In the summer of 1988, I was called to serve as the mission secretary in the Deutschland Mission München office. My companion, Elder Mark Jensen (the mission finance secretary), and I attended the Munich American Servicemen Ward, which also had a smaller group that met in Bad Tölz.
That May, the Church held a regional conference in Frankfurt. The German congregations in our mission were not invited, but the American Servicemen units, including ours, were. President Burton gave the missionaries currently serving in a servicemen's unit permission to attend if we could find our own ride.
Fortunately, we did. Elder Jensen and I joined the Assistants to the President, Elder Neuenschwander and Elder Gillette, and caught a ride with a couple from the ward. The husband was American, and his wife was German. The trip was around 400 kilometers, maybe four hours under normal Autobahn conditions. However, the German sister considered that a journey worth pacing. She packed a lovely picnic, and halfway there, we pulled over to enjoy it under open skies. I still remember that lunch. It was simple, generous, and very German.
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| Elder Jensen and me outside the Deutschland Mission München office in 1988 |
We stayed in Frankfurt with family friends of Elder Neuenschwander’s parents. They were Church employees who kindly let us sleep in their basement.
On Sunday, we attended the regional conference where President Thomas S. Monson and Elder James E. Faust were the keynote speakers. President Monson spoke with a German translator, but Elder Faust delivered his talk in fluent German (with an English translator), which I had not expected. Hearing an Apostle speak my mission language was deeply moving.
After the conference, we made a short pilgrimage to the Frankfurt Germany Temple. It had only been in operation for about a year. We were excited to see a temple in Germany. Though we could not enter on a Sunday, walking the grounds was a powerful experience. The temple stood quiet and dignified. It was built in the same elegant style as those in Boise, Dallas, and several others from the 1980s.
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| The Frankfurt Germany Temple, dedicated in 1987. A beautiful and sacred place we were eager to visit. |
As we wandered closer, the four of us missionaries approached the front doors, cupping our hands to peer inside through the darkened glass. Then, quite suddenly, the door opened. A temple worker in a white suit stepped out, looked at us, and asked calmly, “What is wanted?”
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| The front entrance of the Frankfurt Germany Temple. We stood just outside these doors the day we accidentally rang the bell. |
We stood frozen. I think one of us finally stammered, “Uh... we were just looking around.”
He nodded, explained that we had rung the doorbell, and then gently stepped back inside. We were mortified that we had accidentally rung the doorbell. We quickly backed away from the front door, feeling sheepish.
We later learned from Elder Neuenschwander's friends that President Monson, Elder Faust, and other local leaders were inside the temple at that exact moment in a special leadership meeting.
Leave it to four young missionaries to unknowingly ring the doorbell and interrupt a meeting of Apostles and Area Authorities. Only slightly mortifying!
But even now, all these years later, I still smile when I think about that day. We were young, eager, and a little clueless. But we were full of faith and simply trying to soak in the sacredness of that moment in a place we had waited a long time to see.
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