VISIT FROM THE BUCKEYE STATE

Dear Family,

Yesterday Katje D. her kids and her American "Host Mom" came for a visit.

You remember Katje was the young lady from East Germany who came over as a High School exchage student and stayed with a family in Springville, UT (with 10 children). When she was 18 and had retrned to Germany, she was baptized into the church, then came back to BYU.

She had a part time job with the MTC as a language instructor and one of her jobs was to train two Mission Presidents going to Germany in conversational German speech. Her two pupils were Pres. Larry M. going to Frankfurt and me going to Munich. For several months we had a daily one hour chat in German about the Gospel, the Church, the missionary lessons, family and many things and it was so much fun. When we were on our mission, Katje's mom, Marita M. joined the church in Howerswerda, Germany.

Katje filled a mission in Moscow Russia and came back to the Y where she met her husband, Daniel D, who also served in Russia and were married, They moved to Columbus Ohio where he is getting a masters in Slavic language studies at Ohio State.

It was good to see Katje again with her two little kids.

I was intrigued with the 3 year old daughter Talipa. This little girl reminded me so much of those German dolls I used to buy our girls. She had bright eyes, thick brunette hair in two pigtails. She speaks to her mother in German and to her father in English.

Her German was perfect in syntax and sentence structure with an excellent vocabulary. It reminded me of what Mark Twain said about the German language, "It is not so hard; children speak it and dogs understand it!" Talipa seemed to know what language to speak to others, She spoke to me in German and to Mom in English all in the same breathe. She discovered the basement and the cache of toys and brought up plastic food and served her mother. She was very obedient and at the end was told to clean up her little plastic food party and return the things to the basement which she did without a murmur! One time she did say, " aber,,, (but..) whereupon the Mom, Katje, said, "Es gibt kein aber_(no buts) and I wondered how many ties I heard that in German growing up.

At the end Katje was putting her kids in the van and then this little three year old bolted from the car and came up to Mom and said "I want to give you a hug" and embraced her around the legs and then came to me and said, "Dir auch!" and I got a hug around the legs.

It was good to see Katje again and her bright little daughter and her new little boy. I thought about our own grandkids and wondered if Heavenly Father was saving the Best for Last.

Love, Dad