Planting seeds for others to harvest
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RIGA, Latvia — President Peter Barr of the Baltic Mission assures his missionaries that even though their contacts might not join the Church right away, the seeds they plant might well someday bear fruit.
He speaks from personal experience.
Peter Barr was a baby in Lithuania in 1944 when Russian armies threatened his hometown, forcing his parents to flee with him to a refugee camp in Germany. They were among many displaced European families who relocated during the late 1940s and early 1950s.
The Barr family eventually settled in Newcastle, Australia. Just a couple of blocks away was the Romaniak family who had moved to the same town as refugees from Poland.
Daughter Eugenia Romaniak's name was changed by Catholic nuns to Genivive. Ten years later, Peter, now 16, paid a visit to Genivive, whom he'd been courting for three months, and was introduced to the missionaries.
Peter was disinterested at first as the elders presented a discussion to Genivive's family. "But over the next few weeks," he said, "I felt the Spirit of the Holy Ghost confirm the truths that we'd both heard. Genivive and I committed to live the Word of Wisdom and, through personal prayer, I received a testimony of the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith. I knew the Church was true."
Genivive gained a testimony as well, but their parents, while polite to the missionaries, refused permission for baptism.
"Some weeks following, the missionaries, Elder John Andersen and an Elder Bohling, whose testimonies had such a wonderful impact on us, were both transferred to another city, and we lost contact with them," President Barr explained. "We were sad to see them leave and wondered if we would ever see them again."
Both the courtship and Church attendance continued, despite their parents' insistence that this was just a fad. Peter and Genny were so eager to attend Church that they'd dress for the beach Sunday mornings, their Church clothes hidden in beach bags. They'd drive to the beach, change into their Sunday best, and spend the day at Church before repeating the process in reverse.
Three months later, when they decided to confess the truth of their Sundays at the "beach," their parents admitted they already knew what was going on. "Our mothers said that if it meant that much to us, we could continue to attend," President Barr remembers. "Still, we were not to be baptized."
Three years later, Genivive was finally baptized. Two years after that, Peter, then 22, was also baptized. They were married in the New Zealand Temple in 1967. They have four children born in the covenant, "who have all heard many times about the Elder Andersen" who not only played basketball with Peter but also "brought the gospel to us."
John Andersen, who'd retired from a career as an educator in Washington and Alaska, was compiling some of his life history in 2000 when he and other former missionaries from Australia decided to hold a reunion in Salt Lake City. At the event, they learned they could fill out a contact form which would then be sent to the convert's address, if the Church had that information.
Brother Andersen decided to try to find out what had happened to the young couple he'd taught in 1961, as he felt sure they had joined the Church. It wouldn't be easy after four decades. The search was made more difficult by the fact that Peter had years ago changed his last name to Barr from the Lithuanian surname Elder Andersen had known. After a long silence, he received a phone call from a Matthew Barr in Australia.
"I understand you're looking for my father," Matthew Barr told a baffled Elder Andersen, whose elation grew with his understanding that not only had the young couple been baptized, but were now serving in a mission president capacity. The following morning, President Barr and his wife phoned the Andersens for a tearful long-distance reunion.
The reunion became a reality in Latvia in 2003, 53 years after the Lithuanian and Polish families left war-torn Europe to find a new life. A year earlier, Peter Barr had been called to preside over the Baltic Mission — a call to return to the lands of his forebears.
"About June 2003, we received word from the Missionary Department that Brother John W. Andersen and his wife, Peggy, had been called to serve as a senior couple in the Baltic Mission," President Barr recalls. "We could not hold back the tears. To have Brother and Sister Andersen serve in a mission which is presided over by two of his converts of 40 years ago, and with whom he had lost touch and did not even know had been baptized, completes a cycle portraying a powerful missionary experience."
The Andersens are serving for 23 months in the Baltic Mission as Church Educational System missionaries.
"It has become a spiritual treat to see what the gospel did for those two teenagers I met 42 years ago," said Elder Andersen. "I stand in awe at what the Lord has done with the seed He allowed me to help plant."
President Barr concluded: "On various occasions I have taught our missionaries about the converting power of the Spirit, and the great need to open our mouths and 'plant the seeds of the Restoration' with all whom we meet. We may not always discover the result of the planting or see the harvest but, with faith in the Lord, we can work with confidence and have hope and trust that there will be many whose lives will be changed. Such is the case of a young elder from America who opened his mouth in Australia to two European-born teenagers and 'planted the seeds of the Restoration.' "
