Last Week of the Transfer

Hey You!

The last week of this transfer went very well!  Elder Johnson and I worked hard, and we were surprised to find out that I am being transferred!  (Elder Johnson is also getting a Golden!! or "greenie" as it is called in the US).  I am moving down to Göttingen tomorrow and get to start working with an Elder Frensel from Texas!  I am pretty excited to see a new place.  I hear there are a ton of people who ride bicycles in Götitngen, and that it is a university city.  It's always cool to talk with young people.  

I had a good week, I assure you.  I just don't have a lot of time to finish all my e-mails today!  So I am going to attach a few pictures, and I hope you all have a great week!

There are a couple pictures in Hannover, including a lion, me at a manmade lake thing, and a picture of our district.  There are also pictures of the beach in the middle of Hildesheim!  It's so funny, and cool.  There is also a picture or two of the fourth of July, including cake!!  Then, there is one picture in Berlin of some statue thing that looked cool.  I would have more pictures of Berlin, but the batteries in my camera died.

P.S.  My new address is:

Kirschberger Strasse 38

37085 Göttingen 

(If you don't know how to do the umlaut on the ö, you can just write the following: Goettingen)

What a great week!

Well, hello!

This week has truly been a great week!  I think this week was the most stereotypical week that I have experienced, haha!  How cool is that?  Everyone has these stories they tell as a missionary, and now I have the same ones!  Don't know what I mean?  Read the rest, and you'll understand.

Okay, first thing is first.  Companionship exchange!  I think I mentioned this earlier, but Elder Barnes, my MTC companion, is now in the same district as I am!  We were able to do a Companionship Exchange this last Wednesday (in Nienburg)!  We worked all day, met with an investigator (That just got baptised yesterday, by the way!), and we were trying to find more people!  It was pretty close to the end of the day and we had still not made out an appointment with anyone that we talked to.  We had about a half an hour left in the day.  Anyone who knows small German towns knows that it's rare that people go out after 8pm and walk the streets.  We can't do doors after 8 either (It's some generic rule of Germany that people doing door to door things don't do it after 8pm).  We were having no luck.  Literally nobody in our sights.  We decided to say a prayer.  We prayed that the Lord would direct us to somebody that we can make an appointment with.  After our prayer on the street, we literally felt pushed in a certain direction.  We both felt that we should go the same way.  Still, even at this point, we saw nobody on the streets.  I was thinking the Lord was directing us, but we still needed to keep our eyes out just in case somebody was in their yard or something.  I was wrong.  Not too long after, a young teenage boy was literally jogging our way.  He didn't have any intention on talking with us, but he didn't avoid us either.  We stopped him and talked with him.  Even though we were full of the Spirit and knew that we were supposed to be going this direction, it was still a really wonderful feeling to hear him accept the invitation to meet with us and talk about the Book of Mormon.  The Lord blesses his missionaries, and Prayer seriously works!

Next, I want to tell the story of a great day--Friday!  We started off the day early, going to a lesson at 11AM.  The appointment was with a lady living in a small town/village an hour bike ride away.  Elder Johnson and I took off and went our way.  We made it to the appointment and taught the Plan of Salvation.  This lady literally accepted everything.  She thought it was great!  It was so cool to have somebody so easily accept the gospel!  Afterwards, we had an appointment with a member, about a half hour bike ride from where we were.  We showed up a couple minutes late, but they surprised us with lunch!  Way cool!  We didn't expect it at all.  It was nice.  It was a super good lunch, and we gave a nice spiritual thought.  After traveling home and putting the bikes away, we went out to talk to people on the street.  We talked with many people, and we got the same normal answers: "Keine Zeit" "Kein Intresse" "Geh weiter", etc.  Then, we talked with one lady who spoke with us for probably 45 minutes!  It turns out she had already planned on visiting our church in two weeks, and she thought it was great the we happened to talk with her!  Coincidence in her mind, but it was not a coincidence.  We told her how to get to the church, gave her our number, and had a great talk.  After her long talk, we had to rush to an appointment.  We were meeting an investigator in the market place.  She showed up, and so did our member (we were doing a Joint Teach).  We found a spot to sit down in the city.  This was no ordinary spot.  They call it "City Beach".  It's literally a bunch of beach sand that the city put in the middle of the city.  They build a bamboo looking fence around it, and have a bunch of fake palm trees and a volleyball net.  They have a bunch of speakers set up, and they constantly play music during the day.  There are also a bunch of beach chairs and tables all for public use.  So crazy!  It's a fun place, haha.  Anyway, there we had a great lesson with our investigator, and we had a very spiritual experience.  We were on a "beach" in the middle of a city, with lots of people around us and music in the background, and we still had a wonderful spiritual lesson!  That was cool day.

Last thing I want to share is Saturday night!  We had an appointment with a Jehovah's Witness.  The third one we had.  This time she brought someone else to try and convince us we were wrong! (Earlier appointments were mostly just us sharing the Gospel. I guess she didn't like that very much, even though she didn't show it)  We ended up having a three hour long bash.  Normally, we shouldn't stay in a lesson more than an hour!  That was a crazy experience.  I could understand all the German, and I always had something I could say back in German.  It was a three hour long argument in German, and just like every missionary will tell you, the Spirit was most definitely not there!  We got home late, and we were all riled up.  We took some time to calm down, invite the Spirit to be back with us, and talk a little bit with each other.  It was weird, after fighting for three hours in German, it was difficult to try and discuss things in English.  I would randomly start speaking German, but not on purpose.  Needless to say, it was really good that we had church on Sunday to help bring the Spirit back to us!

Oh, and speaking of church: We had FIVE investigators at church!  FIVE!!  How cool is that?  It's super cool to get one to church.  We were super busy running around, trying to make sure the investigators were doing well, as well as talking with the members to get other things cleared up for the week.  The members did really well in making our investigators feel at home.  Some of the members didn't even realize that the investigators weren't members because they fit in so well!  It's really exciting.  I am looking forward to another wonderful week!

I wish you a great week!  Enjoy yourself!

July Fourth!

Exciting Right?  Yes, they have July 4th here in Germany too!  It's just the same as any other day though.  There is nothing special about it.  A couple people on the street knew that it was our independence day though, and they mentioned it.  My companion and I celebrated by speaking  a lot more English than normal!

Tuesday was an awesome day!  We traveled all the way to Berlin for a mission conference tour!  Elder Causse came and talked with us!  The train ride(s) took about 3 hours there, and 5 hours back.  It was only 3 hours there because we took a super cool, but very expensive, express train.  It was almost exactly like being in an airplane.  We even got a tiny snack of gummy bears on the way there.  As we arrived, we searched for the correct bus.  We found some sister missionaries who were also going to the mission conference, so we rode the bus together hoping that one of the six of us would know which stop we need to get off on.  Not a single one of us knew, and we ended up going much further than we should have.  We got off the bus and tried to catch a bus going back.  That was crazy.  Two busses didn't even show up, and the third bus took us, but we showed up late.  Late to a meeting with a member of the first quorum of the seventy!  Woops.  I guess that's just like me though, make people wait on me, and make a big deal about showing up.  Everyone got to see us, and everyone had been waiting for us to show up.  We made it, and they started the meeting right away.  The conference was wonderful!  I learned a lot, and it was a very spiritual time.  We learned that there are thousands of people out there who are ready to hear from the missionaries.  We just need to find them!  We are given the task to talk with EVERYONE.  If we don't talk with everyone, how can we find the people ready for the gospel?  It was cool.  Of course the 5 hour train rides back made us really tired, and we didn't show up at home until about 11pm. 

Throughout the rest of the week, we worked hard to implement all the things we learned.  We continued to talk with everyone, as normal, and we invited more people to be baptised.  Nobody accepted... yet!  We also invited a lot of people to church!  That was really cool.  We invited somebody we met on the street to church.  I had only met her once for a brief minute or two, and Elder Johnson didn't know her at all, but she showed up!  That was really exciting! 

The next week brings new opportunities, and more chances to find new people!  I hope everyone is enjoying their Summer break (if you happen to have one)!  Have a great week!

mit freundlichen Gruessen,

Knocking on Heaven's Door

Hey!

I hope all is well!  Everything is excellent here in Hildesheim!  I have been receiving lots of letters from my family!  That's always fun :).  Thanks for those! 

The last two weeks have brought so many miracles!  I simply do not have the time to type them all up.  I guess I need something to tell when I get back anyway.  We have been able to teach significantly more people!  It's really great.   People are really opening up!  We have a few new investigators, we have been making out appointments with more potential investigators, and the Lord finds us worthy enough to receive a referral.

I want to explain this referral story.  My companion and I were out on the street talking to people, as normal.  As we were talking to people, somebody we don't know came up to us and asked us if we were the Mormons.  Of course we answered in the affirmative, and then he proceeded to give us a referral of one of his buddies that is interested.  That was a miracle in itself!  After giving us the name and address, this man left back the way he came.  We then contacted this referral, and he was seriously interested!  We made an appointment out, and we will be meeting him tonight!  It's really exciting!  I love the Lord! 

Another awesome miracle was yesterday, Fast Sunday!  We fasted, like normal, and worked hard throughout our day!  We rode bikes in the rain for more than an hour, rang several doorbells, and talked with angry people.  A normal day--or so we thought!  We continued to work hard!  We were diligent with ringing doorbells, talking with people on the street, and trying to find those who are ready.  We saw some serious success.  God allowed us to find 5 people!  We made out appointments with 5 people that we having met before!  That was such an exciting day!  It's normal for us to make out one, maybe two appointments if we have enough faith.  Five appointments is great!  I know the Lord helps those that do his work!  If we just do our best, the Lord takes care of us!  Never forget that! 

Tomorrow we head of to Berlin for a mission conference!  That will be great!  I can't wait to learn more--and to see Berlin again.  I haven't been there since December!  Have a great week, stay positive!  Enjoy the summer vacation time, if you have any!

New Transfer Week 1: Fertig!

Hey You!

Well, another week has gone by!  Time seems to go by pretty quick.  Next week, I will have been in Germany for 6 months!  Weird eh?  I know!

This week went really well!  My companion is sick, but he insists on working really hard anyway.  So, we did!  It was definitely worth it.  We found a lot of people.  It was really cool!  We didn't have a whole lot of lessons this week, oddly enough.  We did make out more for next week though!  That's cool!  We are still searching for steady investigators!  I can tell that we are helping prepare the people here in Hildesheim though.  People are getting a spark of interest in what we have to say.  Later, they may look into it.  Eventually, they will want to actually hear the lessons!  I can feel it!

Yesterday, we had a super-awesome experience.  We had planned to work in a certain area.  After our eating appointment, we headed out to go work!  Then, I realized I didn't know how to get there!  My companion is new here, so he didn't know either.  Finally, we just decided to pick a direction until we found the place.  After probably an hour and a half on riding our bikes in the rain to make it to the place where we wanted to work, we didn't know exactly where we should do doors.  We prayed to find out which street is the right one.  Immediately, a thought came into my head!  We started doing doors on that street, and it seemed like a normal street.  We doored a pastor (it seems to always happen that way), but oddly enough he didn't have interest in even convincing us we were wrong or anything.  We went to the next house, and asked them if they had some time to talk about Christ!  The lady asked if we were Mormon, and we replied in the affirmative.  She said she didn't know much about Mormons and wanted to learn a little more.  She and her husband let us in, and we talked.  It was such an awesome experience.  This lady had sincere interest.  She wanted to learn from us!  We gave her a Book of Mormon, and explained it!  It was so cool.  It turns out she is only here for vacation!  She wants to learn more though, so we showed her how she can meet with the missionaries in her area!  She said she felt the Holy Ghost tell her that she should learn more!  How cool is that?!  I had the thought that the couple will accept the gospel and get baptised!  The Lord shows us the right way to go, we just need to trust him!

I'm looking forward to an awesome week, and I hope that YOU have a great week as well! 

P.S. Here are two pictures: one at a museum, and one in Hannover haha! 

New Transfer!

Well, it is a new transfer for us in Germany!  I am pretty excited to start a new transfer.  I am not moving to anywhere new, but I am getting a new companion, Elder Johnson.  I am excited to work with him.  I got to know him a little bit in the MTC.  He and I overlapped our MTC time by 3 weeks. 

 The last week was full of appointments!  I mean full!  We had so many that were planned.  Unfortunately, not all of these appointments went through.  Some people decided they didn't have interest anymore, and some people forgot.  That's alright though, because we were given the opportunity to find more people!  It's always good to find new people!  I love finding people who are interested, and whom we can teach. 

Today and yesterday were both holidays in Germany.  We were expecting more drunk people to be out on the streets, but this time there was some sort of event going on in the city.  Most of the people were attending this event, and as a result, we didn't have as many people to talk to like the last one.  The last one, "Christi Himmel Fahrt," tends to be a bigger drinking Holiday.  Bigger than this weekend Holiday.  Germans were drinking anyway, of course.  It wasn't anything super crazy.  We walked around the city anyway, hoping to find people.  It was still good.  A man came up to us and asked to meet with us, before we even talked to him!  That was way cool.  We gave him our info and we will meet soon. 

There tends to be people we meet on the streets often.  Sometimes we make appointments with these people, but they never go through.  We make appointments everytime we see them though.  It's pretty funny.  We are making friends on the street simply by inviting them to the gospel.  Of course the missionaries are always coming and going, so they aren't permanent friends, but it's still kind of fun.

It has been a good week, and I am looking forward to another great week with a new companion!  I can always use your prayers and love!  I'm still in Hildesheim for another 6 weeks, so if you want to send me a letter, I wouldn't be upset! ;)

More Pictures

These are just additional pictures to the previous e-mail!

Talk About Heat!

Hey all!

Just for your information, I will be posting a few pictures of my adventures at Schloss Marienburg (A castle in the Hildesheim area).  I may add other pictures too, I don't know, we'll see haha. It may be a lot of pictures, so I hope that it still works okay!

Let's start with a week ago yesterday.  I had the opportunity that Sunday to TRANSLATE!  Crazy huh?  So there is a member here that speaks only English and it was my turn to translate for him.  I had never translated before and so naturally it was really intimidating!  I wasn't sure that I could actually do it!  He asked me to translate for him, and I accepted.  It was a really good experience.  I have gained a better understanding of what it must be like to translate for the Spanish Branch in the Carson Valley 2nd Ward, or anywhere for that matter.  It takes complete attention, and it was difficult to try and hear what people are saying, and translate it in a way that makes sense on the spot.  Just like any language, it cannot be translated word for word, so sometimes I would have to wait until a few sentences are finished before it can make complete sense in English.  Then, I had to listen while I was saying it in English so that I could continue to translate later.  It was really interesting!  I didn't expect to ever have to do that as a missionary, haha!  I am glad I had that experience though.

This last week was definitely an interesting week.  To start out with, we had a lot of time to walk the streets and talk to people.  So we did so.  We made out so many more appointments this week than the previous one's.  I realized that we were able to do this with an increased faith on God, and that he will help us find those who are ready.  I realized I was slowly falling into a false thought that it's nearly impossible to find people in this area!  I was wrong.  The members sometimes like to tell us this is a difficult place to find people, but our district leader proved that otherwise.  I was able to learn a lot by going on an exchange with him on Wednesday in Nienburg.  Talk about a Faith builder!  

Next, I must talk about our day on Thursday.  Thursday was a Holiday here in Germany.  It's called "Christi Himmel Fahrt" (or Christ's ascension to Heaven).  It also kind of doubles as Vater Tag, or Father's Day, but it doesn't mean the same thing as the American Father's day.  As it was explained to me by a German, this holiday is a holiday meant only for going out as males and getting drunk.  It is specifically a male get drunk day.  That being said, you can imagine what two guys with white shirts and ties look like to a bunch of drunk people.  In Germany, it's quite common for everyone to be drunk out on the streets, just sitting on benches, walking around the city, or sitting on the curb at an intersection.  So, we had plenty of people to talk to.  We were invited to parties, invited to smoke Hookah, and yelled at all over the place.  It was really quite interesting!  There are many many many Jehovah's Whitnesses in this area, and so most people yelled at us at first thinking we are the JW's.  Of course, after a quick clarification, they were set straight on what our name was, and it was time to ask questions.  You can imagine how intelligent these questions must have been considering everybody was intoxicated.  We met two guys that night who insisted that we continue talking to them.  We talked to them for a long time!  I mean, multiple hours.  Maybe an hour and a half on the street, and then they invited us over to their place later that night.  They wanted to hear what we would normally teach somebody.  So, we showed up outside their apartment complex at the allotted time, and come to find out, they had been gathering people on the streets to "Come listen to the Mormons!" (in German of course).   They gathered quite a crowd!  They were even reading to each other out of the Book of Mormon we had given them. As soon as we walked up the crowd disappeared and it was just the original two guys.  One of the two guys insisted on finding more people to listen to us, so he is just yelling at everyone on the street.  Finally, one person agrees and we ended up going to HIS apartment instead!  We walk up to his apartment complex at the top floor and talk with the three of them.  We explain the Book of Mormon a little bit, but mostly they just wanted to tell us their problems they have in life.  So we couldn't say a whole lot.  We invited them to read the Book of Mormon and find out if it is true or not.  Then, the guy who had been gathering the poeple on the street, spoke up suddenly, "Es ist wahr!" ("It is true!").  Such an interesting meeting.  We tried to leave, but the guy who told us the Book of Mormon is true wanted us to meet his wife.  So we walk over to another apartment, go up the stairs, meet his wife (who wasn't drunk, fortunately), and then leave to go home.  It was definitely a crazy day!  haha.

Now, I must say that we had dinner on Sunday with some members.  It was so delicious!  The best tasting meal I have eaten since I have been in Germany!  The two we met with are travelers and love traveling all over the place, so they made this meal up from several different cultures' foods.  It was amazing.  They even said that they bet that we haven't eaten something like it in Germany before because it's definitely not a typical German dish.  I just wanted to throw that in there, that I had some delicious food that you probably didn't have, haha.

Alles Gute!  Have a great week!  Until next time,

Awesome Week!

Wow! I think I say that a lot.  Wow.  I can't think of a better interjection!  It's just really awesome when so many good things happen.  Want to know what I mean?  Here you go:

First, this week we had three different people come up to US and ask us if we were the mormons.  They asked for our card and said that they wanted to meet with us.  Three times in one week!  That is unheard of!  That was just amazing.  We now have three more people that we are sure we can meet with.

Next, we received new cards!  New cards that are only being used in the Germany-Berlin mission!  We hand out these cards like crazy!  During the last week, we handed out around 500 cards.  We are hoping to generate our own media referrals.  If we can do this, then we will have more people to teach.  If we have more people to teach, we can show more people the joy of the gospel.  If we can show people how much joy they can have in the gospel, then we can help them on their way to receiving Eternal Life: The

Greatest Gift of all the Gifts of God.

We just had a great week.  It felt long, and we worked hard, but it was rewarding.  We are really seeing the miracles.  We also have the opportunity today to go to a castle in our area.  That will be fun.  I hope to take plenty of pictures! 

Enjoy your week! 

Deutsch:

Die Woche war wirklich wunderbar!  Drei vershiedene Personen haben sogar zu uns gekommon.  Die sagten, "Sind Sie Mormonen?"  Natürlich haben wir mit "ja" geantwortet.  Jeder von dieser Personen wollte mit uns treffen!  Es war super!  Das passiert nie!  Wir sehen so viele Wunder, dass ich es kaum glauben kann! 

Wir haben auch neue Karten bekommen.  Diese neuen karten sind nur in die Deutchland Mission Berlin benutzt.  Letzte Woche haben wir ungefähr 500 Karten verteilt!  Wir hoffen, dass die Leute Intresse haben werden.  Wenn sie intresse haben, werden sie uns anrufen.  Dann können wir mit ihnen treffen.  Wenn wir mit ihnen treffen, können wir ihr zeigen, wie wunderbar das Evangelium ist.  Wenn wir das machen, können wir mehr Leute helfen und taufen.  Ich freue mich darauf!  Wir wollen die Leuten helfen, Ewiges Leben zu empfangen, was die beste Gabe von alle die Gabe des Herrn ist. 

Wir hatten eine gute Woche.  Wir haben viel gearbeitet aber es hat uns belohnen.  ´Wir sehen viele Wunder.  Wir haben auch die Gelegenheit heute, zu einem Schloss zu fahren.  Das wird Spaß machen!  Ich hoffe, viele Fotos zu machen!

Genießen Sie ihre Woche!

Mit Freundlichen Grüßen,

quick!

Here are a quick couple pictures of a cool street and a large church in Hildesheim... Funny story, we were taking this pictures then a guy thought we were waiting for a bus and offerred us a ride.  He said he wanted to pay us back for saying hi to him on the street.  That was cool.