What Exactly is Public Affairs?

In anticipation of yet another "travel post", I thought I better step back and explain exactly what it is we are doing here in Frankfurt, Germany.  Yes, as noted in past posts, we do have the opportunity and blessing of being able to travel here in Europe.  Consequently, the bulk of my posts will be about these wonderful sites we’ve been blessed to experience.  But be advised that Elder G and I do put in a 40-hour work week.  It’s just that, for the most part, there is usually nothing to report about those 40 hours.  "Today we worked" is not a very interesting post.   
But, "Saturday we saw this..." can be very interesting.

Most senior missionaries serving here have a less-structured schedule.  For example, the medical missionaries and their wives can be anywhere at anytime; however, they are ON CALL 24/7.  Others who work in an office setting do have a little more freedom than we do regarding their comings and goings throughout the week; nevertheless, despite our 40-hour schedule, we do have the weekends free and plan to take advantage of that.  However, since we have been assigned to attend a struggling German branch, we will strive to be there most Sundays.  Consequently, most Saturdays will find us with a "Get out of Dodge" mentality!  Nevertheless, although we don't have the opportunity to travel mid-week as some senior missionaries do, occasionally we will be given assignments that will take us to (and pay our way to) various countries throughout western Europe. 

So, "short story long," we are here to serve a mission during the week 

and to get in as much travel as possible on the weekends.

So, just what is Public Affairs that we've been called to support here in Frankfurt?  Wow!  Is all I can say when I think of how little we understood prior to arriving here!  Of course, the overall Public Affairs (PA) for the Church is headquartered in Salt Lake City.  But throughout the world tthere are a number of smaller geographical PA units.  Ours is the Europe Area Public Affairs, which oversees 25 countries (in 23 languages!) and is headquartered here in Frankfurt.  Besides the "usual" western European countries, this also includes Great Britain and five countries located in the 

North Adriatic Mission.

We serve directly under the Europe Area Director, Gabi Sirtl, who is German.  She has both an Associate Director, Ralf Grunke, who is also German, and an Assistant Director, Dinis Adriano, who is Portuguese, working alongside her.  

A second Associate Director, Malcolm Adcock, is British and has his office (as well as a senior missionary couple) in London.  In addition, most months we also have a BYU Journalism or Communications major assigned to work with us on a short-term basis.

We are one of two senior couples working in the Frankfurt office.  The Walkers, from Salt Lake, went through the Missionary Training Center (MTC) with us, and we work across the hall from each other.  We also share a car as well and have been doing a lot together.  They are a great asset to our team!

We all work together to accomplish the goal of Public Affairs, which is "to build strategic relationships with opinion leaders who affect the reputation of the Church of Jesus Christ, and whose actions and influence can help or hinder the Church's mission."

Just who are these "opinion leaders"?  These are selected people--city officials, various religious leaders, educators, and people of the media--whose influence we hope will endorse, authorize, or defend the purposes of the Church.  For example, before we hope to build a chapel in a city, it is important that the groundwork be laid months or even years prior by local Church leaders getting to know those people whose input would make a difference in getting our plans approved.  Thus, many local Church events are planned around making sure such opinion leaders are invited to attend.  We, here in the office, both encourage and offer to help the local units 
promote and carry out such events.

Among the 25 countries in our Europe Area, each country has its own National Director of Public Affairs (NDPA).  These people are called by an Area Seventy (Church official); and they, in turn, call Stake or District Directors of Public Affairs--as well as a council--to function on stake or district levels.  Each country also has a webmaster, who is responsible for maintaining that country's Church websites.  Just as we have https://www.lds.org/ for members and http://www.mormonnewsroom.org/ for "seekers," almost every country has the same thing in its own language (for example, two German websites, http://www.presse-mormonen.de/ to assist members and http://www.kirche-jesu-christi.org/ for nonmembers wanting to know more).  

With so much happening in the Church, we see the potential for attracting viewers (members and nonmembers alike) via postings of news-worthy events online.  And since news is now viewed primarily via the Internet, the Church is very proactive in seeing that we have ample coverage--not only on those standard websites mentioned above, but also on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and others.  Believe it or not, the Church has its own sites in the various languages on those venues!  Whether it be the death of two apostles, our leaders meeting with other countries' leaders, temple construction, the "Meet the Mormons" movie (which had to have numerous translations over here!), the Tabernacle Choir's 2016 European tour, Mormon Helping Hands events, and so on--posting these events online by various countries creates interest in the Church.  
And interest creates the potential for "hastening the work."

Anyway, to sum it all up,  Elder G and I work closely with the National PA Directors in the following countries:  the North Adriatic Mission (whose countries include Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Montenegro, Serbia, Slovenia), the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden.  We are their "first contact" with the Church's Public Affairs when they have any questions, issues, or upcoming events.  Luckily, all these people do speak English, and at some time we hope to meet them all during one of their events or at a training session.  Here's Elder G working hard in our nice office.  Love the double screens!!!

We also have daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly in-house duties as well--preparing agendas, attending/conducting meetings, publishing a monthly PA newsletter, maintaining files, tracking the Internet for any mention of "Mormon," preparing summaries of the countries' monthly reports, assisting with yearly and interim training, etc, etc.  And then there are always additional duties related to special events--like the the Tabernacle Choir's just-announced 2016 European tour and the Paris, Rome, and Portugal temples with their eventual open houses and tours.

Our most recent assignment was to prepare a bulletin board for our building to display the surprise announcement regarding the Choir's impending tour.  We were there before 7 a.m. to have everything ready to surprise everyone as they came into the office at 8 a.m.  No one in the whole building--except for Public Affairs and the Area Presidency--has had any idea!!!  Just ask us how hard it has been to keep this exciting event a secret for months!

All in all, Public Affairs is a bustling office!  We are so grateful that we have such a great team! We're especially grateful for our friendship with the Walkers, the other PA senior couple.  As mentioned above, both of us have been called to assist a German branch.  Sister Walker was recently called to serve as a Relief Society counselor, Elder G was just called to serve in the Young Men's Presidency, and I was just called to start up the Nursery!  Pretty challenging
 for two of the three of us who don't speak any German!

We've also made a lot of friends with a large group of the senior missionaries who work out of this 4-story Europe Area office building.  Together we enjoy Monday morning devotionals, weekly temple trips (before it closes in September!), monthly Family Home Evenings, and occasional weekend social activities.  We couldn't ask for a nicer group of people to associate with!

A senior couple's mission can be a lot of hard work, but it can also be very rewarding!