Long, Long Ago and Far Away

A few weeks ago one of the Young Men in our ward asked me if I would do a presentation on Germany for joint activity.  They were having three members of the ward who had served missions take a little time and talk about the countries they had served in and what the different culture had been like. They had given me two weeks lead time, which was good.  It gave me time to hunt through the storeroom downstairs and find what I had left from my mission. I haven't kept a whole lot of things, partly because the cost of living was pretty similar to here at home and the things most people usually buy for souvenirs were a little pricey on a humble elder's budget so there never was a lot to keep.  And a few years after I got home I tossed a few things, as well. They were things that, knowing how I feel about it now, probably would have gotten tossed eventually anyway. But I did get a few things. And I have hung onto a few things. So after searching through all kinds of boxes I found most of what I remember saving from my mission.

The stuff spent some time stored in the garage back before we moved into the house we live in now.  That was hard on it. So when I found it I had to dig it out and clean some of it up. Somewhere along the line mice had gotten into it, too, and chewed up a box some of it was stored in. They didn't damage the actual contents but the box looks pretty bad now.  Anyway, I got it all out and went through it and put together a presentation that, in the end, turned out pretty well.  I thought it was well received, especially the goodies I brought.  I ordered a few things over the internet and from a German restaurant and bakery here in town. I thought it went well.

The whole exercise was interesting.  Among the items I dug out was my old mission journal. Someone had given me a journal made specifically for missionaries and I had faithfully written in it while I was out. Most of the pictures I had taken while on my mission I had developed as slides, which I regretted almost right away after getting back.  But I guess my thinking was showing them to everyone in the form a a slide show, you know the kind that's easy to get board and fall asleep in; dark room, slide projector and screen and all that.  I'm not sure I ever did that, though.  I must have - my parents had a nice projector and screen.  But I don't specifically remember it.

Several years ago Edrbeere had taken my slides and converted a lot of them to digital and gave them to me for Christmas.  That was cool but I put them with the rest of the CDs I have of pictures and even though I have been looking for the box they are in for several months now I have yet to find it.  In the end, though, it wouldn't have mattered because I didn't have anyway to display them. Even though the church has the equipment to hookup a computer and display videos and slide shows, we don't currently have a laptop that I could have used.

Anyway, while I didn't find the slides I did find a few pictures that were prints.  Even though I didn't use them in the presentation it was a very interesting experience to go through the pictures and everything else.  I scanned them all, the prints I found.  But they're old and weren't stored in the best manner so some of them were somewhat damaged and faded.  In scanning them I sort of fixed some of that but I also don't have very good photo editing software so I could only do so much.  Some of the photos I had put in my journal - mostly photos of my companions.  So going through the journal and reading here and there around where the photos were brought back a lot of memories. Over forty years have passed since I got back.

I went back in the days before the Mission Training Center in Provo had been built.  I entered the mission home in Salt Lake City.  It was an old "re-purposed" building that had been originally built to be an elementary school - my mom had gone to school there.  It was across the street north of the church office building. When we went to the temple we walked a block west to the Salt Lake City temple on Temple Square. Harold B Lee had just become president of the church just before I entered the mission home - for many years he'd had a practice of meeting with the missionaries in the temple in a question / answer session in the assembly room of the temple.  Even though he had just become president, he still met with the group I was in.  Meeting in the temple allowed us to ask pretty much any question we wanted.  The only thing he had with him was his scriptures and with them he answered every question put to him.  I don't really remember any of the questions but I remember him complimenting us at the end that no one had asked any questions about "the mysteries".

After a week in the mission home those going to English speaking missions headed out to their missions while the rest of us went to one of three language training missions.  European languages to Provo, Asian languages to Hawaii and the rest to Ricks College, now known as BYU-Idaho.  So I went to the LTM in Provo to spend eight weeks learning German before going to Germany.

This is me and my companion, out front of Amanda Knight Hall, just down off the hill from the BYU campus in Provo.  My companion tried to teach me how to tie a bow tie but it was too much - I never could get the hang of it.

At the LTM the first thing they taught us was the phrase, "How does one say..." (Wie sagt man...) because within only a few days of arriving we were not allowed to speak English with anyone who spoke German.  None at all.  It was total immersion.  Then, as we worked on memorizing the discussions we learned the grammar behind the sentences in the discussions.  The rule was we were not allowed to memorize anything we didn't understand the grammar behind.  

 Then, after eight weeks it was off to Germany.  I had passed off all six discussions before leaving Provo but you could tell how traumatic the transition was by how much you forgot.  I didn't do too bad.  By half way through my mission I would occasionally have people tell me my accent was from the Netherlands.  I did alright.

 My Dad and me at the airport.  I'm holding a scarf my older sister had made me.  I still have it.

 This is me, in the kitchen of my first apartment. We rented a room from an old bachelor.  That was interesting.  He let us share his kitchen, including space in his fridge, which was pretty small.  Small was normal for Germany. The house was the end unit in a row of houses.  He had a second floor, where our room was, a ground floor (where the kitchen was), and a basement.  We also kept our bikes in the basement - my first city was a bike city.

 This is the big cathedral in downtown Munster.  Every city had a big cathedral, along with several other, smaller churches.  We went by this place a lot.

 All over Germany there evidence of and monuments relating to World War II.  This is some ruins; old, bombed out buildings, that had been turned into a monument.

This is me in the living room of our apartment in my third city, Solingen.  In that apartment we rented most of the second floor of a family's house.  The family must have been pretty well off.  You didn't see very many single family homes in Germany.  This was by far the nicest apartment I stayed in while on my mission.  We had our own kitchen, this living room, which doubled as our bedroom, and our own bathroom.  We didn't have to share any of our space with anyone.  Nice.

Not long after I got back I let my Mom read my journal.  She described it as one of the best conversion stories she'd ever read. I certainly used my journal as a therapeutic tool - a way to talk through what I was going through and work out things in my mind.  My mission president told me once he had been pretty worried about me at first but he must have gotten over that because he put me with some pretty difficult companions during the last half of my mission.  Anyway, it was good to be reminded and to remember it all.  Maybe some day I'll dig it back out and read it through again.  I don't think I've ever done that since getting back.

But I'll say this, I still think it was time very well spent.  And there were a few people other than me that also benefited.  But it put me miles ahead of where I'd have been had I not gone.  I'm glad I went.