A two-day trip to Dresden provided an opportunity to visit with old friends Heinz and Käthe Pistorius.

Rainer Barth and I visited an interested "Gute Nachrichten" subscriber near Dresden, and after our visit was over we had time to stop by the assisted living facility near Zwickau where Heinz and Käthe Pistorius live. I first met Heinz and Käthe in August 1971 when their son Dietmar got married in what used to be East Berlin. I visited them often in their home in Zwickau, East Germany. Heinz was called in the mid-1960s and was once a Communist Party secretary for the section of Zwickau where he lived. He had been a soldier in the German army during World War II and was thoroughly disillusioned after the war. He thought that Communism was the answer. But his calling to God’s truth convinced him of a better way, and he pursued the truth with the same intensity that he had displayed as a convinced Communist. The Pistorius family had its share of challenges during the Communist era. The Feast of Tabernacles was disrupted in 1971 when East German police ordered the meetings near East Berlin stopped. Later Heinz had to turn in all of his church literature. He told me once that as Communist Party secretary he knew of people who were imprisoned for having possessed one piece of "dissident" literature. But nothing happened to him. I was their pastor in the 1980s, and it was a joy to visit them again and know that they are standing fast in the truth and the way of life to which they were called. They receive our literature and sermon CDs.