Elders Zenger & Vincent playing chess in the back seat of the van on the way home from Freiburg. Another one of those Zurich cow statues.

SEPTEMBER 17, 2009 THURSDAY

Zone Conference today was in Freiburg, Germany, so it required that we be up, dressed, and at the Stettbach Bahnhof by 7:30 to catch a ride with the missionaries in the mission van. When we got on the tram at our stop, Elders Harris and Nilsson were already on it so we all rode together. Gerd Weiss, a member, got on at Heerenwiesen and we talked with him the rest of the way to Stettbach. He was on his way to work. The van was waiting there when we arrived so we all got in and away we went. Elder Richeson drove and the others in the van besides ourselves were Elders Carrier, Vincent, Harris, Nilsson, and Dockstader. It was a long drive (2 hours) on a foggy dreary morning, but the company was great.

What can we say about zone conferences? The first part is the introduction of the new missionaries in our zone, followed by a statistical analysis of our goals/achievement regarding baptisms, baptism dates, lessons given and lesson given with a member present. President Matern taught us for an hour interspersed with video clips from a Preach My Gospel video on how to plan and work with the Ward Mission Leader and the missionary correlation council. He is always an inspirational teacher and teaches doctrine out of the scriptures. Part of his talk was taking a scripture from the bible and then using a scripture from the Book of Mormon to clarify them to illustrate how important the BM is and how we can us it to teach. For example, Romans 3:28 talks only about faith being necessary to be saved; James 2:14 talks about faith being dead without works to go along with it. This seems to be a contradiction unless you take them both together. It’s more completely explained in 2 Nephi 25:23 in that we are saved by grace after all we can do.

Following Pres. Matern, came the three separate workshops. All three of them were concurrent and all the missionaries were supposed to be divided up into three equal groups and then rotate from one to the other. We were in charge of the one on the BM using chapter 5 of the Preach My Gospel. In each of our session Diana began by giving them one minute to write down at least ten stories out of the BM, had them draw a question out of a jar and use one of their stories to teach the principle while answering the question. She also asked them give a scripture cite to help answer the question. Some of them were a little stumped and Diana skillfully helped them be successful in completing the task. Diana’s attitude was that every answer was a good one and, in reality, they were, although she helped some be become better. She did a great job and used up most of the time allotted to us for each session which made me happy. I came in on the end and summarized what we wanted to accomplish with this exercise. As missionaries we need to be conversant with stories in the BM to help people understand how to use the book to find solutions to their particular situations or concerns and to help bring the book alive so they will read it. It doesn’t do any good to place a book and then not have the person ever read it. I also introduced a marking guide in which certain scriptures are underlined throughout the BM so a person can quickly read these to understand what the book is about and, hopefully, feel the Spirit bear testimony and get interested in reading it front to back.

Our first group had nine in it which is one more than what we expected. And all spoke English so all went well. The second group came in and there were 13 in this one, one of which spoke only German. This changed everything because now we had to do everything in German instead of English. Diana didn’t miss a beat and, although her German wasn’t perfect, she conducted the workshop just fine. My German isn’t exactly perfect either, but we made it through okay. There were only six in the last group including President and Sister Matern so this one was in German too. By the time this 3rd group came, we were feeling a little more comfortable in presenting the workshop. All in all we felt it was a productive exercise for the missionaries.

After the sessions were over, Elder Rowley told me he didn’t have time right at the moment, but that he really wanted to ask me a question before we all went our separate ways. Later on, he asked how well Diana spoke German before her mission. I replied she spoke not a word. He was surprised and commented that she was really speaking well for only being here less than a year and wished some missionaries could do as well. He then asked me how I was able to keep up my German from when I served as a missionary forty-five years ago because he wanted some hints on how to do it when he went home. I told him I didn’t, but I wished I would have. He complimented me on my German proficiency too. It was nice of him to take the time to show care and concern and to support a senior missionary couple.

After the conference was over, we had a few minutes while the AP’s and ZL’s meet with Pres. Matern for a debrief, so we walked around the corner from the Church to a grocery store and bought a few items to take home. We like to take advantage of the prices in Germany whenever we can. Soon after, we made the long drive home through the overcast, foggy landscape. We arrived home safely and it’s good to be back safe and sound. On the way home Diana heard the missionaries talking of interviews next Monday and so we asked them, “What interviews?” We found out that Monday Pres. Matern would be interviewing missionaries in our district and we were scheduled for 10:30. That’s good to know! Evidently that page was inadvertently left out of our packet that we get every zone conference.

For dinner we finished off our leftovers from a few days ago and then got to busy on writing our journal. Roxsan skyped us and brought us up to date on the family and our rental properties and the things going on at home. We really appreciate her taking care of our problems while we are way.

A tender mercy we witnessed yesterday concerned Norma Bachmann, who went to the aid of someone she didn’t know who was in trouble. Norma herself is a single mom who is struggling to make ends meet, but she still shared what she had. She somehow met a man who played the harp and, since she has always wanted to learn how to play one (she owns one already), she invited him to come over. That’s how they got acquainted. This man was at the airport the other day and ran into a woman who had missed her flight to Paraguay and couldn’t get another replacement flight for a week. She had no money to pay the difference for another ticket, no money for food or to pay for a place to stay and so she was living in the airport. This man called Norma and asked her if this woman could stay at her place. She said yes and the woman came over and stayed a night. This woman had two small sons in Paraguay and was really wanting to get home. Norma felt sorry for her and went with her to the airport and bought her a ticket with her own money so this woman could go home to her family. She really practiced “love your neighbor as yourself.”