With Elder McBride as his train is pulling inWow. This really came out of nowhere. I am training again! I expected Elder McBride to be transferred ever since the beginning of our time together when he told me he had already been in Essen for five transfers. But for whatever reason I did not think I would train again! I thought I was just going to be District Leader in different places for the rest of my mission! I thought I had my chance to train at the beginning of my mission and that was it!
It's crazy. What happened in our district was Elder Graf, Sister Swain and I were all transferred here six weeks ago. Now we are all training new missionaries. That was another reason why it came out of nowhere, because I and they had only been here for six weeks! I still don't quite feel at home here. I do feel much better than I did the first week though. This will be a very different 12 weeks with a new missionary than it was in Wuppertal. I felt like I had everything figured out there, and it was my first area. Now I have had more experience in different areas, but I still don't know this one very well. Last week I told about how we hadn't had contact with Laila since shortly after she started having heart problems. Well, it turns out she lost her phone! That was why she wasn't answering us. We went over to her house and got her sister's number, so at least we have that. On Tuesday when I was at Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof to pick up my new companion, and I talked to Elder Jennings, who has been serving in Regensburg. He told me that Tabata, one of my favorite investigators from Regensburg, has been to church every week since he got there. He said he and Elder Yorgason had a really intense lesson with her on Monday, where they asked her and the members in the lesson to pray with them about if she should get baptized. She called them Tuesday morning and said she did! I am so happy about that! Success! Elder Sanders has been doing awesome. He has a lot of desire to learn the language and is staying really positive. He is from Mapleton! He is a trumpet player, and we had an awesome time today talking about jazz and brass instruments. We taught a lesson to Stela and her husband Tillmann yesterday. Stela is from Colombia and Tillmann is a German. So the lesson was all in German. And Elder Sanders did a great job! It was a good first day. We had a few crazy random miracles too, like a man off the street asking us when General Conference is, an African man saying he has never seen Mormon missionaries in Germany before, and a German lady in a Straßenbahn asking us what Elder means and what church we represent. I love you all! Ciao ciao! --Elder Kimball The Essen District!It's my year mark in Germany! I've survived a year of life in the mission field! It's been great. It's been cool looking back on all the opportunities I have had to help people and all the friends I have made.
So first I wanted to talk about a specific street contact. Early in my mission, I thought a lot more about getting people's phone numbers when I talked to them on the street than about how they felt or what they were learning from what I was saying. As time has gone on, my goal has become meaningful conversations, which naturally lead to staying in contact with the person so we can teach them. I have started to think of talking to people on the street as another teaching opportunity. So we got out of the Straßenbahn, and I talked to a lady on the Gleis (platform). She talked for a while about how she doesn't know if there is a God because of all the bad things that happen in the world. I rememebered something that my Branch Predient in Regensburg told me: never just hand an investigator an answer. Ask a question and let them come to the answer themselves, and it will be more meaningful to them. I listened to understand what she meant, and a specific question came to my mind, that I then asked her: "Do you think that everyone in the world does what God wants them to do?" She just said, "No." After that she was listening intently. I explained that I could go out and do something against God's will, but that doesn't make God bad, that makes me bad. As missionaries we are here to help people listen to God's voice and in so doing make a better world. By this time the Spirit was very strong, and I invited her to read the Book of Mormon because it is proof that there is a God and because it has changed my life and it can change hers. She took a Book of Mormon card and promised to read the Book of Mormon. She didn't want to meet with us, sadly. I feel like she was so close to saying yes to meeting with us. That was definitely a special street contact. It's remembering experiences like that that make a mission awesome. Even if she didn't say yes to meeting with us. Elder Graf and I met an awesome young man on our split. We first talked with him on Monday, and then met with him on Tuesday at the church. The lesson went great. Then yesterday he texted us and said he didn't want to meet with us anymore. To make a long story short, he had been reading anti-Mormon stuff on the internet. I always knew this moment would come on my mission, where someone reads untrue stuff about us. We tried to explain everything to him and asked him to pray about it, but then he started texting us all kinds of awful stuff and telling us that we worship the devil. It started out with him being honestly confused, but by the end it was just him slamming our religion and purposely trying to bring us away from it. We eventually asked him to pray about it and signed off. We are going to call him on Saturday and see if he did. Hopefully he will and then we can get back to teaching him. That first lesson with him was really awesome. Our investigator Laila was going to get baptized, but she started having serious heart problems and had to go to the hospital. We haven't had contact with her in a few days. We hope she's okay. For my spiritual thought this week I wanted to talk a little about pride. I have been reading a talk called "Beware of Pride" by Ezra Taft Benson. In it, he calls pride the "universal sin," meaning everyone has it. It has actually been kind of cool to realize that a lot of the big problems I have are rooted in my own pride. Pride is enmity and jealously towards other people and stops us from progressing. It's only when we realize that we have pride and work to overcome it that we can become like Jesus Christ. Or, we can wait for God to beat us with the stick of humility. That happens to me sometimes too. It is not the most comfortable experience, I wouldn't recommend it. Well, have a great week! Hope you liked the letter this week! Stay tuned to find out if Elder McBride (my companion) gets transferred! Elder Kimball Germany Frankfurt Mission With Elder Folau and Elder DoyleSo I had my year mark on my mission! It was February 22. I have been having trouble being as motivated as I would like to be. I have been praying for more motivation to do missionary work. My answer came in the form of an awesome dream that I want to tell you about. In the dream, I was at my homecoming talk. I gave the talk, and it didn't feel right. Then people afterwards started complimenting me and saying, "You served such a good mission, you did such a great job!" I thought about my mission, and I started to get bothered that people were saying that. I knew that I hadn't done all that I could, and that I hadn't tried my hardest. I felt that I didn't deserve any of the compliments that people were giving me. It was an awful feeling. Then in the dream, at one point I realized, "Hey--and I only served for one year! I still have a year left!" It was awesome, because even in the dream I realized that my work isn't done yet. After I remembered that in the dream, the whole illusion sort of came crashing down and the dream ended. I woke up with a feeling of satisfaction. I still have a year left! My mission isn't even close to over! I have a year to give it my all so that when I give my real homecoming talk, it won't feel like it did when I experienced it in the dream. The dream was an answer to prayer for me. The next day I felt more motivated. It really flipped my perspective. We also had stake conference on Sunday. Two general authorities spoke, and both of the talks were AWESOME. Elder Massimo De Feo talked about the story in Mark 6. In this story, Jesus leaves the apostles to go pray. They are rowing out on the sea, and the waters get really rough. Jesus comes to them eventually, and this is the story of him walking on water. But he didn't come until the fourth watch of the night, which is just before dawn. Elder De Feo explained how Jesus would only do things that God would do, which means that we worship a God of the fourth watch. God is always there for us, but he usually only shows himself right as we are about to give up. I really liked that principle and I think it is really true. With the same Elders in front of a weird bird in DuisburgWe had a Zone Conference this week also. We are focusing on the Book of Mormon this transfer. In Preach My Gospel there are lots of quotes from prophets and apostles, and something I like to do is find the talk that the quote comes from and read the whole thing to get more context. I found this awesome quote in "Flooding the Earth With the Book of Mormon" by Ezra Taft Benson from October 1988: Moses never entered the promised land. Joseph Smith never saw Zion redeemed. Some of us may not live long enough to see the day when the Book of Mormon floods the earth and when the Lord lifts His condemnation. (See D&C 84:54–58.) But, God willing, I intend to spend all my remaining days in that glorious effort. In the name of Jesus Christ, amen. In this quote it is talking about the Book of Mormon and the condemnation that will stay on us as members of the church if we don't use it like we should. But it really applies to a lot of things. So many people never get to see the fruits of their labors. They never got to see the one thing happen that they wanted to happen. President Benson lists Moses and Joseph Smith and adds himself to the list. I would add Abinadi, Mormon and Moroni, and so many other prophets to that list. That doesn't mean we should stop working though! I love what President Benson says--he will spend all of his remaining days in that effort! That's what I will do on my mission, and that's what you should do in whatever thing you are working on, especially if it involves helping other people and sharing the gospel! It will come back to you, if not in this life, then in the next! That's all my spiritual-ness for today. Here in Essen, they don't say Servus very much, which stinks. But I am still going to say it. Servus! Schöne Woche! Elder Kimball
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