Diese Woche

Hey Mom!

This week was very busy and really cool. It started off kind of crazy though. On Sunday I had split with Elder Gautreaux with some different branch members since we cover two branches that start at the same time. I was in the German branch and I set up appointments for the next day after P day ended. When we met back up together after church, Elder Gautreaux told me that there were two potentials that would be attending a YSA activity in the Baumholder Branch, our American branch, and they were at the same time as the meetings I had set up for the upcoming day, so we planned a split with our zone leaders, Elders Nuila and Jongejan because all of the appointments we had set were important. The next day, we took a train to Kaiserslautern where the Stake Center is and where the Zone leaders are near to, and in order to get back in time with Elder Nuila, we needed to leave as soon as possible to make the train back. When we got there, Elder Nuila didn't have his missionary clothes on or anything because it was still P day, and so I had to call up our first appointment and cancel since we would not have made it. We could have taken a later train to get to the other appointment, but when we got to Elder Nuila's apartment, a 15 minute drive from the church, he had forgotten the key to his apartment and so slowed us down too. I had to call the other appointment and cancel, and I felt bad because she had already started cooking. Every plan we had fell apart, and our only reasonable option was to go to the YSA activity and stay in K-town. That ended up not even being that useful because the two potentials did not show up so every plan we had made in Idar-Oberstein and in K-town fell through. The YSA activity was still pretty cool; we got to go to a castle and cook bratwurst and smores with American YSAs.

The next few days were spent in Friederichsdorf, where the Frankfurt Temple is located. All of the Goldens (new missionaries) and their trainers had meetings and such for one day, and then all of the Goldens traveled home and the district and zone leaders came in and had leadership training meetings. I got to stay though since I am the only Golden in my zone and there was no one to split with on the way back, so I stayed for another day and a half and got to experience a bunch of leadership training, met a bunch of older elders, and got to do an endowment session in the temple in German.  It was really awesome because I got to see all of the elders I was in the MTC with again, and Elder Proffitt and I had some more good times like always. He and I are literally as far away from each other as you can get. I am in the very south-western tip of our boundaries and he is the furthest north-east in Werdau.
 

Even though we didn't have a lot of proselyting time this week, it probably turned out to be our most successful week in the end. When we returned to I-O we ran into a former investigator called James Williams who had been in America for a while recording a song for Obama, and we set up an appointment with him for tomorrow. We also did a split with our Ward Mission Leader and Branch President in I-O (I was with the WML, Bru. Holzmann) and we visited a less active named Jenny whose daughter wants to be baptized, and I committed her to come to church yesterday, which she did. We also swung by on a potential we had doored the other day but he wasn't home, so Elder Gautreaux slipped a Book of Mormon in his mailbox on his door with a pass along card in it. When we were driving away, Elder Gautreaux saw a guy in his window just staring out into nothing as we passed by and he had a feeling that we needed to go talk to him. This street was one-way though, like a ton of streets here, and so we had to make a big loop to get there again. When we came back around, we couldn't remember which building it was because the guy was not in his window anymore, and we didn't find anywhere to park so we drove past again and Elder Gautreaux said we could probably door it the next day. When we were almost home, he had a feeling that we needed to go back and talk to this guy, so we went back, found his door, and he opened it when we knocked. Elder Gautreaux told him that he had seen him from his window and that he felt like we needed to talk to him and that we were representatives of Jesus Christ. He said he had seen us drive by as well, and that he wants to know more. He is a YSA, which is awesome because Pres. Schwartz wants us to focus on YSAs and there are practically no YSAs in I-O since it is a retirement and tourist location. He is Indian but he speaks perfect German so we are pretty sure he was raised here. We are going to go by and visit him tonight or tomorrow. It is pretty cool that Elder Gautreaux had that spiritual guidance.

That is all for this week. Everything is awesome and I am enjoying the work. I hope everything is going well and that everyone is happy and doing great. Until next week then! Love You!

Liebe, Daniel