Elder and Sister Burkhardt Training and a Birthday

Elder and Sister Burkhardt

This is soon-to-be Elder and Sister Burkhardt.  They have been called to serve in Athens, Greece in a new mission assignment to provide sustained support for refugees in a new friendship center that LDS Charities is establishing.  The center will be a place where refugees and members of the communities can learn to live together and share the cultures of their countries through music, art and stories.  There will be opportunity to learn and share traditional food preparations, perform in groups and play sports together.  The Church's wonderful Self-Reliance course will be taught. This course will teach the refugees how to start and grow a small business, find a job, identify needed job skills and how to create an education plan. It will primarily be a place where people can come together, grow in understanding and friendship, build relationships, receive guidance and share time together.

The Burkhardt's are uniquely qualified to begin this great work.  Sister Burkhardt was a refugee herself as a child when her family made a harrowing escape from East Germany.  It was obvious to all of us who met them that they have been preparing all their lives for this important assignment.  They have creativity, very warm hearts, humor and deep faith.  We had the privilege of spending a day training them in some of the systems they will need to do their work.  Sister Burkhardt shared her remarkable conversion story with us.

Condensed Conversion Story of Sister Burkhardt
Sister Burkhardt and her family lived in East Germany, Her father was an aircraft engineer and had a good job, but he was told he must be a member of the Communist Party or he would lose his job and he and his family would be in peril. He told them he would take a week of vacation to consider his options. He used this time to arrange with underground persons to help his family escape to the west. The family traveled to Czechoslovakia and then on to Hungary. They missed connections with their underground escape persons, but decided to take things into his own hands. They traveled in the family car and passed through Czechoslovakia and into Hungary with no problem, but had to run through the barricades to get out of Hungary and into West Germany. They crashed the gates and the guards shot at them as they passed. The West Germans received them and told them how to get where they were going. They were safe in West Germany. Later they learned that soldiers came to the home they left in East Germany looking for her father and they were prepared to take him away or shoot him.

They made a new life with friends in West Germany. About a year later, Sister Burkhardt was selected to be an exchange student and live with a family in Arizona. She went to Arizona and had a struggle with the English language, but worked hard to learn the language. Her friends at high school talked about their religious views and she especially liked the idea of eternal families that some of them had. She later learned that they were members of the Mormon Church, and she learned all about it. She wanted to join the church, but her parents forbade her from joining, or even talking with anyone from the church. With her limited language skills she read the Book of Mormon, understood most of it, and knew the Church was true. She had such a burning testimony after reading the Book of Mormon that she got up in a fast and testimony meeting and bore her testimony. She was later baptized in Germany.

I'll share her whole story in another posting. She and her dear husband were married in the temple and raised their family in the church. All the children have served missions and now Elder and Sister Burkhardt have been called to serve a senior mission to Greece. They will staff the first refugee "Friendship Center" for LDS Charities in Athens. Other refugee centers in Europe will open in the coming months.

We are so grateful to be associated with such faithful saints as Elder and Sister Burkhardt.

Elder and Sister Canfield, the Burkhardts and Sister and Elder Lindsay

Birthday
That same week we celebrated Elder Garrett's birthday.  He and Sister Garrett are over LDS Family Services in Europe.  They are also called as the Zone leader for our mission and serve twenty-five senior couples.  We were called as their assistants.  We are in offices next to each other and they make our office a wonderful place to be.

Sister Canfield, who serves with her husband over the refugee work in the Europe Area, baked Elder Garrett's cake.  She is a gourmet cook and the cake was spectacular!  It gave us one more reason to celebrate Elder Garrett's birth!

Johannesburg

We extended the celebration by going to Johannesburg, a village about an hour away from Frankfurt.  We ate at this delightful restaurant where they still have a working water wheel.

Great food inside this little building!

We also visited the woodcarving shop a few kilometers away.  The family who owns the shop does beautiful work and missionaries have been coming for years to see and buy their work.

We were delighted with the shop and their wood carvings. We'll be back!