we take Alex to the get his Patriarchal blessing. He is so excited about getting it and seems so grateful that we offered to take him to get it. It’s about 50 miles to where he goes to get it. He does that at 3 o’clock in the afternoon then at 5 o’clock is the evening session of stake conference. They are showing the broadcast of the worldwide leadership training meeting and have requested that all the missionaries be there as well as everyone else in the stake 18 and older. I’ve heard nothing but positive things about it so we’re looking forward to it. We have a teaching/dinner appointment at 11:00 that morning then its back to Wurzburg, pick up Alex and the Elders and head for Erlangen. Sunday will be a regional broadcast with Elder Perry conducting. I’m sure that will be a wonderful meeting. Following conference the ward is having a “linger longer” for the Merkleys, a military family who are leaving and for Elder and Sister Price. So that will be a busy, wonderful day, our last full Sunday here.
We have to be in Munich at 2 o’clock the next Sunday for our final interview with President Rakow and to finish up all the little details at the mission office so we will just go to Sacrament meeting then leave. Sunday evening we will have dinner at the mission home and we will spend the night there. The elders who are going home with us will stay in a motel not far from there. We leave for the airport at 6:50 AM. That’s going to be a long day!! In the letter from President Rakow giving us all this information he told us that we would be missionaries until we have been released by our Stake president and expects us to conduct ourselves as such. That included how we dress. There goes my dream of waking up Tuesday morning and putting on my Levi’s! But missionaries play games and they laugh and have a good time and senior missionaries don’t have a specific bedtime so we’re expecting to join in all the fun when we’re together in Utah. But it does make me want to get home as soon as we can and have our interview with President Cutler. We’ll probably leave fairly early Wednesday afternoon and try to see him that evening. I think the stake presidency sign temple recommends on Wednesday so maybe we could sneak in then. Whatever—I’m just looking forward to no panty hose!!!
We’ve had a good week. We had another meeting today with the couple I told you about last week----the one where she is from Brazil and he is from Germany. They are such a neat couple and are so excited about their baby that is due in June. It’s fun teaching them. I should tell you that Dad does most of the teaching. Diana, the wife, is picking up German quite well and Jurgen, the husband, is very good and very patient as he explains to her what we’re saying. She is a member and is loving the chance to talk about the church. They have been reading in the Book of Mormon this week.. He calls the Book of Mormon the Bible and said they have enjoyed reading together. We have an appointment with them next Friday------forget the threat I made to Dad-----and then we’ll have to let someone else work with them. We have another appointment with Leng, the lady from China, tomorrow. She just seems like a member of the ward already. She’s been to church for the last 6 weeks and is very friendly with everyone. She does better communicating with people each week. We hate to leave her to someone else too but that’s what happens when your time is up! Tim Palmer is making great progress. He just called and asked about the stake conference meeting tomorrow night. He wants to go and asked if we knew of anyone who needed a ride. The Elders quorum president asked us last night if he could ride with us and we have no room so when Tim called, Dad told him to call Brother Pinder. He’s an awesome man and it will be good for Tim to get better acquainted with him. When we finished our meeting with Ron Peterson and told him that would be the last time we would be able to meet with him, tears came to his eyes. Then tears came to my eyes. Every week we drive up to his house my stomach goes in knots. His wife just plain frightens me. She can be so mean and so cutting. But all was well this week because she wasn’t there. She did call the night before and asked Dad to bring some of the information we had talked about when her Jehovah Witness friends were with us a few weeks ago. I thought she was going to be there and it would be another loud battle. I’m just thankful for small favors. Out meeting went really well. Ron told us that he was really thankful that we’ve stuck with him this past year and he has come to realize that the church is important and wants to overcome his smoking and become active again. He was brought up in the church and went to church every week before he joined the army. Now he wonders why he quit going. But it’s not too late and he is just a super guy. We were very disappointed last night when we met with Sister Meyers and went over some very basic things about the church. She admitted that she just plain doesn’t believe that Joseph Smith really did see our Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ. She also admitted that she doesn’t read and she doesn’t pray regularly. How we hope that someday she will feel a need to gain a testimony and do whatever is necessary to do so. Her dear husband wants more than anything for them to be sealed in the temple. He gets tears in his eyes when she says things like she did last night. We just hope she will continue to come to church and that one day something will touch her that helps her want to gain her own testimony.
Saturday night the Young Single Adults had a going away party for us. There were 11 there. They had fun food and we just sat around the table and talked for nearly 2 hours. Then they had Dad and I sit on the couch and each one of them gave us a small gift that we would remember them by and a tribute to us. Nearly every one of them thanked us for bringing them all together-----that until we came and started having regular Family Home Evenings and institute classes that they weren’t really very close. Now they all feel like they are best friends and are so close knit. We can’t take the credit. When we were sent to Wurzburg, President Rakow told us to make the young single adults our primary concern and that’s what we’ve tried to do. They are just really neat kids. Working with them has been another highlight of our mission. We’re going to miss them but will try to stay in touch. We gave them strict orders to send us wedding announcements!! One of them is getting married this summer.
Sunday we were invited to dinner at the Rosels. She is the Relief Society president. Her husband is not a member. Their son in now in Russia serving a mission and they are so proud of him. Mr. Rosel promised his son that he would read the Book of Mormon. He has already finished that and is reading the D&C now. He is another fantastic person. Sister Rosel is just a go getter! The bishop always kids about “talk to Sister Rosel” if you need to know about someone in the ward. They also have a beautiful daughter who is just finishing up her schooling in Stuttgart. She too is very active. They are just a wonderful family. We’ve met so many great people here. I can’t let myself think about them too much. I’ve shed almost as many tears on this end of our mission as I did on the front end.
I’ll have to admit that it’s a bit difficult staying focused on our work this close to our release. When the young missionaries get transferred or when their mission is over, they just pack their bags and leave. It’s a big different have an apartment to clean and leave a detailed list of people we are working with, directions to their houses, etc. We found out today that the couple who are taking our place won’t be here until a few days after we leave. We had blocked off next Thursday and Friday to spend with showing them around and talking with them about the people we are working with. I guess she had some kinds of medical problem and now they don’t know for sure when they will come. We’re scrambling to figure out how the bases will be covered until they do get here. We just hope it isn’t too long. No, we wouldn’t extend even for a few more days!!! But we haven’t been asked to do that and I doubt we would be. I find myself driving along thinking about seeing all of you again instead of thinking about what we’re going to talk about when we get to our next appointment. I hope that’s a normal thing to be doing.
I’ll draw this to a close for now. I have just one more letter to write from Germany. It just doesn’t seem possible. I thought at one time that it would never end but it is ending and it seems like the time has just flown by. We will always be grateful for these 18 months and the experiences we have had. I feel we’ve all been blessed by our coming on this mission and I know for sure that “absence makes the heart grow fonder”. I can’t even begin to put into words how much I look forward to seeing each one of you again. That will be soon!
Much love,Mon
