I arrived in Berlin on July 5, 1961 as a missionary. We spent most of our time in East Berlin teaching and baptising. On August 13, 1961 our Landlady beat on our door yelling, "Berlin ist gesperrt!" (Berlin is blockaded) Suddenly 10 American tanks came rumbling down the cobblestone street.

Many of the Bishops/Branch Presidents lived in East Germany and not allowed to come. We were told to keep doing what we were doing and if anything happened we would receive a telegram saying "pack your bags" (get packed and wait in apartment until further notice) or "ship your bags" (one hour to get to the Mission Home). We never did receive either message.

It was a wonderful experience. Many people all of a sudden started thinking more about God. There were close to 300 baptisms in 1962 and close to 500 baptisms in 1963, my last year. A stake was formed in 1961. I never thought it would come down in my lifetime.

Because of work I could not go to Berlin when it fell.

My wife and I are serving a mission in Germany and will travel there afterwards to walk the path of the wall.

Strange, no stories about the building of the wall. Can't criticize JFK? Letting Krushev get away with the wall led to the Cuba crisis.

I was in training for a mission to Germany when we all found out that the Wall had fallen. We were all ecstatic, because Berlin was in our mission area. Six months later, I was serving in Berlin and got to paint on the wall, chip off pieces, climb up in an old guard tower, and even had my picture taken with two East German border guards (who no longer carried machine guns). It was an unbelievable time that I'll never forget. I may have never met my future wife, who is from East Germany, if this hadn't have happened when it did.

The real hero is Ronald Reagan. He forced the ideologically and financially corrupt communist regime into bankruptcy. The wall wasn't built by conservatives.

I actually have a piece of the Berlin wall at home. It was a gift from an Ogden-area artist named Jim Kilburn (a very good friend of mine) who gave it to me before he passed away.

I can't remember exactly how he got it but it's a chunk of cement about 2 inches by 1 inch and is an aqua-bluish green on one side.