Member Missionary Work

Hey Mom! 

This general conference was so great. There were a ton of over-arching themes that I really liked, like doing the things that Christ asks us to do, rising up, and especially being equally yoked in the work. I think two of my favorite talks were from Edward Dube and also from M. Russell Ballard. Those talks were great and opened my eyes to what we need to do here in Langen to see success. I have kind of had this mindset of focusing primarily on member work since I got here since the ward is so supportive. We didn´t have that as much in Gera just because there weren´t a ton of members who could help with a bunch of things. While I was there, we tried to do member work but focused primarily on our personal activities as missionaries. I now have a respect for balancing these things equally in order to see success. 

Well, this last week was pretty good. On Monday, we had FHE with the Mühlmanns, and Zinnah (the 14-year-old daughter) brought her friend just like she said. She enjoyed the thought we shared and said she would be interested in coming to FHE more often. It went really well. 

Tuesday was zone conference in Heidelberg, which took the entire day. It was really good. President Schwartz talked a ton about chapter 9 in PMG and about having faith. At one point he said something like, "People are being prepared in your area. Many are waiting to accept the gospel. Can we please believe that?" It was really cool. I hope I can improve my faith to find. 

We had a good day on Wednesday. We went to Neu-Isenburg where a less-active and an investigator live. We brought cookies to the less-active for his birthday, and he seemed to appreciate it. We dropped off a brochure at the investigator´s apartment. As we were on our way back to the train station, we were talking to various people, and at one point we passed an older turkish woman struggling to carry her groceries. We asked if we could help her, and she let us. We talked about religion the whole way and she was really happy to see people like us still around since most youth our age are ruining their lives with drugs and alcohol (her words). She said she would try to make it to conference, but she didn´t end up showing because she gave us a bad telephone number. She has our card though, and hopefully she will call one day because she seemed really sincere and quite interested. Later on, we had a correlation meeting with our ward mission leader, Bruder Sauer. After that, we had a good conference-preparation lesson with Eva Sonn, a ward member. 

Thursday was also a pretty good day. We biked out to the Grassmans, who are a family in our ward, and had lunch there. We shared that same video from "Hastening the Work" and they liked it. They had a really long discussion about it and a lot of other things. When we finished that appointment, we went to Neu-Isenburg to have a lesson with that investigator whose name is Boubacar. We had a really good lesson with him. It is the first time I have met with him. He had met with the missionaries before a little bit, but he works for the German airline company as a plane mechanic and he has really crazy shifts he has to work, and therefor rarely has time to meet. We helped him understand the importance of the Restoration, and he now has a desire to know the Bible and the Book of Mormon a little better. When we got back from that appointment, we went to the Branch President´s house for dinner. We didn´t get to discuss much with him about missionary work because they had other visitors coming. 

On Friday, we did some service with the Noack family, helping replace a rotten, wooden beam on a car covering in their driveway. We had lunch with them after that and shared a lesson about conference. When we returned home, we did our weekly planning, and went to a primary activity in the evening. On Saturday, we went to the Mühlmanns to meet with Peter Rojas, a member from Spain who is living in their basement. We had an intro to family history lesson with them using the videos the church has out now. It went well, and he wants to do more research on his family now. After the appointment, we rushed to the train so we could get back to the chapel in time to watch the Saturday morning session of conference. 

All of Sunday was basically spent in Darmstadt, watching the Priesthood, Saturday afternoon, and Sunday morning sessions of conference. We barely caught all of our trains and it was kind of hectic getting home, but we made it. 

Well, that was about the week. This week is going to be pretty cool. Elder Young and I have been planning some activities with the ward council that will take place weekly (a bible study class, church tours, etc.). We made some fliers for these activities and designed a big paper to be on the front of the church door so that passersby can see the activities we will be having. We sent these to the bishopric about 3 weeks ago, and I thought all of the projects had just kind of been forgotten and died, and I was kind of bummed because we had worked hard to convince people to take part in these activities, but then we got a call from a member in charge of printing out the fliers and he asked how many we wanted. He printed them out the same day and also the big shield with all of the activity information on the church. According to the fliers, these activities start this week, so I am now really excited. We have ward council tomorrow, so I hope we can get everyone pumped about taking part in these activities. 

Anyways, that´s the news. I hope you have a good week!

LG, Daniel