Photographs

HAPPY THANKSGIVING EVERYONE!!!
It's been a bit of an odd day for me...since due to work on the morrow, I'm not spending the weekend with my family....which I've done since I've been born. It's so weird. But I'm grateful that I was able to drive up anyway to spend a few hours with my family. I'm thankful that I have a vehicle that allows me to drive like a two day's journey by wagon in under an hour as it allowed me to take the journey and back without too much hassle...but with an aching heart as...it's weird to not be with family all day, Thanksgiving day. :)

Still...keeping with tradition. Here is a conference talk that I think goes along with the idea of gratitude. :)

Brother Edwin Q. Cannon, Jr., was a missionary to Germany in 1938, where he loved the people and served faithfully.
At the conclusion of his mission, he returned home to Salt Lake City.
He married and commenced his own business.

Forty years passed by. One day Brother Cannon came to my office and said he had been pruning his missionary slides.
Among those slides he had kept since his mission were several which he could not specifically identify.
Every time he had planned to discard those few slides, he had been impressed to keep them, although he was at a loss as to why.
They were photographs taken by brother Cannon during his mission when he served in Stettin, Germany, and were of a family--a mother, a father, a small girl, a small boy.
Brother Cannon knew their surname was Berndt but could remember nothing more about them.
He indicated that he undrstood there was a Berndt who was a Regional Representative in Germany, and he thought, although the possibility was remote, that this Berndt might have some connection with the Berndts who had lived in Stettin and who were depicted in the photographs.
Before disposing of the slides, he thought he would check with me.

I told Brother Cannon I was leaving shortly for Berlin, where I anticipated that I would see Dieter Berndt, the Regional Representative, and that I would show the slides to him to see if there were any relationship and if he wanted them.
There was a possibility I would also see Brother Berndt's sister, who was married to Dietmar matern, a stake president in Hamburg.

The Lord didn't even let me get to Berlin before His purposes were accomplished.
I was in Zurich, Switzerland, boarding the flight to Berlin, when who should also board the plane but Dieter Berndt.
he sat next to me, and I told him I had some old slides of people named Berndt from Stettin.
I handed them to him and asked if he could identify those shown in the photographs.
As he looked at him carefully he began to weep.
He said, "Our family lived in Stettin during the war. My father was killed when an Allied bomb struck the plant where he worked. Not long afterward, the Russians invaded Poland and the area of Stettin. My mother took my sister and me and fled from the advancing enemy. Everything had to be left behind, including any photographs we had. Brother Monson, I am the little boy pictured in these slides, and my sister is the little girl. The man and the woman are our dear parents. Until today, I have had no photographs of our childhood in Stettin or of my father."

Wiping away my own tears, I told Brother Berndt the slides were his.
He placed them carefully and lovingly in his briefcase.

Thomas S. Monson -To Learn, To Do, To Be -April 1992 General Conference

Until you next read these words;
I'll be watching the leaves.
Enjoy the day!

-Sarnic Dirchi