Spring seems to be finally making it over here also! I do
not know what to think of it though. That means that it will be super hot
before I know it.
This last week was good and terrible. The good outweighed the bad I think. At least, it is slowly starting to get warmer!
I have no idea where the time went. It was a super fast week as well. This week I saw the movie Meet the Mormons
while I was at Zone Conference. It was
actually really good! I thought it was
going to be really cheesy honestly. If
you guys have not seen it, I would defiantly recommend it! It was really good.
We had an appointment with one of our investigators this
last week and it did not go that well as usual with him. He is a super nice guy, he just talks, and
talks, and talks, and talks, and talks.........
When we try to speak he will talk over us and we just sit there. He says
that he already knows that the church is true and that he needs to be baptized.
He says that he cannot because of
various reasons. We want to help him get
over his excuses, but he just rambles. He's 77. This next appointment with him is going to be
very straightforward. It will simply be
an appointment which determines whether we keep meeting or whether we stop. I do not want to drop him, but we cannot be
wasting our time with someone who is not making progress in coming closer to
God. I will let you all know how that
goes next week.
On Wednesday, we did some service for an old lady in the
ward. We went to a graveyard with her and Karlheinz (Our trusty 3rd person when
we meet with a woman and need an extra man). While there, we planted some flowers on a
couple grave plots for her family members. I did not want to use gloves because they
reminded me too much of working fast food so I just went at it. Karlheinz and Schwester Kaesstler kept
insisting on gloves but I got away without. Then, they made me to go a faucet and wash my
hands right then and there after we were done. It was a freezing cold morning and the water
was even colder. It was terrible. We continued walking around the graveyard for
a bit. It was super pretty. It's nothing
like the boring graves in America. These
are super green and full of nature. It
is not simply a huge field. As we were
walking, we came to a field which had graves for all the WWII Soldiers. It was super cool!
Later that day, I went on a split with our District Leader,
Elder Stout. He is dying (going home) at the end of next transfer. Super cool
guy! I love this kid. For dinner that night, we ate some home-made fried
chicken strips. We ate that along with some ranch that we made from a packet I
brought along with me. I inherited it
from my trainer, Elder Heil. There is no
such thing as ranch out here, so Elder Stout was super pumped. That night we went on a home teaching split
with people in his ward. It was fun. A split within a split. Splitception.
Photo 1 and 2: The WWII Graves
The next day with Elder Stoud was absolutely amazing!!!!! It was the coolest! We go to the church in the morning for an appointment
at 11am and we wait for this guy from Gahna. He was not there on time, so we called him
about 15 minutes later. He said he was
still coming. We pretty much hung tight at the church until 1:45 and then he made
it. Stout tried to teach me how to read
music on the Piano. He then attempted to teach me how to sing good. I failed both classes. So the guy shows up and we teach in English. It was super weird. I did not like teaching in English. At the same time though, it was nice to be
able to be personable with him. After
that, we go home and eat and we did some 'language study'. In other words, we played Carcassone while speaking
only German for an hour. We then end up
going to an appointment later with an investigator family from Bulgaria. They
are super cool! A dad, mom, 11 year old
daughter, and 5 year old son. They didn't know any English and their German was
not that great. They had to have their
11 year old daughter translate for us. Thankfully,
the Spirit knows how to communicate to people, regardless of language because
we are all children of God and we understand the Spirit when we feel it. While with them, we asked them how much they
have read in The Book of Mormon. The
husband says, "I was able to read some. I read from about here (1 Nephi) until about
here (Mormon)." Elder Stout and I
look at each other and we are just like, "Wait what?" He then proceeds to tell us that he tried to
go to bed but he just could not, no matter how hard he tried. He just kept reading the book. We were just joying ourselves and we asked the
wife if she had a chance to read. She
says yeah. Even the daughter says that
she read a little bit also. We were
super excited! Elder Stout challenges them to be Baptized once they come to a
knowledge that this is the true church, but the daughter had no idea how to
talk about baptism, so that message did not get across. It got quiet and I decided to talk a little
bit about the Book of Mormon. I talked
slow and used hand motions so that there was less of a chance of not
understanding me. The spirit was super
strong and it was awesome! We then ended the lesson and closed with a prayer. Elder Stout says it. Afterwards, the husband looks up at us and
says, "Whenever you guys pray, I always get this super warm feeling
inside. It goes through out my entire
body. I love it." I then proceed to tell him that that was the
Holy Ghost and that he can always have this feeling with him. I couldn't bring up baptism because they would
not understand, but next time, Elder Stout will bring a translation and have
them read it when the time feels right. This
family is super awesome!! We were just
filled with total joy. It was amazing! This must be a fraction of what Ammon felt in
Alma 26. We leave the appointment that
night and we are just super pumped.
On Saturday, we help one of our investigators, Frau Dirks,
move to a new apartment. It was
terrible. She lived on the 4th floor and
she has a ton of stuff that just needed to be trashed but wasn't. We carried down two 7ft tall 4ft wide
wardrobes down 6 sets of stairs along with a ton of other heavy and/or bulky
stuff. We then put it into a van that we
filled up 3 times. We then took all the
stuff and carried it to her new place. Thankfully,
she is now on the 1st floor. Only had to
go up 5 steps :^) It was a 6 hour
project.
So far today, we helped a member of our ward clear out a
bunch of debris in a room on the 5th floor of a place in Essen. We did the same thing to the basement. It was tiring. I am now super pooped but feeling good at the
same time. I am still in the process of
blowing out black boogers and coughing up black garbage. We went to a Greek food place afterwards for a
reward. Worth it. Today, we are going to go to a member's house
right after buying some groceries. It
should be a lot of fun.
Yesterday, Elder Peiffer and I did some planning for the
week. We realized that we have virtually
nothing going for us right now. We made
a plan to do a lot of contacting this week and to do a lot of less active
Go-bys. We made the goal to get 3 new
investigators this week. That is a
pretty high number here. After my
experience with this family though, I got super pumped to find a family of my
own. I really want to find the people who are ready for the Gospel like the
Bulgarian Family. It is going to take a
lot of contacting, which is what I suck at, but I am willing to do it. It is going to be a good week I think! Lots of
potential out here and I am ready to find!
I love you guys and I will write you next week!
Elder Grow
Funny Chicken Restaurants
No comments:
Post a Comment