Coming Home

     Well, we're coming down to the end of things here in Freiburg. It is deeply humbling to have such continued affection expressed by those around us, but that also has its lighter side: lots of folks are filling up our social calendar the last month in the form of dinner invitations. We, too, have made it a point to see as much of the missionaries as possible. Which brings us to another point.

    Back in July and August, an awful lot of missionaries went home, with very few replacements coming in. One of the upshots of that was that Freiburg lost her sister missionaries, who live one floor above us. President Martin Bates had to spread his missionaries a bit thinner among three countries. Leesa and I felt the loss of the sisters immediately. Our lives became just a bit less joyful, and we missed our "granddaughters."

    On a happier note, we got to hobnob with all the senior missionary couples one last time at our Fall Senior Couples Conference, this time in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, a world-famous ski resort. The Edelweiss Lodge and Resort is reserved for American military use, but we had a contact in the Munich International Ward, who got us in for two nights. 

    Another terrific thing was I finally got to reunite with Elder John Christian Fjeldsted, who was my first mission companion after I transferred from Frankfurt to the Switzerland Zürich mission back in October of 1977. He and I only spent two weeks together, but we were there for the Fateful Fondue Chinoise Dinner put on by Werner and Nelly Riesen, described in an earlier blog post. John and his bride Trudy live not far from us in Mountain View, CA, in the S.F. Bay area. They are currently assigned to labor in Bruck an der Mur, Austria.

with Elder John C. Fjeldsted

    

with Pres. Martin Bates & Donna at the Garmisch Conference

    Owing to the fact that Freiburg had lost her sister missionaries back in July, I took this occasion to ask Pres. Bates about a possible return in the November transfer. He said it was doubtful, as other areas needed missionaries to return as well. Leesa and I were duly bummed, but it's not our mission to run, thank heavens.

    November rolled around, and I heard from Elder Dawdy, our District Leader, that we would, in fact, be getting sisters back in November. Best news we could possibly have received! And what a companionship we got! Sister Eva Malonos is from the Ukraine, and a more dynamic missionary doesn't exist. Her companion, Madison Kearns, was a brand-new sister from Lehi, Utah. Together, they have energized the area, the district, and the ward. For our part, we were just happy to have them back in our lives, mostly so we could spoil the snot out of them.

    And spoil we did. Any excuse to which we could resort was dreamt up just to be around them and enjoy their abundant vivacity. Desserts, leftover food, printing stuff out on our printer, you name it, we did it. Which brings me to Thanksgiving dinner. For the rest of Americans, Thanksgiving is held on the fourth Thursday of November, this year being the 28th. But since we were due to clear out of our apartment on the 30th, we knew we had to hold it sooner. 

    So, weeks (months?) earlier, I decided on Monday, the 18th. Like the previous year, my first move was to order two turkeys from our butcher, Angela Pum of Metzgerei (meat market) Pum, which she owns with her husband. Raised in the Black Forest, these birds couldn't have been fresher, and were indeed alive the day before I picked them up. I brined them for two days in a mixture of fruit juices, peppercorn, orange peel, cloves, coarse salt, and brown sugar.

    They would be accompanied by most of the usual Thanksgiving sides, like stuffing, sweet potato casserole (from Debbie Dickson), mashed potatoes, green beans (sautéed in bacon and onions, not that horrible canned mushroom soup), AND topped off by Swiss Apple pie and Sister Holt's amazing pumpkin pie. The Holts are the senior couple in Lörrach, about 40 minutes away, close to the Swiss border, and we were also joined by Debbie and John Dickson, another couple stationed in Ravensburg, about two hours east of us, near the Bodensee. Along with Lahr Elders Koller and Bettinger, and Bad Säckingen Elders Packard and Clegg, and four Freiburg missionaries, we had a robust 14 people around our table.

    In the run-up to the last few weeks of our mission, a fair number of members invited us over to eat "one last time," and one of these families was Nicolas and Stephie Gehlert, with their three children Lily, 8; Louis, 6; and Colin, 4. Nico is the Elders Quorum president, and we share something in common: a passion for smoking meat. He prepared the main course of that night's dinner with smoked ribs, a wonderful smoked brisket, and burnt ends made of venison. 

    The real treat, though, sprang upon us very literally when we entered. All three children were in a mood, and we roughhoused with them from the moment we sat down until the moment Stephie called us to dinner. I hadn't had a good pillow fight with children since we'd left granddaughters Clair and June in February of 2023. They were all over the place, making sneak attacks (some of which got through). It was a riot and a half, and something I'd missed for a long time.

    Interspersed through all the social engagements was the ongoing task of deep-cleaning and preparing our apartment for our eventual successors, a series of tasks which we had come to view with some trepidation. But we started in on them early enough, like cleaning windows, the oven (after all the pies, pizzas, and cheesecakes I'd made), and by the time our last week began, we discovered that we had gotten them all done, leaving us to thoroughly enjoy our final days in Freiburg. Time itself felt doubly dilated. The time was going fast, true, but it also slowed curiously down, enabling us to savor each day.

    I said my goodbyes to the local tradespeople: Manny, Liz, Jürgen, and Jessica from the local Edeka supermarket. Since I was the main cook, I was also the main grocery-getter. And I had to say goodbye to Ibrahim, my barber up the street from Iran.

with Manny, who routinely made fun of all my huge grocery purchases, necessitated by our commitment to make a weekly meal for the Young Adults at Institute. 

with Liz, a sweet girl with very good English, and who called me her "favorite customer."

with Jürgen, who so often helped me find obscure ingredients to make recipes the Young Adults loved.

with Jessie (Jessica), who always had time to chat a bit while she restocked the shelves.

with Ibrahim, my Iranian barber, soft-spoken, kind, and very consistent and talented in his work.

    I suppose it may reasonably be asked why I include all these good people in this blog. Maybe they didn't have much to do with the so-called "highlights" of our mission, but they were the people I interacted with week in and week out, in the course of doing my calling. And there was something deeper.

    When I was called to my first mission, Germany Frankfurt, in March of 1976, I had but a single year's membership in the Church. I was immature for my age, immature in life, and immature in the Gospel of Jesus Christ, yet the Lord saw fit to call me anyway. To describe myself at that period of time, I am fond of the phrase, "greener than spinach."

    One of the qualities that the Lord desires for his missionaries to develop is a sincere and thoroughgoing love for the people whom he serves. While I was able to do that with with some people from 1976 to 1978, the quality was far from comprehensive, and didn't stretch to ALL the people with whom I lived and associated.

    45 years later, when the Lord prompted us to serve again, my Number One goal was to "love like there's no tomorrow." Leesa had learned this lesson on her first mission to Germany, but now was my turn to really make a difference. And I have to say, despite myself, that I have achieved that goal in full. Even the people with whom I had, in a spiritual sense, little in common. I will always treasure the friendships I made with these people.

    Our final night in Freiburg, we were out of the apartment and into a hotel. I wanted to bring our Freiburg missionaries together for one last meal, along with our committed and endlessly enthusiastic ward mission leader, Andreas Andrich and his bride, Astrid. We had a terrific time at our favorite Freiburg restaurant, Waldrestaurant St. Valentin, only 15 minutes away from our apartment, but in the middle of thick forest.

    Missionaries of the Alpine German-speaking Mission have a good tradition is "Tschüss Books." "Tschüss" is German slang for "See ya later," and the books are blank diaries. When a missionary is transferred out of an area, or goes home, they all write a farewell in each other's books. By the end of one's mission, it has a lot of wonderful memories.

    So this night, after we'd ordered, we all wrote one last time in each other's Tschüss books, and it was a memorable experience.

    The next morning, Sunday, December 1st, we attended our final Sacrament meeting. Bishop Winterhalder had asked us to speak, and I told a story. We first got to Freiburg on Wednesday, March 15th, 2023. The next night was ward council, and two nights later there was an Elders Quorum fireside. Though I didn't understand all that was spoken in those two meetings, Leesa and I fully grasped the intensity of the Holy Spirit in them both.

    These were Saints who were united in one goal: to help every soul make a step closer to the Temple and to their Savior. I saw people in deep spiritual longing to become just a little bit better in order to fulfill that common goal. At the Saturday evening fireside, I took a napkin and started writing the names of the brethren present, more or less in the order in which they were seated around the room. I wanted to learn their names as quickly and as thoroughly as possible.

    I kept that napkin on my nightstand for the entirety of our mission, and I brought it with me to our final Sacrament meeting and held it up. "These are my heroes. They are Priesthood holders who are united and who seek nothing but to bless the lives of those around them. And if I had to make one of these up for the sisters in the ward, I'd need a tablecloth." I further told them that this napkin, once we'd arrived home, would be framed and mounted in our office, where it will always be in my line of sight.

Promise kept.

    One of the traditions of the Freiburg ward occurs at the close of Sacrament meeting on certain occasions, namely, when longtime members relocate. In our case, we were going home. After the closing hymn and prayer, the members stand up and sing "Gott sei mit Euch bis Aufswiedersehen," or "God be with you till we meet again."

    Every soul stood and turned toward Leesa and me. I couldn't sing; I was too emotionally overcome. But I did look around the room and met every eye, seeing the love in every single of them. 

    We drove to Munich immediately afterward, and the next morning, endured a 33-hour day flying home to a family who wanted us home very badly. We celebrated with food, naturally.

God be with you all until we meet again.