Russell and Eileen's Church Missions: FIRST WEEK IN GERMANY

We arrived in Frankfurt on Saturday April 30^th after leaving Atlanta the night before. It was a beautiful spring day, which immediately reminded me of the two years we lived in Brussels.

We have been called to serve as the Europe Area Welfare Specialists. This means that we will be working with 11 to 12 other couples who are serving in individual countries from the Czech Republic on the north to Greece on the south and east to Moldova, plus Cape Verde off the west coast of Africa. We will work with the couple’s to help them develop humanitarian projects and get them approved by the Area Presidency in Frankfurt. We will also spend a substantial amount of our time dealing with the many financial and clerical tasks necessary to keep the work moving forward. This position has the disadvantage of not being right on the ground working with the projects (as we did in Indonesia) but the advantage of being able to see and work with may more projects from a large number of countries. Another BIG advantage is being able to serve in a location where you are not so isolated from other senior missionaries. We have two dozen other couples here serving in a variety of technical and supervisory roles for medical, LDS Family Services, physical facilities, young single adults, audit, etc. In addition to providing technical support to the 11 or 12 Welfare couple we will be assisting, we are always mindful of how isolated most of these couples are. Supporting them with our friendship may be one of the most important things we do.

This week and part of next week we have the opportunity to be taught by Elder and Sister Sharpe on how to fill our role here. We will have less than two weeks of on-the-job training by our predecessors and right now we are feeling a bit unprepared to take over. We appreciate the Sharpes and their patience with us as we try to learn. Thursday of this week was Ascension Day, a public holiday here. Everything was closed down for the holiday. The Germans religiously observe their religious holidays, and most did not work Friday making it a four-day weekend. Since we have so little overlap with the Sharpes, we worked Thursday and a half day on Friday. We spent a few hours Friday afternoon with two other couples walking through the Frankfurt botanical gardens. It was a fun opportunity to have a change of pace at the end of a frantic first week here.

Just a block from our apartment is the Hauptfriedhof cemetery, the largest cemetery in Frankfurt. It is approximately a mile long and half a mile wide. What makes this cemetery unique for me is that it is in a forest. Each morning Eileen and I go for a walk between 6 and 7 am together there. It is both beautiful and serene. Eileen’s leg is getting stronger and she is walking almost normally now.

On Monday this week we saw a post on Facebook from our son-in law with pictures of damage caused by high winds in Centerville. There was a picture of a trampoline wrapped around a telephone pole, photo of tree branches broken off Jessica’s trees and a photo of a large quaking aspen that had fallen. Eileen responded on Facebook by saying, “Are you kidding me, is that your back yard? We had the tree guy come and prune the trees at our home just in time.” Then I said to her, “No that is our house.” Fortunately for us, some of our neighbors (Shane Smoot and Mike Nyborg in particular) came over and helped the tree fall away from our house, and then cut up and removed the tree from our yard.

We have thoroughly enjoyed our first week here and look forward to learning all aspects of our calling.