Our district, the new guy is Elder Heller (far right)The first transfer of my mission is over! A transfer is a 5-7 week period on a mission, and at the end a missionary has a possibility of being sent somewhere else. Elder Hyatt and I are both staying here! I'm happy we are--we've seen so many miracles in just the past week! For some reason, all these great things have been happening--someone calling us after we gave them a card and wanting an appointment, people approaching us on the street instead of us approaching them, and getting seven new investigators in a matter of days! We think some of our success comes from following the Spirit when it prompted us to have a new focus. We've been spending most of our time and effort finding people who are interested, and now we think the Spirit is telling us to focus on helping the people we have found towards baptism. The result has been amazing! We've been teaching more lessons, which I love. A ride we rode at a castle in the mountains last week, it was called SchlossburgWe taught a lesson to a man named Mohammed. It went much better than past lessons have because we had a French translator. Hearing them talk in French was so interesting! I never thought I would get to hear so much French on my mission! My other favorite lesson from this week was with Janik, a new investigator. After saying a simple, powerful prayer with us, he told us he felt good and that Joseph Smith did restore the church. It really is that simple! I had a great Easter! The Bergmanns are a very nice family in our ward, and they had us over for lunch, which was delicious. We brought some notes and food to an investigator family and to a family in the ward who had helped translate for an investigator. This week while visiting a man in the hospital, Falk, I was writing a note in a Book of Mormon to give to him. I shared Alma 7:11 with him in the note and was overcome with the Spirit telling me how amazing it is to have this calling. I try to share something about Christ in everything I do as a missionary, and it's such a privilege to be able to share Christ's love! This is a photo we took with a sister we did service for, her name is Schwester GroßThis is a picture of someone we met on the bus (Elder Blackner and I, during the split). Yusif was his name, and he said he's a pro soccer player! Maybe someone will recognize him?Hello!
We had an amazing lesson with Frau Augustin this week! She is accepting what we tell her so well! We had a member and his wife there. They had the idea to do a tour of the church first, and Frau Augustin was so interested in every part of it. We had the lesson, and that went better than any lesson I have taught so far as a missionary. This was the first time on my mission that I really felt like a missionary. Frau Augustin said something really amazing when Elder Hyatt asked her what the picture on the front of the pamphlet meant to her-- it was artwork depicting Christ coming out of the tomb. She said it was amazing that God provided a way for us to be saved. Elder Hyatt and I taught a lesson at Zone Training this week! Zone training is similar to zone conference, missionaries get together and talk about how they can do better. We wanted to make it fun, so we had the idea to hide chocolate in Easter eggs in the classrooms. It turns out that they don't have empty Easter eggs in Germany, or at least we couldn't find any, so we just hid chocolate. It turned out well, we thought! The lesson was about how we can find joy in missionary work through the Spirit. I had my first split with the District Leader yesterday! A split is when mission leaders switch companions in order to check up on missionaries and teach them. I've mentioned our district leader before, his name is Elder Blackner, and he's awesome. He wasn't afraid to go hard with me. When we were late to something, we would run. When we had waiting time, we would talk to people. We taught a few less actives, which was a new experience for me. One guy who we taught learns the gospel like a scholar. He has the Elders write down questions and then work with him to answer them. It was so interesting to me how he would accept everything that we told him. The running part happened a lot--for varying reasons we ended up running late to several things. I wanted to come up with a name to remember this split. We call splits an Austausch, and schnell means fast, so the name I came up with was the Schnelltausch! Thanks for reading! If you haven't watched the video on mormon.org, Prince of Peace, I would challenge you to do it! Every time we share it with someone I can feel the power of the Atonement in my life! Word of the week: Füllhöhenschwankungen Definition: A ridiculously long German word that I saw on our cinnamon. Yours truly by a kid's museum called the Junior Uni that is right next to the Schwebebahn station for our church. My eyes are closed, but it's the only picture I took this week.The title of this week's email comes from a funny situation involving confusion about German words. I was on a split, which is when missionaries switch companions for 24 hours. Me and my temporary companion, Elder Richter (the native German from our district) were walking around and trying to show the Prince of Peace video to people, which is a really amazing video, by the way. Watch it and share it with people if you get the chance. A girl and her friend walked by us. The girl was talking loudly on her phone, and her friend turned to us and said what sounded like the German word for Mormons, ´"Mormone." I turned to her and said in German, ´"Oh, you know us?" She looked at me strangely and kept walking. It turns out, as Elder Richter explained to me later, she said ´"Hormone," the German word for hormones, to explain why her friend was talking so loudly. Elder Richter thought that was hilarious and I did too. General Conference was so motivating for me! I'm ready to be kinder, stick to my goals, and listen to the Spirit with better ears because of what I learned! I have an ongoing goal to talk to two people during every train, Schwebebahn, or bus ride and at every bus stop or train stop. General Conference really helped me be renewed and pursue my goals further. The Bishop often asks us to visit people in the ward. It seems like he is just throwing names out, but every visit is special and we are able to see how inspired he is and how much he knows the needs of the ward here in Wuppertal. We visited a sister and her little daughter this week with a brother from the ward. We had the brother share his thoughts on the Prince of Peace video that we showed, and he said it is amazing to have a promise of resurrection after we die. The sister we were visiting opened up to us and said sometimes it's hard to trust in the promise that someday life will be perfect when it is so hard right now. Eventually she asked for a blessing, and it was amazing the peace we felt afterwards and during the blessing. Unfortunately we were then 40 minutes late to an appointment with Frau Augustin. That was hard because I feel like God has prepared and humbled her so much, and I just don't want to mess things up. But, my companion Elder Hyatt has told me before when I was stressing out that we have to remember that it's not all up to us. I thought that was good advice. Weekly statistics:
Map of the mission with Wuppertal showing in the Northwestern areaThese are our mission standards, I wanted to share them with you because I think they're awesome |