Miracle in Frankfurt



LDS Temple in Frankfurt Germany
and site of Welfare Services Conference

Even before we left the USA for Cape Verde we expected to have one opportunity to visit Frankfurt Germany during our mission. Frankfurt is the seat for the European Area of the Church, including Welfare Services. Our supervising couple. Elder and Sister Leonard, sit there along with John Mulligan our Welfare manager.

The Leonards started planning a welfare services missionary conference last summer and gradually put together all the plans and preparations for the 10 welfare services missionary couples to come together in March.

The conference in Frankfurt was a long awaited experience for us. As it approached, the greatest anticipation for us was the opportunity to attend the temple again after 9 months away, the longest absence in over 40 years.

Couples serving all over Eastern and Southern Europe,

and Cape Verde

in LDS Humanitarian Services

About a week before leaving for Germany we were visiting with Maria Rodrigues as home teachers and asked her about the work for her husband who had passed away the end of January 2011. The impression came to us to offer to do the temple work for her husband while we were in Germany. She immediately accepted our offer, almost without belief, and we began laying plans to gather the information to submit his name. She would need to do their sealing at a later date when she could get back to the temple herself. She is one of the few endowed members of our branch.

We agreed to meet Sunday after church to input the necessary information and submit to New FamilySearch to get clearance to do his temple work. By Sunday she had his birth, death, and their marriage certificates. We set her up with an LDS account and looked in to see what was there. We found her husband already there and entered his death date. Unfortunately FamilySearch would not allow us to submit his temple work since it still listed him as living. Why, we didn’t know.

It's hard to describe the joy of the temple.

The Leonards rescued us from the Frankfurt cool

with winter coats ready at the airport.

We successfully brought lots of sunshine from

Cape Verde rendering the coats only needed at night.

That began a search for the problem and a request for help from the FamilySearch support team. They immediately sensed the urgency of the opportunity and seemed willing to do whatever was necessary to help resolve the problem. We involved our branch president to see what could be done through the church membership record system. Janet handled all the communication and did a superb job.

It looked like the problems centered around the fact that when Maria was baptized they created a membership record for João also, and that membership record still showed him alive. We now had two problems, a membership record showing him as a member, which he was not, and also showing him as alive, which he was not.

The date for our departure was rapidly approaching with no solution in sight. At the last minute FamilySearch support asked for proof of his death. To make sure we didn’t miss anything, we made a last minute hike to Maria’s to make photocopies of all the documents she had. We also had her sign a statement we wrote out for her declaring that her husband had never been baptized.

With these roadblocks still unresolved we left for Germany. At the time we felt like a miracle would come and somehow we would be blessed to do the work for him, but FamilySearch still said NO.

Participants taking a break to get

better acquainted during the conference

As soon as we arrived at the temple, we went to the family history library next door. The German staff didn’t seem to understand our anxiety (or our English) and none of their computers were going to let us check FamilySearch. Finally Dennis commandeered a directors computer and we managed to login to FamilySearch. What was the answer? When we saw the blinking green arrow we knew that the miracle had been granted and the work was ready for us to do.

Entrance to Frankfurt Germany Temple

We immediately paused to offer a prayer of thanks to the Lord and for the FamilySearch support team who had sensed the importance of this work. Our prayers the days leading up to this point had communicated a quiet assurance that a miracle was forthcoming.

Guess who celebrated a birthday

during our time in Frankfurt.

Janet felt very loved by the

other Sisters at the Conference.

60 years and young.

Our need for help was not over yet. Thanks to sister Jennifer Laird, an English-speaking worker in the Frankfurt temple, we were able to understand the temple limitations and to schedule the baptism and confirmation for the next morning and the initiatory the next afternoon, right before the conference scheduled endowment session. We allowed a ward group doing baptisms to do those first ordinances. How sweet it was to enter the initiatory room with João de Deus Rodrigues’ name on a blue card and begin his endowment.

João's temple ordinances have been
completed and recorded, on Janet's birthday

The rest of the conference was wonderful too, but this was the miracle and the icing on the cake. The next part of the story was equally as wonderful, sharing the full story of this miracle with Maria back in Mindelo.

For P-Day on Saturday we visited

the Braunfels Castle

for a little Germanic culture

Throughout the conference we heard reports on water projects in Bosnia, winter relief success in Montenegro, wheelchairs in Slavakia and Czech Republic, and many other inspiring and instructive stories. We want to be better welfare services missionaries as a result of the conference and feel much gratitude to all who made it possible.