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By
Laurie Williams Sowby and Robert B. Sowby
NEUBRANDENBURG, Germany — Werner Leonhardt
had been waiting all his life to be able to go to the temple. So
he was understandably excited about the Freiberg Temple, which hosted
an open house during 10 days before it was dedicated in 1985. He
was so excited, in fact, that he personally invited 15 former schoolmates
from Freiberg to attend.
“I’ll be waiting at the door at
4 p.m. on June 12,” he told them. Then he traveled from his
current home in Neubrandenburg, north of Berlin — between
six and seven hours’ drive — to be at the temple door
as he’d promised. Fourteen of the 15 invited friends came.
“I did not expect many to come,”
says Werner, “so I was excited that they did show up.”
The picturesque city of Freiberg has a beautiful,
old cathedral, notes Werner, but even a man giving tours there would
tell people, “The Mormons are building a temple. Go see it!”
“Of course, they did,” he says.
In fact, Werner recalls, open house organizers
— who expected perhaps 12,000 visitors — were overwhelmed
at the 93,000 who toured the temple during those 10 days in June.
Click on
photos to enlarge
The Freiberg Temple, dedicated in 1985, was built at the invitation
of the East German government. All photos are by Laurie Williams
Sowby.
The temple was dedicated
later that month in 1985 by Gordon B. Hinckley, then a counselor
in the First Presidency. Werner and his wife Anne attended several
of the dedicatory sessions, along with members of Werner’s
family still living in Freiberg. Following one session, as they
were taking pictures outside the temple, they noticed a dove landing
on the spire.
“We took it as a sign of confirmation
by the Holy Ghost,” Werner says. “It is a special memory.”
He also remembers how, as the busload of leaders
and General Authorities was getting ready to leave the parking lot,
German Saints surrounded the bus, waving white handkerchiefs to
honor their guests.
At the time, Freiberg was part of the German
Democratic Republic (East Germany). Soon after the temple’s
dedication, Werner and Anne Regina Leonhardt were sealed with their
four children, now ages 33, 31, 27 and 24. A son and daughter have
served full-time missions, to Ukraine and Spain. Their eight grandchildren
are being raised as Latter-day Saints.
Werner and Anne Leonhardt are longtime members of
the Church, having grown up as members in East Germany.
The fact that those children are fifth-generation
members of the Church in what used to be East Germany surprises
many who thought the Iron Curtain that fell between the West and
Communism prevented the gospel’s spread behind it.
But The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day
Saints had already taken root with the baptism of Karl G. Maeser
in the Elbe River at Dresden in 1855, and those who were already
members before Communists closed the borders in 1961 remained true
to the faith.
While not allowed to leave East Germany between
1961, when the concrete and barbed-wire Wall went up, and 1989,
when it fell, Church members continued to meet in homes. They had
to have government permission and teach from Church manuals printed
in 1936.
Neither Church officials nor missionaries from
outside were allowed into East Germany. But leaders maintained contact
by phone, and missionaries from within East Germany served in their
own country.
Members were no longer allowed to go to the
temple in Bern, Switzerland, so, according to Werner, the East German
government invited the Church to build a temple within the country.
Four years after its dedication, Communism began to fall throughout
Eastern Europe, and the first missionaries from the West flowed
into the former East Germany. (The two Germanys reunited in 1989.)
“There were a lot of baptisms between
August and December,” recalls Werner.
But the gospel had come to the Leonhardt family long before then.
Werner’s parents were introduced to the Church by friends
in 1949, and he was baptized in 1955. Anne was “born in the
Church” — “actually, in a hospital,” she
jokes, “but my parents were members.” She credits faithful
grandparents who joined the Church; Anne’s own mother was
baptized as a child at 8 years and still attends the Neubrandenburg
Branch.
Werner and Anne met after Werner’s family
moved there from Freiberg. They married in 1972 and waited 13 years
to be sealed when the temple opened in Werner’s hometown.
Anne is fond of telling people, “We had two weddings.”
Werner Leonhardt was a branch president in Neubrandenburg,
now part of the Germany Berlin Mission, at the time the Freiburg
Temple opened. Although those 14 friends who attended the open house
have not joined the Church, they still talk about the event when
they get together for class reunions.
Werner Leonhardt, right, often accompanies elders
to the train station Neubrandenburg. Convert Robert Schnell stands
next to him.
Werner has maintained a successful auto painting
business while serving over the years as district president, member
of the district council, teacher in Sunday School and priesthood
quorums, and, currently, counselor in the branch presidency —
“everything but Primary and Relief Society,” he says
with a laugh.
Anne has served in those as well as Young Women
and is currently a counselor in the branch Relief Society presidency.
She picks up her mother each Sunday to drive her to meetings at
the small white chapel, where they join maybe 45 others for services.
Trained as a medical assistant, she instead works in a federal government
office which coordinates child support for new mothers.
Anne is well-known among the local missionaries
for at least two things: making grand meals for Sundays after church,
and dropping water balloons on their unsuspecting guests as they
pass below the Leonhardts’ third-story window on the way to
or from dinner. But it was missionaries who taught Anne her first
phrase in English and encouraged her to use it with Americans: “Go
jump in a lake!”
The Leonhardts are well known among the missionaries
for their support
— and great Sunday dinners.
Although the growth of the Church in East Germany
has been welcome, other influences that have come with the fall
of Communism have not all been positive, say the Leonhardts. When
they heard the news that the Wall had come down, the family went
to West Berlin and into a modern, new world of bright-colored billboards
and the availability of fresh fruit they’d never seen before.
Things such as bananas, oranges, and inexpensive pantyhose —
unknown to East Germans during the years the Wall was up —
were happily and eagerly accepted.
But the same Wall that had kept East Germans
in and isolated from the rest of the world for nearly three decades
had also prevented a lot of modern influences, such as Internet
pornography and certain dress styles, from becoming temptations
for Latter-day Saints. Members must be strong to withstand such
influences, say the Leonhardts, but the gospel provides a firm foundation.
Many things were dazzling when the
West first entered the East, but with the gospel an integral part
of the lives of Latter-day Saints in Germany, explains Anne in English,
“Now one knows what really is important.” – Laurie
Williams Sowby
Living the Laws
One January evening in 2007, the sister missionaries
were going door-to-door in Neubrandenburg. Sibille Pelikan-Pape,
a 60-year-old woman who lived in the heart of the city with her
only son, had compassion on the freezing sisters and let them in.
Although not devoutly religious, she did have
some degree of faith and loved the message which the missionaries
shared. “I believe in God,” she told them, “but
why belong to a church?”
Sibille Pelikan-Pape, shown here with Elder Sowby,
was baptized after she committed to pay tithing along with keeping
all the commandments.
A few months later, the sisters were transferred
from the city, and my companion and I began teaching Sibille. By
this time she was coming to church regularly, despite having serious
health problems that were worsening. She loved the gospel and the
ward members. She listened to the scriptures on CDs because of her
failing eyesight.
But there was one thing holding her back from
being baptized — the law of tithing.
Sibille was an accountant, having worked 30
years at the local bank. We tried our best to explain to Sibille
that the blessings one receives from paying tithing cannot be calculated
or added up numerically. For three decades she had managed budgets
and reasoned that when 10 percent is gone, it's gone, and it doesn't
come back. No one's budget allowed for such expenditures, she argued.
Stubborn, and afraid of long-term commitment,
she often said, "I'm never going to be baptized. And if I do
get baptized — which will not happen! — I wouldn't pay
my tithing anyway." Nonetheless, we loved Sibille and enjoyed
her sharp wit and convivial manner. We prayed for the Lord to bless
her with an understanding of the law of tithing, as well as the
faith needed to keep it.
My mom, who was serving as a missionary
in Chile at the time with my dad, sent Sibille a letter that I translated
and read to her. In it, my mom offered her own testimony of how
keeping the law of tithing has blessed our family. She also asked
Sibille if she planned to pick and choose which commandments she
would keep, or if she was going to keep all of them, the
law of tithing included. (Months later, when my parents picked me
up after my mission ended, we visited Sibille, and she expressed
gratitude for the little push my mother had given her to commit
to paying tithing.)
In time, the Lord answered our prayers on Sibille’s
behalf. Following church meetings a few weeks later, Sibille eagerly
approached me in the church foyer, walking slowly but excitedly
with her cane. She said she had something important to tell me.
Because she was a rather short person, I had to lean in as she whispered
proudly, "Elder Sowby, starting next week, I'm going to pay
my tithing." Needless to say, I was stunned.
But this was only the beginning of a series
of miracles that eventually led to her baptism on March 29, 2007.
Having never been completely under water before, she allayed her
own fears by making a “dry run” into the font to see
if she could support herself on her amputated foot.
On her baptismal day, as the branch president
led her into the font, I was also standing in the water as backup
to help her feel secure. Immediately after we’d helped her
out of the water, I asked her to describe how she felt. "Wet,"
she responded, without missing a beat. She later described it as
feeling “as though I were being carried, light as a feather.”
Sibille became a faithful member, full tithe-payer,
beloved "grandma" to the missionaries, and secretary in
the ward's Relief Society. She related to my parents how the gospel
had brought into her life a different perspective, the love and
caring of other members, and the availability of priesthood blessings
to help her endure her physical trials.
Sadly,Sibille was hospitalized after our last
visit and passed away the day after Christmas 2007. But she kept
her good humor, wit, and faith right up to the last minute. She
told us before I left Germany, “I have suffered so much on
this earth, and I can’t imagine not having pain. But I believe
that after the Resurrection, I will have a perfect leg — and
I will dance! Because Jesus was perfect, that’s where I want
to go.”
– Robert B. Sowby
Prepared to Hear the Gospel
As some elders were walking back to the train
station after a zone conference, they stopped a moment to introduce
themselves to a young man named Robert Schnell. Although it was
not Robert’s habit to give out his phone number or address,
something prompted him to share these with the missionaries. The
elders knew upon their initial visit that this was a “golden”
contact who had been prepared to hear their message.
They began meeting in the town’s
LDS chapel to teach Robert the lessons. As his last name indicates
(“schnell” means “fast” in German), he spoke
fast and questioned fast and progressed quickly as an investigator.
He also played killer ping-pong.
Robert Schnell was a "golden" investigator
and still shines as a faithful member
of the Church in this city north of Berlin.
He was enthused about the gospel and readily
accepted the principles and made the commitments given him by the
elders. It was a matter of less than a month until he was baptized
just a week before Sebille, and she was on the front row to witness
it. It was after his baptism that she announced she would herself
be baptized.
As with many German converts, once Robert had
made the commitment, he was steadfast. He attended church every
Sunday and served mini-missions (short-term when an elder needed
a companion for a couple of weeks). Within months, he was ordained
an elder and called as ward mission leader. A 21-year-old student,
Robert remains active in the Neubrandenburg Branch and is preparing
to serve a full-time mission.
– Robert B. Sowby
The doors of the church in Wittenburg contain bronze
copies of the 95
theses nailed to the doors by Martin Luther in 1517. His defiant
act helped set
the stage for the Restoration of the gospel.
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