Busy Week at Work

If it seems that we have been silent this past while it is because we have been so busy at work with training. As we already told you we have been involved in intensive training directed from the Salt Lake based Family and Church History headquarters to train us as FamilySearch Support missionaries who can answer phone calls and emails from patrons all over the world who need help with their New Family Search, Indexing, PAF, Family Search, or other Family History problems. We are supposed to be able to respond to their questions, find answers for them or direct them to the person or department where they can get their answers.

The church has hundreds of missionaries world wide who have been or are being trained to do this very thing. Most of them work from their own homes, but we will work from here in Germany. Soon we will join the ranks of those missionaries helping patrons, Family History consultants or directors, etc. who need answers to their questions. It is very intimidating to think that we will know how to do all this, but such is the case, in addition to whatever else they want us to do here in Germany.

Many of our training sessions have been in direct contact with the trainer in Salt Lake and all the other 15 or 20 missionaries being trained in our group. To do those meetings we have to meet at 10 p.m. our time to coordinate with the 2 p.m. Salt Lake time and the early morning time in New Zealand. After working all day on training lessons we've had to come back to the office at night to get online and SKYPE with our trainer and the others. We have had 4 of those sessions this week.

Now I, Sister Howlett, can relate to those working mothers and wives who work all week then go home at night and try to fix dinner and do other things needed before falling asleep at night and getting up the next morning to do it all over again. However, I must confess my situation is a little different in that I have Elder Howlett to help me at night and on Saturdays to do the things necessary to keep going each week. We get tired quicker though, so perhaps it's similar.

This view is similar to one posted earlier. It is from our window looking across the street to the "Heil Park" (healing park) that has been there on the bank of the Nidda River for centuries. Recently we came home to find some big machines in the parking lot that was there, and they took up all of the asphalt and ground it up. Then they started digging. As Americans, we can be proud that the machinery was "Caterpillar" brand. That is quite a compliment in a country that prides itself on its native designs for construction equipment.

There will someday be an addition to the "Hotel am Kurpark" on that corner. I don't know where they will have any parking for their guests, but I suspect they'll find some somewhere. They have thousands of cars parked now in little spots that already seemed to be filled when Elder Howlett was here 45 years ago. Some have been made in the little garden or yard spaces that then existed (like where we park behind this house.) Some of them are on the sides of the road. They don't have to build "Traffic Calming" speed bumps. They just alternate the parking spots on one side of the road then the other so the cars weave down the road. They have very strict rules about who has the right of way: if the roadway is blocked by parked cars on your side, then you must yield, but if they are parked on the other side you have it. That makes the traffic move pretty slowly, but in spurts. They mark a lot of roads "Einbahnstraße" (one way road) so that they can park cars on what was already a small road 45 years ago. We've found ourselves in roads so narrow we couldn't continue, and had to back out. Once it took 4 or 5 people watching and guiding us so we could avoid hitting something.