Letter to My Friends - September 2, 2020

 Friends,

I just shared these stories with a very close friend and I just felt I should share them will my other close friends.  These are a few of the tender mercies or miracles I have witnessed in the past few days.  I always love hearing stories like these and the missionaries have already shared many others.  These are ones that I have witnessed personally.

- How about a 21 year old Sister American Missionary who had hearing problems before her mission.  She wears hearing aids but depends on reading lips to help her understand.  The German’s don’t move their lips like Americans and therefore her first 6 weeks here were very difficult and she didn’t know how she could ever learn German.  At 6 weeks, she suddenly could understand and speak German.  Sadly, her hearing has worsened during her mission but this is the amazing part, when she is sitting in Zone Conference, if a person speaks English, her native language, she has to look at them to read their lips in order to understand.  If a person speaks German, she can understand them without reading lips.  Talk about a miracle and a beautiful witness of the Gift of Tongues.

- We have a new Elder who has not been through the temple yet.  He will be receiving his endowment on Saturday at the Frankfurt temple.  He is from Germany and his parents will be joining us.  Only 16 can participate in this special ordinance.  The Frankfurt temple was closed for 2 years and just reopened in October before closing again for COVID.  None of our missionaries have been through the temple for at least 6 months.  Selecting who will fill those final spots was very difficult and is very similar to deciding who would have surgery and who wouldn’t when I was in Haiti after the earthquake. Remember the Elder whose 17 year old sister was hit by the drunk driver and lost her legs? He was the first missionary who came to mind because I know he would receive peace, comfort and guidance for his sister while in the temple.  My next thought was that he lives 3 hours from the temple and that is too far and the logistics just don’t make sense (the 2nd voice).  I crossed his name off the list.  I just couldn’t get him off my mind and so I called him today to tell invite he and his companion to join us at the temple.  He starting crying and told me that this was an answer to prayer.  Act on the first prompting according to Joseph Smith and you get it right 9 times out of 10.  I also invited the Sister and her companion whose dad was just diagnosed with cancer.  We have never seen or been to the Frankfurt temple so we are very excited to go. There was a miscount and I invited 2 more than we have room for.  I offered to wait outside but Elders Budge and Adams, insisted on us going to the temple in their place.  I have 102 missionaries who would love to go to the temple and I was give 4 spots.

- A missionary called me literally just after I arrived and he was deeply depressed and has been struggling for 5 months.  He really needed to begin seeing a counselor but just didn’t know how to begin the process and I had so much else to do.  I literally didn’t even know where to start.  I opened my email about 30 minutes after talking to him and I had just received an e-mail from a someone in the church telling me that a therapist had just agreed to work with some missionaries virtually from his home in Utah and here was his e-mail address.  I sent him an e-mail that I had a missionary who really needed to talk with him.  He immediately responded and I gave him the missionaries contact information.  This was truly a miracle.

- I previously that to my surprise, my COVID test at the airport was “Suspicious for an early COVID infection.”  I had absolutely not symptoms, I thought.  I received a call from a German Health Agency telling me I had COVID and needed to quarantine at home.  She asked if I had been anywhere and I said, “We haven’t” - in German and she immediately said, “we?”  She took all of Debbie’s information down and insisted that she also quarantine.  I received a call from the German Health Department everyday checking on our quarantine.  I told her I had no symptoms and that the test said “Suspicious . . .” and that did not say I had COVID.  She insisted that I did indeed have COVID.  We were so wanted to go out and meet our missionaries but this put that on hold.  I did convince her to let me have another test.  On Saturday I went to Bürger Hospital where she had registered me.  As I approached the hospital I saw a nurse and asked her where to go to get the COVID test.  She got a terrified look in her eye and jumped back 4 ft.  We were already 6 ft apart and we both had masks.  The hospital testing center was closed so I made some calls and was referred back to the Airport.  When I got to the airport and they scanned my name, I could tell I was a “special case”.  Supervisor after supervisor were called in over 20 minutes and they talked in a group with each person looking at me and then at papers they had in their hand.  The drew lots and the “loser” had to approach me (but staying 6 feet away) basically telling me I had COVID and they would not test me again.  They wanted me to go see a physician.  I was really frustrated at this point because I was convinced I didn’t have COVID and the test was in error.  I texted a close friend, Sterling Bennett, who is the director of the entire IHC testing including COVID.  He is a guru.  I asked him the false positive rate and he told me it was around 99% accurate or 1% false positive, not what I wanted to hear.  I found a Dr in Heidelberg who was a member of the church and called him.  He was in Austria on vacation but arranged a test in his office on Monday.  As we spoke we made the following connection.  He served in Switzerland he told me about a a young man he taught and baptized named Peter Wiesner.  It turns out that Peter Wiesner was a companion of mine twice while I was a missionary.  We served as ZL’s and AP’s.  I haven’t talked to him in 40 years and will arrange for us to meet again.

On Sunday I had a significant change in symptoms.  I developed a significant sore throat.  I had been having a severe sore throat since we arrive on Thursday but I simply assumed it was due to lack of sleep and stress.  I also noticed that On Friday I started having a metallic taste and smell.  I remember waking up Friday morning thinking we needed to get air-fresheners because the home smelled like the smell when I solder electronic circuits.  I began to worry that I might indeed have COVID.  Monday morning, I woke up and all the symptoms were definitely worse.  I also noticed a tightness in my chest.  I wasn’t significantly short of breath but I couldn’t take deep breaths.  I also started to cough.  I Googled COVID symptoms and found that headache, sore throat, metallic taste and smell were all part of the symptoms.  I knew that some patients had gone downhill pretty fast and I was a little worried about that.  My symptoms were getting worse every hour and by Monday night I was concerned enough to call Tom Wood, and ER physician and our daughter’s father-in-law.  He explained to me the typical course of the disease with the time frame when things get the worst due to the body mounting an immune response.  I literally was right on the schedule.  Asymptomatic first, then mildly symptomatic, . . .  We decided that the next morning I would buy a pulse oximeter to monitor my Oxygen status.  We both went to be rather concerned.  I woke up Tuesday Morning and have never felt better in my life. For the first time in 6 days, I didn’t have a headache and the sore throat and metallic taste and smell was gone. The chest tightness and breathing issues were also gone.  I had gone to Heidelberg the day before to get the repeat COVID test only because the doctor had scheduled it and I didn’t want to miss that appointment.  At the time, I thought it was a waste of effort because I clearly had symptoms.  I checked my test results and they were negative for COVID.  I was shocked

mentioned that the COVID symptoms started on Sunday although I had a headache since Thursday.  On Monday the symptoms started getting noticeably worse throughout the day.  My chest symptoms including tightness and some breathing issue seemed to be getting worse by the hour.  I got a COVID test but knew it was a waste of time because when I had originally scheduled the test I had no symptoms, just a test that said I had an early case of COVID and I scheduled the test to prove it was in error.  Since that time I had developed symptoms that were unmistakable.  I had this metallic taste and smell and I had no idea those were even symptoms.  On Friday morning I literally thought that the mission home had a weird metallic smell and the food had a metallic taste.  I contacted the Director of IHC labs who is an expert on COVID tests.  We are lifelong friends and he replaced me in the stake presidency.  I told him about the positive test and asked him about false positives.  He told me that the results are 99% accurate for positive but the false negative rate is the problem because it is higher.  I was shocked that there was only a 1% chance of error.  As my symptoms worsened I called my daughters father-in-law late last night because he is an ER doc in Ogden.  I told him my story and my symptoms and he said they were absolutely typical of COVID.  He described a 2 day asymptomatic course followed by 2 days of mild symptoms followed by worsening symptoms as your body creates an immune response.  His time scale correlated absolutely with my symptoms.  He recommended buying a pulse oximeter to watch my Oxygen saturation and I decided to buy one today.  Based on what he said, today and tomorrow would be the worst days and would really determine my course.  I was starting to get a little nervous last night because my symptoms seemed to be getting worse every hour.  I woke up this morning and all of my symptoms were gone.  I felt 100% for the first time in 5 days.  No headache, no metallic taste, no sore throat and no chest pain or trouble breathing.  I checked my e-mail and my test came back and it was negative.  I was absolutely shocked.  You can explain this in many ways but having lived and experienced it, it was an absolute miracle in my book.  We were looking at another 2 weeks of quarantine and now we are able to begin teaching and working with our missionaries.

We appreciate all of your prayers.  I was just reminded by a German missionary that we always pray for the missionaries but we often forget to pray for the people of Germany to whom we are trying to bring the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  Please pray for all the people in Germany both members and friends of the church.  I have also mentioned that we have 53 missionaries who were called to serve in the Frankfurt mission but who are now serving in the USA.  In one month that number will be 72.  Please pray that we can get those missionaries into Germany.  They are desperately needed.  As you may have heard, our way in has closed.  Both Hungary and Germany are closing their borders to Americans due to worsening COVID statistics.

We wish you all the best.  

Bis bald, (until soon)  

Dan