The Pope,The Word of Wisdom, and Kinder Eggs

Hey Mom!

That sounds like you guys had fun with Mat and Libby there for the weekend. That is also really cool about Keaton coming to the Frankfurt Mission, it is crazy how many people are in this mission that I know.  I am super excited for him to get here later in the year; by the time he gets to Germany, I will have been out for about 13 months or so.

I got a phone call last night from Elder Hall, one of my zone leaders, and he told me that in our entire zone, which consists of I think 11 companionships, there was not one new investigator found this last week. The mission is going through a pretty tough time right now, especially in our zone, even though we are all working really hard. I think part of it has to do with the Pope stepping down; a member told us that in Germany alone, 40,000 people took their names off the records of the Catholic church, and another 30,000 from the Protestants. And that was two weeks ago, so it has to have gone up by then. There is an even bigger disbelief in any kind of religion in Germany than there was before, and I would have to think that something has to happen here in Germany soon to get people to remember God again. I was reading in the Book of Helaman this morning where Nephi prays for a famine to come upon the people so that they will stop fighting and remember God, and then they do only after this huge trial where they realized they needed God.

Anyway, this week was pretty low on success for the zone, but we had actually a pretty good week, even if we didn´t find new investigators. On Tuesday, we met with Stan the Man and had a little cake with him. We met with Bruder Olbert as well. Wednesday, we had language study with Bruder Schumacher, and went by on a less-active family (who came to church yesterday) and also our former investigator, Sebastian. Things went good, but he is still just really indecisive. We had district meeting on Thursday, and afterwards had a split with the Wuppertal Elders. I was in Wuppertal with Elder Brown. We did some finding and stuff, and Elder Colson and Elder Minert in the meantime had a lesson with our main investigator, Fabian, and also with Bruder Benten from the ward and with Sebastian again. On Friday, we met with Bruder Phong at his bakery. He gave us a ton of free sandwiches and really likes us. Afterwards, we went to Domingo´s and had cookies, like always. We went to Remscheid after that to meet with Bruder da Silva, who is from Portugal. On Saturday, we had an appointment with an investigator fall out, and then met with Fabian again. We taught him the Word of Wisdom because he smokes and drinks a ton of tea and coffee. He said he understood the alcohol and tobacco, but he said he didn´t understand why tea and coffee would be against the commandments. We invited him to live it and see how he felt about it, and he said he would try. He also said he would come to church, but once again, he didn´t. Sunday was still good, though. After church, we met with the Hansens (Christopher and Miriam) and had tacos. We also made out a ton of appointments for this week, so it should be a busy week.

Today is Elder Sommerville´s birthday, and we are about to go down to Düsseldorf for a sport Pday with the zone. Before we came here to email, though, we all got 24 Kinder eggs (the things I sent everyone for Christmas), meaning Elder Colson, Elder Minert, Elder Brown, and myself. I will send you pictures next week, but needless to say, it was pretty epic. I don´t think missionaries have ever had that many Kinder eggs at one time; we had 96 in one room. It was pretty awesome.

Well, I hope everything is good in Vegas, and I hope it is starting to warm up. Have a great week!

Liebe Grüße, Daniel