Part 4: A Brighter Day

In 1979, President Thomas S. Monson assembled a small group of Church leaders on a hill between Meissen and Dresden. Looking down into the Elbe Valley, he offered a prayer in behalf of the members of the Church in the German Democratic Republic. [See Ensign, May 1989.] In 1982 the first stake was formed. In 1984 the second stake was formed. In 1985 a temple was dedicated. In 1989 the Dresden Mission was opened, and ten missionaries were permitted to leave the country—the first in fifty years—and were assigned to missions in South America, the United States, Canada, and England. The following spring, a second group of ten missionaries were called; this group included five sister missionaries. Now “all of the promised blessings have been fulfilled.”

In the three short chapters that follow, Elke Schulze writes about her reaction to the building of a temple. Then follow six short testimonies by some of the first converts to the Church after the opening of the Dresden Mission. These convert testimonies were written at our request shortly after their respective baptisms. Finally, we conclude these “recollections” with a short interview with two of the sister missionaries called from the Dresden Ward in the spring of 1990.

Reception for LDS missionaries given by the minister of ecclesiastical affairs of the GDR. The reception was just one important sign of the official acceptance of the Church’s missionary program. East Berlin, June 1989. First row, left to right: Elder Roger Muir, President Henry Burkhardt, Stake Secretary for Ecclesiastical Affairs Kurt Loeffler, Martha Müller, Frank Apel (president of Freiberg Stake), Norma Davis, Garold Davis, President Hans B. Ringger (First Council of the Seventy, one of the several brethren who worked diligently to reestablish the missionary program), Manfred Schütze (president of Leipzig Stake), and Wolfgang Paul (president of Germany Dresden Mission). Second row: Elder Jörg von Allmen, Elder Thorsten Ludwig, Elder Clarke Hilbig, Elder Dale Moss, Elder Robbie Dean, Elder Steven Smith, Elder Craig Miles, Elder Mark Smith, Elder Jeffrey Engleke. Third row: Elder Dale Tingey, Elder Christopher Karpowitz, Elder William Powley, Elder Stephen Anderson, Elder Christian Yost, Elder Mont Diderickson (head down), Elder Fred Grimmer, Günter Schulze (head down). Courtesy Norma and Garold Davis.