The glow of being with some of you at the end of April for Reid and Rachelle’s wedding is beginning to fade; gratefully, we are anticipating the surround of many of you in another month! FAMILY---just saying the word warms my heart and lifts my soul!
In our last letter, I announced the birth of J.C. and Beki’s fourth child, Wyatt James, who was born in Twin Falls, Idaho, on April 8th. John and I couldn’t resist a quick trip on Saturday, April 20th, to cuddle the latest arrival. What a darling baby—just enough hair, long fingers and toes, and he radiates a gentle, patient spirit. We returned to Jerome with Adam, Kaylyn and kids the first weekend of this month for his baby blessing. The cousins became re-acquainted, and we were able to relax on Saturday as we went to lunch and visited Shoshone Falls and watched young people parachute jump from the Twin Falls Bridge into the Snake River. It was great to be together. Beki and J.C. have been busy—and not just making babies! They recently excavated a part of their basement to create more storage, have finished a large basement family room and have tiled a space for and installed a wood burning stove.
Adam and Kaylyn arrived in Heber on the 28th of May. Their one request was to “not go anywhere,” understandable since they had been “on the road” since arriving in the USA in early May, and would be leaving Heber for their cross-country trek to Virginia. The farthest anyone ventured was to Park City—one morning, Sam and I drove to Staples to exchange his defective tablet case. The horses were saddled for ride-around-the-arena fun, we made good use of the pool and the sprinklers, Sam (for the second year in a row) claimed the John Deere lawn tractor and kept the grass trimmed, William and I weeded and trimmed shrubs, we changed irrigation sprinklers (when you are nine and eleven-almost-twelve, it’s fun), the littler ones ran down the batteries in the little Jeep and Gator, the Razor scooters were in constant motion, Papa John offered thrilling rides on the ATV, the playroom was well-used, and we enjoyed a few afternoon movies and lots of bedtime stories. With a couple of trips to 7-Eleven for Slurpees, it was a perfect week-plus-some. (in the previous paragraph, I reported our trip to Jerome to J.C./Beki’s over the weekend). Early Wednesday morning, June 5th, after the van was loaded, sandwiches packed and the last seatbelt fastened, I was truly sad to wave goodbye to seven of my favorite people.
(I have to insert a little story here about Sam which tells a lot about his personality. Sam had a Kindle Fire, but felt it wasn’t versatile enough. He began saving for a tablet and pestering his parents to let him purchase one. Finally, they told him to make an appointment with them to discuss the reasons he “needed” the tablet. Sam came to the meeting with a PowerPoint presentation which was persuasive enough that, not only did he receive permission to obtain a tablet, but his parents paid for it!)
John and I spent a good part of May on vacation. Our first stop was New York City, where we attended church services on the Upper East Side. It was an interesting ward, made up of about equal numbers of older couples and young families. From the testimonies that were borne in Sacrament Meeting, I am guessing most of the younger families are Utah transplants, fairly recent college graduates who are working for major banking and legal firms in the Big Apple. One of the running jokes among the members concerned stroller parking in the Church foyer. On Monday, I walked through the garment district looking at buttons, trim and fabric while John wandered the Bronx Zoo. Tuesday, our plane for Germany didn’t leave until the evening, so John made his way to the Museum of Natural History, while I walked from the Upper East Side to the Bowery and the Brooklyn Bridge. We had arranged a time to meet at our hotel to pick up our luggage and take the subway and AirTran to JFK together, but John was lost in the bowels of the subway at rush hour and couldn’t seem to find his way to me. It didn’t help that he didn’t have his subway map or that live help at the stations was non-existent. The numbers of people in a hurry were also stressful for him. Thank goodness for cell phones; John would call me and read the words on the station where he exited the train, I would consult my map, and direct him to the next station where he would again call and I would relay transfer information. And he made it “home” in time for us to arrive at the airport with some to spare.
Our overnight flight to Germany was uneventful—when we arrived in Frankfurt the next day, we had a little trouble locating our friends the Hansens who had flown from LAX to meet us. But, find them we did. We took a taxi to our hotel, asked for directions to the temple, and spent a wonderful afternoon there. We met an older man who cares for the grounds at the Church “compound” and whose personal story is so engaging that we nearly missed the session! Temple workers are the same everywhere—loving and patient with celestial smiles. The session was in French, and we sat close enough to each other that we could hold hands across the aisle. After we left the temple, we met two elders from the US and enjoyed hearing about their mission experiences and their teaching pool. We decided not to spend $80 getting back to central Frankfurt (the hotel clerk had mistakenly told us that it would cost us no more than $25 to get to the temple) so we asked for directions to the train station and spent a lovely hour walking through the little town where the temple is located. On the train, we met a young woman named Anna whose English was excellent (she had spent a year as a high school exchange student in Milwaukee). She was on her way to a language class in the same area as our hotel and offered to walk with us. Before we parted, she directed us to a lovely, small restaurant (excellent dinner!) and we gave her a missionary pass-along card.
The next day, we took the train to Heidelberg and spent a relaxing day wandering through the town and the castle. On Friday, we picked up a rental car and began our leisurely drive along the Romantic Road. We overnighted Friday in Rothenburg au del Tauber in a 600 year-old former grain mill and explored the medieval town with its intact wall around the city that evening and the next morning. Then, we continued driving through little towns and past beautiful, green farms until we reached Nuremberg.
Sunday morning, we attended the local ward, where for Mothers’ Day, they observed a curious custom (to us, at least). After the sacrament, the Primary children thundered to the front of the chapel (just like here), but instead of singing, each child approached the microphone and expressed thoughts about his mother, after which he reached into a bucket, retrieved a long-stemmed red rose, and presented it to his mother as he returned to sit with the family. What seemed curious to me was that, after all the children were finished, there were still two or more dozen flowers in the bucket; I assumed they would be presented to the mothers without Primary-age children at least by the end of the three-hour block (plenty of grandmothers and mothers of young women in attendance). Nope—the roses were still in the bucket when we left the building.
In Nuremburg, we visited the Nazi Documentation Center, the former Nazi Rally Grounds, what is left of Hitler’s Congress Hall, etc. It was a sobering afternoon, and even after reading the plaques and watching the films at the center, I am no closer to understanding how so many Germans supported Hitler and the Nazi party.
The next morning, we drove to Dachau and spent an appropriately rainy, blustery cold day touring the first concentration camp. We returned the rental car in Munich that evening, and spent our last day in Germany wandering Munich and marveling at the beautiful post-WWII reconstruction of homes, churches and government buildings.
On Wednesday, John and our California friends returned to the United States, and I caught a flight to Warsaw, Poland, to meet George and Leslie Nelson. We rented a car and made the four-hour drive to Auchwitz-Birkenau (one of the most famous of the Nazi concentration camps—this is where the largest gas chambers and crematoriums were built to exterminate the Jews and other “undesirables”). Our guide was a thirty-something woman from the area who was very knowledgeable, personable, and who had an obvious passion for sharing information about the camps. When I thanked her for the privilege of being in her group and asked about her personal interest, she shared that her grandparents had been deported in the war to a German labor camp (and acknowledged that conditions for them were much better than for the people sent to Auchwitz). They died five years ago without sharing their experiences with anyone.
We spent the next several days walking Warsaw, did a little shopping, took a train to the country to meet an actress friend of George’s at the farmhouse she and her husband are remodeling and hiked the woods nearby, hosted a dinner in the Nelsons’ apartment for colleagues and the translator, and attended the Warsaw Branch on Sunday. The spirit in Sacrament Meeting was grand, though the translation of the talks from Polish into English by one of the missionaries was marginal. The speakers spoke very, very fast and didn’t leave any “space” between their sentences, and the missionary translating for us was fairly “green,” so his translation of a talk was typically this: “(Chuckle, chuckle)…(Silence)…Oh, she’s telling about a talk from President Eyring (a fact we already had discerned) on the importance of missionary work (again, a concept already grasped, thanks to the universal language of church words)…Oh, and ‘Amen.’” The spirit in Relief Society was warm, the sisters were friendly and inclusive, and in spite of not understanding very much of the discussion, it was lively and the sisters were eager to share their thoughts.
On Monday, a van and driver appeared at the apartment to transport us to Poznan, Poland, a smaller town that was overlooked for the most part in the bombing raids of the Second World War. We stayed in an apartment in a beautiful house that had been built and owned by members of the same family for eighty years, close to the beautiful and quaint city center. One day while exploring, we came upon a ballet school and watched a class of eight or nine year olds through a window as they plied and pirouetted. We enjoyed tucking into small shops and local grocery markets and watching people doing everyday tasks.
One of the things I loved about Poland was meeting people. I enjoyed talking to them and hearing about their admiration for our freedoms and the beauty of our constitution. They are a resilient people, full of hope for the future, and anxious to better their lives. I also noticed a real difference in the Catholic churches there. Every time we passed a church, I ducked inside, initially to see the beautiful wood and stone work and to look through the stained glass windows. To my surprise, on most afternoons (not just Sunday), as we opened the door, we encountered a service being conducted. The congregations were mixed—young as well as old people, and they were singing and reciting the congregant portions of the mass together and with feeling. It was beautiful. In one church, I watched three teenage boys enter the church, kneel and make the sign of the cross before squeezing into a row together. That experience was in stark contrast to visiting churches in the rest of Europe, where they seem little more than buildings to be admired.
It is wonderful to travel, and it is wonderful to be home. Grandpa Barrus used to say we could see everything in the world in The National Geographic and didn’t have to leave home in order to have broadening experiences. To an extent, he is correct, but there is a beauty and an education in observing other cultures through the smells and sights and feelings that come when you are present, senses which cannot be transmitted through a picture or written description.
Sorry this was so long. I hope you know how much we love you and are grateful for your determination to cling to the iron rod. Your examples bless us!
Love,
Uncle John and Aunt Carole
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