Crossing International Borders

As a missionary, I served as the mission secretary for about 8 months (April to October 1988). In this role, I acted as the personal secretary to the mission president. I also handled the paperwork processing for new missionaries arriving in Germany and missionaries leaving to go home. 

When new missionaries arrived in Germany, I would get them registered with the German government as foreign visitors. In addition, I would register them with the US Consulate in Munich. The missionaries would leave their passports with me. I would take their passports to these offices for processing and registration. Then, I would mail their passports to them. 

In July, a new missionary serving in Innsbruck, Austria called me about two weeks after I mailed the passports back to the missionaries to say he never received his passport. He did receive an empty envelope in the mail from the office. It turns out that I had not sealed the envelope I used to send his passport to him and his passport fell out of the envelope. 

A day or so later, I received a call from the US Consulate office that someone had turned in his passport to their office. He could come by the Consulate to pick it up. 

This presented a problem because the missionary was in Austria and his passport was in Germany. 

I met with the mission president and the assistants to the president to consider options. In the end, the president asked us to drive to Innsbruck in the mission van to pick up the missionary and his companion and bring them back to Munich to get his passport. 

We (the assistants, my companion, and me) drove to Innsbruck. We met the Innsbruck Elders. Then we waited in Innsbruck until it was dark and headed back to Germany. We had some blankets and luggage in the back of the van. When we got close to the border crossing, the elder with no passport hid under the blankets with the luggage. 

Then we drove to the border. At the checkpoint, the other four missionaries and I gave our passports to the guard for review. The guard reviewed our papers and returned our passports. Then waved us across the border. 

We drove the Innsbruck Elders to the mission president's house and dropped them off. The next day I took the missionary to the Consulate office to get his passport back. The Innsbruck Elders rode the train back to Austria. 

And that is how I participated in sneaking a missionary across the Austria/Germany border!

In retrospect, I do not know why we never considered telling the Consulate office that the missionary was in Innsbruck. It is likely they could have transferred his passport to the US Consulate office in Austria for the missionary to pick up.