A mid-mission jaunt from Switzerland to northern Germany

I’ve been asked by a friend who is a reader of and a commenter on this blog to explain how in the world I was able to visit the north German university town of Göttingen almost precisely midway through my mission to Switzerland.  (I mentioned this somewhat curious fact in yesterday’s blog entry entitled “Imagination as a Key Element in Science and Mathematics.”)  Please permit me to do so.  One of the very occasional functions of this blog is to serve as a place for autobiographical entries — interspersed, as one reader apparently perceives it, among an endless series of obsessive and deranged denunciations of the Dear Leader, President Donald J. Trump.

I served in the German-speaking Switzerland Zürich Mission, the place to which I had wanted to be sent and something for which I’ve been deeply grateful ever since.  Roughly a year into that mission, I received a surprise telephone call from my mission president, the late Edwin Q. Cannon.  Would I, he asked, be willing to accompany another missionary up to northern Germany for three or four days?  (I can’t remember how long we stayed; the train travel took multiple hours each way.)

This missionary was of direct German extraction.  I think that he had even been born in Germany; I had never worked with him and never really had much contact with him thereafter.  His parents had joined the Church and emigrated to America, but the rest of the family, nonmembers all, were still living in Göttingen.  His grandmother was now dying, though, and — somehow — the family had obtained permission from Church headquarters for their son to leave his assigned mission area and go up to bid her farewell on their behalf.  But, of course, he needed a companion.  And, possibly because I was the most useless, ineffective, and dispensable missionary then serving in German-speaking Switzerland, President Cannon had chosen me to accompany the other elder.

So we traveled by train from either Zürich or Basel (I’ve forgotten which) up to Göttingen, which I was thrilled to be visiting because I knew something of its storied legacy in the history of physics and mathematics.  I think I was also already vaguely aware that the Norwegian-born future apostle John A. Widtsoe had earned his doctorate from Göttingen in 1899, after completing his undergraduate studies at Harvard.

I don’t honestly remember very much of the visit there, except that the grandmother seemed to be in remarkably vigorous health.  For all I know, she may still be alive.  And I recall one amusing experience:

My temporary companion and I walked out, one beautiful sunny morning, into one of the city’s squares.  Probably, though I’m not absolutely sure, into the Marktplatz.  It was, I think, a Saturday, and the plaza was quite full of people.  This was in the bygone days before missionaries (at least in Switzerland and Germany) were wearing plastic name tags.  Still, we were dressed in the standard suit, white shirt, and tie.  We noticed that a pair of fellow missionaries — complete strangers to us, of course, but recognizable from their mode of dress and, obviously, from what they were doing — had a “street display” up, with posters about the Church and the Restoration.  So we stopped to look.

One of the missionaries approached me and offered me a German pamphlet of The Testimony of the Prophet Joseph Smith.

“Möchten Sie eine?” he asked.  “Would you like one?”

I reached into my coat pocket and pulled out an identical pamphlet.

“Möchten Sie eine?” I asked him.  “Would you like one?”

“Who are you?” he asked, astonished.  “Are you on your way home after being released?”

“No,” I truthfully replied.  “I’m Brother Peterson, of the Switzerland Zürich Mission, and I have about a year left to go.”

But then I continued:

“In our mission, baptisms are so rare that, when we get one, we’re permitted to take a little trip.  I’ve already gone south, so, this time, I thought that I would swing up northward.”

“You’re kidding!” he exclaimed.

Sadly, I immediately confirmed that I was, and explained the real situation.  In retrospect, I wish that I had permitted his astonishment to last at least a little bit longer.