8 April 2015 | Konold Chronicles

Every morning, we have a prayer meeting with our group in Frankfurt. Recently each has been telling a story (testimony or something in their work). This morning, one of the attorneys in Frankfurt who works on Visas (bless his heart), told of an experience spanning over the last several days, but culminating today. The Rome Temple has been a real challenge—to put it mildly. It has become necessary to send two more construction supervisors from SLC to Rome. The Visa and work permit challenges were insurmountable and I can’t even recall all the hurdles. It involved US Social Security, Italian Social Security, the State Departments of both countries. In the course of it all, both families had to be physically present in Italy to make certain applications. However, they had to complete the process in less than about 2 weeks or they would be sent home to start over. As the attorney in Frankfurt went through the several hurdles, each one would historically require 2-6 weeks to accomplish. Documents had to be prepared, translated (by a government certified translator), certified by proper authorities and then attached to an apostille (a glorified notary) and the originals delivered to the officials in Italy. As it turned out all of this was accomplished in one day (the day before the families would have had to return). Those involved in the process are certain there was divine intervention—and it would be difficult to argue the point. Sometimes mountains do need to be moved—nuisance that they are.

“Bank holidays” here are serious business. Everything shuts down and no one is expected to work. Our office was closed, so we took off Thurs. afternoon and headed, by train, to Edinburgh—the first time to Scotland for us. A few observations: 1. there is a remote possibility that you can understand perhaps 1 in 5 words if you ask them to repeat slowly; 2. they really do wear kilts—a lot of them; 3. they can out-drink the Irish; 4. they are very proud of their history and don’t have a fondness for the English. We were very fortunate to have good weather. In fact, the last two days were absolutely stunning. Very clear, blue skies and temperatures in the 60’s—which to us (both of us) felt warm. We did most of the pure tourist things: The castle, Holyrood House (Queens’s summer palace), the royal yacht Britannia, art gallery, cathedrals, and, of course, shopping and WALKING. Mom spent a lot of time with Greyfriars Bobby (the dog that sat on his master’s grave every night for 14 years), and with the Lewis chess pieces at the museum of natural history.

Since this was conference weekend, we did make an effort to find a chapel. I did find one about 2 miles from our hotel and walked there Sunday morning—thinking that is when they would re-broadcast Priesthood. There was not a soul at the church and I could not raise anyone at the mission home/office next door. I would have liked to have met some of the people in the mission office as I work with them (by phone) quite a bit. I can only surmise they were at a stake center somewhere attending a session. We were able to watch a couple of sessions via the Internet back at the hotel—so all was not lost.

We found the Scots to be a friendly group—as long as you initiate the conversation. The landscape—particularly on the trip there and back was stunning. So much pasture land and so many sheep. The textile industry is all but dead in the UK but they still produce and export a lot of wool. On the way up, we saw no sheared sheep; but on the way back, several—so I guess the season has begun. Idols of Scotland are Rabbie Burns, J.K. Rowlings, Robert Lewis Stevenson, Sean Connery, One of the most curious things to me is the number of people who say they would like to come to America to visit Graceland. I’m pretty sure I would not visit Graceland if I were in Memphis.

The Edinburgh Castle, like many in the UK, is very well “preserved” which means it has been rebuilt several times. When Robert the Bruce recaptured the Edinburgh Castle (with 30 men against 300 Englishmen) he ordered the entire castle destroyed because they could not commit the number required to defend it and didn’t want to re-take it again. In those days (14th century) the Scots didn’t really have an army, when they had to go to war, they would go and recruit support from as many clans as they could muster. When the battle was over—the clansmen returned to their homes. I don’t think I can understand how it must have felt to grow up worried every day who, when, and how someone was going to try to steal your freedom and enslave you. And death was so in your face every day. We heard about a wife of a king whose husband accused her, probably correctly, of conspiring to over through him. She was sentenced to live in a wooden and iron cage outside the castle wall—where she stayed for 4 years. Do you know how cold it gets up here? And how hard the wind blows? Mary, Queen of Scots spent 14 years in prison in London tower and was then executed. These were hard times.

Strange train happenings. Due to the long bank holiday weekend, National Rail decided it was a good time to do maintenance on the line—so they shut it down. We ended up having to take a two hour bus ride (not fun) to Carlisle, a train to Preston, then back on a bus to Buckshaw Village. While on the train we were informed that a freight train ahead of us had broken down and we would have to sit until it was fixed (anywhere from 1-3 hours). Fortunately, we were moving again in about 1/2 hour.

As I was contemplating all of this, a thought came to my mind: “Often we find that the stones that appear to be obstacles, turn out instead to be stepping stones,” Our trip back will probably be among our most memorable times on this trip and will probably provide the most value in our lives.

That’s it for now. Here are a few pictures of our visit to Edinburgh.