Time Keeps Flying

Hey guys! 

I hope yall had an awesome American day. We enjoyed our
Independence Pday as we went up to Bayreuth in Lederhosen and visited
a castle over there. It was a ton of fun. I don't know when it was
made, but the guy who made it just made it for the heck of it,
apparently. Just because he could. It had a really nice garden and
everything. I sent some photos over about it earlier. We went out
there with the entire district. 5/6 of us had Lederhosen. It was fun.
We then went back to Nürnberg and traveled back up to Erlangen. We got
there and ate some McDonalds in celebration of America's freedom.

Tuesday was also a really good day! We met with a less active member
with their home teacher. It went ok. She is just lazy and won't put
forth the effort to 'remember' about coming to Church. It's sad. We
made out an appointment with her for next Tuesday and said that the
Sister Missionaries who would be coming soon would love to meet with
her and she was fine with it. We then went by a referral who lived out
in the Boonies. We take our bikes with us from the appointment to a
train stop near by and travel for about 45 minutes. We then biked
pretty much downhill for about 20 minutes through the German country
side. It was way pretty! I would've gotten some photos of it, but I
was enjoying speeding down the hills too much. We then get to a tiny
little village and find the dude's house. There was a guy working in
the front. We asked him, "Hey, do you know this guy?" He replied,
"Yes." "Are you this guy?" "Who's asking?" "We are Mormon missionaries
and heard that he wanted a Book of Mormon from us." "Well sounds like
somebody lied." He never did tell us if he was the guy or not, so we
are going to continue trying to get in contact with him through email
and telephone. The church now contacts people who refer themselves so
double check that they really do want a visit from the missionaries,
so we can be a lot more sure that referrals that we do get really do
have interest to some extent. After we turned around, our map said
that there was a castle of some kind right up the hill. This is why
Bavaria is awesome. There are castles and cool things like everywhere.
We decide to check it out. Turned out to be the shortest hike to a
castle that I've ever taken and was the tiniest thing of a ruins I've
ever seen. There was just a chunk of wall coming out of a mound of
earth. We took some photos with it. What was cool is that it was made
like 700 years ago and there was a pretty weird trench thing all
around it. We also figured that the wall continued into the ground and
that a lot of the castle was probably just covered by earth with time
because of random doorways that seemed to be buried. We then biked
uphill forever and then caught a train to Nürnberg to pick up the
Sisters. We waited for a while and then their bus finally came in. One
is from Utah and the other is from Tasmania, Australia. They are both
way cool! We helped them bring all their stuff back and then we all
went to an appointment to a young couple's place. We ate lots of food
and had a good time there. We then all went home for the night.

Wednesday we had our district meeting. Because we got 3 new people
this transfer, Elder Awerkamp and I were in charge of the
Get-to-know-you activity. Our specialty. It consisted of your standard
questions with "Where are you from, how big is your family and where
do you fit in, and what do you want to do when you grow up." We then
had everyone draw two slips of paper from a container. Each one had a
super random question what we came up with the night before. Some of
them were like, "If you could replace any limb, what would you replace
it with? You wake up in an alley, beat up, and missing a kidney. What
happened and where is your kidney? If you could make an animal, what
would it consist of?" Everyone was laughing and having a good time. We
ended up choosing weird questions because the way people respond to
them tells you a lot about the individual. That way, you learn about
each other quicker and have lots of laughs while doing it! After we
did that and had other lessons, we went to an appointment with the
Sisters to the Risner family. We introduced them to each other and we
all ate lasagna. The Risner family is so awesome! They just have the
coolest kids and are always fun to be around. After that we went home
and prepared for our lesson with an excommunicated Member. His last
name is Steinbrecher, which literally means Stonebreaker. On our way
there, we are walking to the back of the bus and a guy from Toga waves
at us and says hi. He asked if we spoke English or French. We said
English. He then told us that he was a member if the Church and wants
to know where the Church Building is. He was apparently baptized 8
months ago in Sweden and then a month later he moved down to Germany.
He hasn't had contact with the church since. We told him where the
church was and we swapped numbers so we could stay in contact. He then
got off the bus and we continued to our appointment. We get there and
Bruder Steinbrecher's son was also there. He is like 12. We all ate
some dinner with each other, which was bread and butter with either
some lunch meat, raw meat, or jelly. It was all pretty good, except
the raw meat. It wasn't seasoned enough. It was just bland.  Needed
some salt :) We Shared 3 Nephi 9:13 and the last two verses of the
chapter. It went pretty good. He then kinda went off on a rant about
why he can't doesn't believe certain things and other small problems
that he has with the Gospel. There were a lot of things he brought up,
but it's not anything that we can't easily solve. He told us that we
could talk about it next time, which is good because then we can start
off the meeting nicely and try to keep the spirit there. The entire
time, his son, who's not a member, was telling his Dad that he needs
to go back to church and repent. Along with the spiritual thought, we
had an object lesson with oil in a cup of water. We said that we can't
just pour out the oil because then we loose a lot of that which makes
our lives full and also because the oil will still be in there. We
showed that by adding more water (good things and habits) we can let
the oil (bad things and habits) float to the top and flow out. The son
would say to the father, "Hey! That's another drop of oil!" each time
that the Dad would go on a rant. It was so funny!  Afterwards we
played a bit of Uno and then went on our way. We have an appointment
with him for this next Wednesday.

Thursday we met with an investigator who only speaks Persian and a
little English and German. We skyped a member who lives in the Herne
Ward, the other side of the mission right next to where I started out
at. He helped translate. He taught the plan of salvation and it went
really well. The investigator's name is Arian. Arian wants to be
baptized but can't yet until he finds an apartment. We aren't allowed
to baptize refugees when they live in a refugee home or any other
Government housing until they find their own place. That is the only
thing keeping him back right now. He is hoping to get one in the next
couple weeks.

Friday night we met with Beate, the lady we baptized in May. We taught
the 3rd lesson in Preach My Gospel. It talks about faith, repentance,
baptism, the gift of the Holy Ghost, and enduring to the end. We went
really well! It's always nice to meet with her. She is so great! She
is hoping to move to Utah next year, which would be awesome!

Saturday was full of traveling and falling asleep on Busses. We went
by on two less actives. One in a place called Gremsdorf and the other
in Neustadt Aisch. We were luckily able to meet with both of them.
They both live in care homes. The one in Gremsdorf smokes again for
whatever reason, but he is now determined to smoke less! He usually
smoked 20 cigarettes a day, but we made a plan to lower it down to 15
until the next time we meet. We shared Philippians 4:13 with him. We
emphasized scripture study and prayer because that is how you get
strength to do things you normally couldn't. He was super enthusiastic
about it and couldn't help but give us a huge hug a couple of times
before we left. When we were leaving, he came with us and told the
Nurses and care people that he is going to smoke only 15 a day now and
he told them that he wanted their help. They were all for it! They
said that's ey'd support him. We left and went to the next guy. We
also had a good lesson with him. Poor guy is so old. He is about to
turn 87. He is way nice though. We had a good time with him and shared
Alma 34:32 with him and talked about how by knowing the purpose of
life, we can get a better perspective on things that come into our
life. It was really good. We then went home for the night and made
dinner.

So yep. Those were the highlights of the week! I hope you guys had a good one!

Elder Grow