The purpose of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is to invite everyone to come to Jesus Christ and, if you choose, receive Him.

Here is how Elder and Sister Lewis are helping others to come to Christ.

Elder Lewis is working for the Church’s Office of General Counsel (OGC).The legal work for the Church is overseen by the OGC. For each of the 17 Areas around the world, the OGC has one paid Area Legal Counsel (ALC). Here in Europe, there are three areas: Europe Central. Europe North and Europe East.  We are working in the Europe Central Area which is headquartered in Frankfurt, Germany.  The Europe Central Area covers more than 30 countries from The Netherlands in the north to Spain in the south and across Central Europe and down through the Mediterranean to Turkey.  The newly created Europe North Area covers Great Britain, Scandinavia, and the Baltic countries.  Europe East covers Russia.

The Church calls retired lawyers as Senior Missionaries to assist the ALCs. Currently there are six senior couples serving as Area Associate Legal Counsel (AALC) here in Frankfurt and doing the legal work for all three Europe Areas. The AALCs hire local attorneys in each country to provide legal advice, file legal documents, draft contracts, and make court appearances.

The OGC does legal work in real estate, visas, contracts, human resources, and humanitarian/welfare matters. For example, legal work in real estate includes preparing contracts for buying or renting land for meetinghouses, temples, apartments and offices throughout the world and constructing buildings on the land. When the Church gains permission to operate in a new country, OGC works with local counsel to properly set up the legal entities needed to operate. The OGC also oversees legal work on lawsuits.

Many of these Senior Missionary attorneys are doing legal work far different than they have ever done before.  For example, one of the attorneys in our office is a retired juvenile court judge.  Another specialized in retirement plans for large companies.  Geoff’s experience as General Counsel is fairly well suited to managing local counsel in a variety of matters.  For all of us, learning the laws and legal practices of different countries is a challenge.  Fortunately, all of of our local counsel speak and read English fluently.

Deborah is learning the visa and residency requirement process for five different countries, all of which are in the Adriatic North Mission. They are Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Serbia, and Slovenia. Each country has a slightly different process and list of rules for missionaries to follow to be legally allowed to enter the country and proselyte. When a missionary receives a transfer, about every six weeks, they could be transferred to a new country within the Mission. Deborah is learning how to keep them legal.

So how are Elder and Sister Lewis helping to invite all to Christ? We are assisting to make sure that the Church, its leaders, missionaries, and members in Europe are following the laws of each country. We are helping to build meetinghouses and Temples. Geoff is helping with the Vienna, Austria temple where the Church is currently looking for land to acquire as a Temple site. The Church and its members can be obedient to both the laws of God and the laws of man. Doing this helps us to build the Kingdom in new countries because the leaders of those countries can see that we follow the laws of the land.

“We believe in being subject to kings, presidents, rulers, and magistrates, in obeying, honouring, and sustaining the law.” (Article of Faith 12).

Last week we had a three-day weekend due to celebration of Germany Unification Day.  This celebrates when West Germany and East Germany were reunited into a single country in 1990. We took that opportunity to travel to Berlin which is the capital of Germany and has been a center of many historic events.  We learned about how oppressed the country was under Russian rule following the Second World War until the Berlin Wall fell in 1989.  We saw Checkpoint Charlie, remnants of the Berlin Wall, Brandenburg Gate, and the Jewish Museum Berlin.  Berlin is now a very large and thriving city.

Yesterday we took a day trip to Heidelberg, a little city just over an hour away.  Heidelberg, with its large, historic castle and half-timbered buildings and houses all set above a beautiful river, is a picture postcard of what one imagines Germany to be.