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"With Thee All Things Are Possible"

AN APOSTLE'S PROMISES ARE ALL FULFILLED 1991-95

Thursday April 18 1991

Late in the day Walter and Edith Krause visited the office. Edith had been brought to Salt Lake City by the sisters who organize the annual women's conference at BYU. I invited my secretary, Lynne Cannegeiter, to sit in on the discussion since she and her husband had been to Freiberg and other parts of Eastern Europe, and I felt she would be interested in Edith and Walter Krause's report. It was thrilling to hear how these two good people persevered through difficult times and helped to hold the Church together during the dark period of the Berlin Wall and the exclusion of missionaries from that country.

Sunday May 5 1991

In the evening I went to the Tabernacle and there met President Donald R. McArthur of the Utah Salt Lake City Mission and Elder Tobias Burkhardt. The priesthood restoration broadcast was planned to go by satellite to many locations throughout the United States and Canada and some locations abroad. The meeting featured a videotaped testimony of a deacon, a teacher, and a priest from different countries of the world, the young men being introduced by Elder Jack Goaslind, president of the Young Men organization and also a member of the First Quorum of the Seventy. This was followed by a message by Elder Marion D. Hanks, executive director of the Priesthood Department. He too used a clip from an excellent videotape on reactivating lessactive Melchizedek Priesthood holders and those who hold no priesthood. Elder Dallin H. Oaks was also a speaker at the meeting, after which I was the concluding speaker.

I entitled my talk "Once a Deacon, Now an Elder." I attempted to address the need for advisers to catch the vision of their work and used as an illustration the manner in which Harold Watson served as adviser to the teachers quorum over which I presided. I told of a one-eyed pigeon that he effectively used by giving the pigeon to me, knowing that it would come back to his loft each time I turned it out. When I would go to retrieve my pigeon, I had a priesthood interview with my quorum adviser.

I then retold the story of young Tobias Burkhardt, pointing out that he was the East German lad who, as a deacon, cared for the grave of missionary Joseph Ott. Tobias, I mentioned, felt he would make a missionary contribution only in this way, citizens of the GDR not having any opportunity to leave their country. As I retold the story and mentioned the events that had taken place in the German Democratic Republic which permitted missionaries to come to America and missionaries from here to go to that nation, I commented that Tobias Burkhardt was one of the first ten missionaries to have that privilege to come to the Missionary Training Center in Utah and to then serve a full-time mission. In his case, he serves in the Utah Salt Lake City Mission and is scheduled for release in just two weeks. Others of the ten served in Chile, Argentina, England, Canada, and the United States.