Learning and Testifying by the Spirit

Hey Mom!

We had a pretty decent week this week. On Monday, we were going to have an appointment with Michael Peter, but he wasn't home. We saw him on the way back to the city center, and he said that he had stuff to do and that we could come by on Thursday. On Tuesday, we spent some time on the pedestrian zone giving out as many cards as we could and inviting people to our weekly ward activity. We also spent a bit of time writing our testimonies in Books of Mormon. Elder Schuetze, who was just released from the area Seventy, visited us in a zone conference last year and told us that no Book of Mormon should be given away without a testimony, reading suggestions, and the contact info of the church/missionaries. Since our area is new, we just had a box of blank Books of Mormon, so we had to get on that.

 

On Wednesday, we went by on a man in a car dealership. We had talked with him briefly on the street a couple weeks ago and he said we could stop by his work. His name is Herr Hundt. He is a pretty cool guy. He is atheist (go figure) and told us that he sees any church besides the Catholic and Protestant churches as some sort of sect. I proclaimed to him that we were not a sect, and that we were members of the same church that Jesus Christ set up, so that was pretty cool. He said he would read the Book of Mormon, but that he would most likely not be able to be converted because he doesn't believe in things like that and only believes in things he can see and grab onto. Later on, we had our weekly ward activity, which normally consists of a lesson about the Book of Mormon, dinner, and then playing ping pong or other games.

 

The next day, we headed to Jena for our zone training meeting, and afterwards I went on a split with Elder Crosby in Werdau. They have bikes there and a ton of hilly streets with narrow passageways. I am sure the Lord was watching out for me on that split because there were several times when we had to hit pretty sharp corners or go through really tight paths, but I didn't fall or hit anything. And that was the first time I had ridden a bike in over a year, with a seat adjusted for Elder Moore, who is over 6 feet tall, so yeah. I almost ate it a lot of times on that bike, but somehow I managed to come out afterwards without crashing. We visited this very old man in the branch there, and then went to a bible study group at an Evangelisch church. It was very interesting. The head guy in the study group could read and speak Hebrew and was explaining how God's plan is made known in the Hebrew symbols just within the first verse of Genesis 1, and it all made sense and was really cool, but there was one thing missing: the Spirit. It really made me appreciate how different it is to learn from the wisdom of man and to learn from the Spirit. Even though I was very impressed by this man and his understanding of Hebrew symbols (which in reality supported most of the things we believe), I knew he had not learned what he had learned though the Spirit of the Lord. I can see now even clearer than before why the Bible has been changed so much and why there are so many churches who believe they have the truth but deny the Spirit.

 

Anyway, the next day, we did some service in a little town called Crimmitschau raking up and shoveling leaves in a park there with a guy who worked for the city. It was pretty cool, and it was nice to get in some service. Later on after a train ride back to Gera, we made our plan for next week and did some studies and finding time. In the meantime on this split, Elder Goodrich and Elder Moore had a lesson with Michael Peter, who said he would come to church in May but would not accept a return appointment to meet with us. Schade. Anyway, on Sunday, we had our fast and testimony meeting, which was really cool. The son of the old man I had visited on my split in Werdau was there (he is on the district council). I talked with him and told him that I had visited his father a few days before. I gave my testimony a little later during the meeting, and then this man ended the meeting with his testimony. He said that he had talked with all of the missionaries in our branch and was confident that we were all nice and good missionaries, at which point he brought up my testimony and the story of me visiting his dad and how that meant a lot to him that we had done that. It was really cool and the Spirit was really strong, and I think it excited the members a little more to do missionary work.

 

Later on, we tried to visit this guy with a bunch of psychological problems that we had met about a week ago, but he was not in the Clinic that he said he would be in. So after that, we did some go-bys on some  members and a former investigator from the other missionaries' records. We did some dooring after that in the northern part of town. And today, we have pretty much just done the usual: study, shop, and do emails at the Kempe's. That about sums up the week.

Well, I hope that everything goes well this week! Love you!

LG, Daniel