10 They Shared the Last Crumb

At age eight, I was baptized by my father. At age twelve, I received the Aaronic Priesthood and was ordained a deacon. At age fourteen, I was ordained a teacher. At age twenty, I was ordained a priest, and a few weeks after that, I was ordained an elder.

Before being called into military service, I was first the secretary of the Sunday School and then a counselor. At the end of 1945, when I returned from a POW camp, I was called to be the MIA leader of the newly organized branch at Forst.

Eberhard Gäbler. Courtesy Manfred Schütze.

In June 1947, I received a mission call. Without the least bit of financial support—we were refugees from the eastern part of my homeland and had only what we wore on our backs, the little that I earned went for food—I accepted the call without giving it a second thought, with firm faith that if the Lord needed me he would also support me. My faith was not disappointed.

I spent a full thirty-eight months in the East German Mission participating in the building of the kingdom of God. On June 9, the mission president, Walter Stover, set me apart as a missionary, and Brother Richard Ranglack ordained me an elder. The same mission president gave me my release on July 17, 1950, after I had worked in the following fields of labor: Erfurt, Gotha, Döbeln, Bernburg, Köthen, Aschersleben, Dessau-Delitsch, and Naumburg. The postwar period placed a variety of responsibilities on missionaries that were quite different from those they are normally given. The food shortage meant that the members often shared the last crumb they had in the house with us. It was a time of grateful giving and receiving, and we all considered ourselves richly blessed.

The branches to which we missionaries were sent were not self- sustaining as a rule. Almost the entire administrative organization lay in the hands of the missionaries. We were the branch presidents, the MIA leaders, the Sunday School leaders, the Primary workers, and teachers in all the organizations and did everything that had to be done in a branch. We received the welfare donations and distributed them. I remember hauling a ton of herring from Aschersleben to Bernburg in a handcart. In spite of all the work in the branch, mission work was not slighted. We held special worship services, firesides, and entertaining programs. I have never worked with so much joy in all my life as I did during those first postwar years during my mission.

The numbers attending our meetings grew and baptisms increased. I baptized fifteen persons myself during my mission and participated in many more. We also had the responsibility of caring for the many refugees from the East, who were scattered far and wide in the little villages. We also gave our sweat, digging the foundations for the branch in Berlin-Dahlem [in what was then the American sector of Berlin]. Those were times of great demands, and we were permitted to feel the Spirit of the Lord in large measure according to our diligence.

To celebrate the centenary of the arrival of the pioneers in Salt Lake Valley, we missionaries traveled from all parts of the mission to Dresden and preached the restored gospel all along the way in the branches and groups that lay in our paths, holding church meetings and firesides.

For me this was the most beneficial time of my life. My testimony grew for further important assignments. I found a wife to stand faithfully by my side as I accepted further callings in the Church. And so in 1953, when Brother Birth was our district president, I was called to be one of his counselors. In 1955, Brother Birth was called to be the mission leader for welfare work, and I was called to take his place as district president. In the Dresden District, there were the branches of Bautzen, Bischofswerda, Cottbus, Dresden, Forst, and Görlitz, with altogether about eight hundred members. The responsibility for the Dresden district lay on my shoulders for twelve years, until 1967. The following brethren helped me bear this responsibility at various times as counselors: Fritz Scherzer, Georg Dräger, Erhard Jelitto, Herbert Kaden, and Reinhold Noack.

I received the calling to be district president when I was twenty-eight years old. At this time, my wife and I had two children, ages two and one, and soon two more were added to our family. When I was called, my wife was set apart as district secretary. I am so thankful to my Heavenly Father that he has blessed me with a wife who has helped me fulfill my responsibilities with complete understanding, dedication, and joy. For many years, she had to be alone with the children Sunday after Sunday and still hold many offices in the branch and in the district. This was the only thing that made it possible for me to fulfill my calling with integrity.

In the first two years, I visited the branches by train, then for many years on a motorcycle, and for one year with a car. When I went by train, Sunday started about 4:00 a.m. and often ended after midnight. It was a time of great stress for me but also a time of great blessings. Many young people were called to serve missions, and they filled them in a way that brought progress to the kingdom of God and to themselves.

In contrast to the times when we were the Soviet Zone of Occupation and were often given large halls for our conferences (the zoological lecture hall in Leipzig, for example), the work in these later times was made difficult for us. The branches had to apply to the local authorities for permission to hold church services, supplying the name of the speaker and the topic that was to be treated. Nevertheless, the members were happy and willing to serve and to support the work of the Lord. Nearly all members were in attendance at our district conferences.

After my release as district president in 1967, I was active in various callings in the branch and the district. I never knew a time of “vacation” during my membership in the Church.

When the Leipzig stake was formed, I was set apart as a high counselor, and a short time after that I was called to be temple worker. I feel myself blessed by the Lord for being a tool in his hands to participate in the building up of the kingdom of God.