Thanksgiving and Voradventsfeier

Hey Mom! 

It looks like everyone had a really good Thanksgiving over there! The golf looked fun as always, and I guess it won´t be too much longer until I am back doing that as well. We got to have two Thanksgiving dinners here, so that was really cool. One was with the district after district meeting (the senior couple in Darmstadt prepared it) and the other was the "before-advent-celebration" with our Elder´s Quorum, which was basically just Thanksgiving. It was really good. 

Well, this week was ok. We started with a sport Pday on Monday in Darmstadt, and that was pretty cool. We later on headed back to Langen, and we had a really good lesson with the Kempeners (the Branch Pres. and his family) on Monday about the Priesthood and how God wants us to use it. The Kempeners are really cool. 

On Tuesday, we had lunch with an old member couple, after which we spent some time writing thank you notes to all of the members. In the evening, we went to Peter Rojas´ (an awesome member from Spain) place for a dinner appointment. When we got there, he asked us if we had a little bit of time, and we said yes, to which he responded that he wanted us to help him decorate his Christmas tree. It was a lot of fun. After that and dinner, Elder Brown shared his favorite scriptures with them as kind of his "goodbye."

Wednesday was pretty great as well. We went to Darmstadt for district meeting. It was a joint meeting with my district and the Darmstadt district. Afterwards, we had the Thanksgiving lunch I mentioned earlier. When we got back, Elder Brown had to pack his stuff until we had an evening appointment with the Mühlmanns. We watched the new "Wrong Roads" Mormon Message with them, which is really a good one. 

Thursday was transfers. We headed up to Frankfurt, and I got to see a lot of missionaries I didn´t see for a long time, including Elder Proffit, Elder Fowler, and Elder Goodrich. I am pretty excited; Elder Proffitt got transferred to Speyer which is in my zone, so I will be able to have more contact with him. I also picked up Elder Overall, my new companion. He is a good guy. We got back and went to Egelsbach to deliver some of the thank you notes Elder Brown and I had written, and then ended by having supper with the Grassmans (the Elder´s Quorum Pres. and his family). We watched the Mormon Message "Men's Hearts Shall Fail Them," and that went well. 

On Friday, we delivered some more thank you notes around Langen and then did our weekly planning. After that, we went to the church and helped set up and later participated in the "Voradventsfeier" (pre-advent-celebration). It went really well. A few members brought their nonmember friends, one of which became a referral. We are visiting this man, Michael, tomorrow evening shortly before we visit the guy who brought him to the activity. We also hoped to have that investigator Jonas there. We got in contact with him again, and he wanted to come, but he didn´t show up and now isn´t answering his phone again. It is frustrating. 

On Saturday, we did a lot of work in our area book, scanning through records of people we could try and contact who were investigators in the past. We decided to pick some out from Egelsbach since we still had a thank you note to deliver there. One of the addresses didn´t exist, but the other two were valid. Both of the people seem promising, but they both said to contact them after the holidays. I can imagine we will hear that from a lot of people. In the evening, we had our correlation with the ward mission leader, and that was good. 

Yesterday was a really good Sunday. Bruder Grassman blessed his newborn baby, and there were a ton of nonmembers there. It was fast and testimony meeting, and the Spirit was really strong. I also got up and bore my testimony, shortly describing what missionaries do. It went well. We haven´t gotten any referrals from this yet, but there were some people who seemed to have good questions and a good experience in the church. After church, we went to the Langners for lunch and talked with them about charity. We later finished the evening with studies. All in all, the week was good.

We have a lot of stuff planned for this week with members and with a couple nonmembers. We need to help the YSAs set up all the Christmas stuff, and we also will have a lesson before our Christmas party with the nephew of a member who is in town. He speaks only Spanish, so Peter Rojas is going to be there as well to translate everything. I hope it goes well, and then we could possibly send the referral to Columbia (I think he is from there) when he leaves in a week or two.

Well, that was the week. I hope you all have a great week and that things continue to go well!

LG, Daniel