Hairnets and Manual Labor

It was a bit of surprise yesterday when I called my mother-in-law about borrowing her surger (for sewing) and she mentioned that she was stressed out trying to find people from her ward to fill their canning assignment. She had about five minutes notice to give people at this point and was hearing a lot of "no" answers. She was going herself, so since I've become a bean expert recently, I volunteered to go with her.
We arrived a little bit late and they ushered us in to the conveyor belt. Great, I thought, I can do this. Just don't get dizzy!

About 15 minutes into my shift, however one of the missionaries came up to me and asked if I could repeatedly lift 30lbs. I shrugged and said "I think so," and he took me back to the shipping area. A machine puts labels onto each of the cans and then puts 24 into a box which is tapped and stamped with the time and load # before one guy and myself loaded them onto pallets. He said he wasn't surprised that he was back there since he was one of the only young guys that showed up for the shift. Pretty much, I was a fill in "guy" for the day. We loaded 60 boxes onto a pallet and I estimate that we loaded over 25 pallets.

It was hard labor, but at the same time, it was a lot of fun. One of the missionaries over that area of the cannery was German, so we started to talk about towns, people, and stories from Germany. He told me about when he was young in the 1950s when the Soviets were still in control of things. He was near Berlin and a guy came up and asked him if he wanted to be smuggled to freedom. Duringt hat time, you were constantly spied on and could easily get trapped and later arrested and questioned. That was how the Soviets did things.

Because of the situation though, he of course said yes (who wouldn't want freedom?)and the guy told him to find 20 others. They were smuggled out through Checkpoint Charlie (he said that he was lucky because at that time, there were a couple Soviets even, making money off of smuggling people out). He was at the right place at the right time, thus he was able to have his freedom.

He told me about the different people in his family and friend circle within the church and their associations in Germany. I believe it was his father who helped build the church building in Dahlem (which is the American Quarter of Berlin). I served in Dahlem, so it was neat to think of the legacy of that building.

Anyway, it was once again an adventure of bean-sized proportion at the Ogden Cannery.