Last Zone Conference and Splits

Hey Mom!

It sounds like all of the Sundays leading up to my return home are
going to be busy in Vegas/Utah. I am sure it will make time fly like
crazy. Time is going by really fast here. It seems weird to think that
I hit the less than 50 days mark this last week.

Well, we had a relatively good week this week. We had to travel a lot,
seeing as we had two splits since the split we were going to have last
week didn´t work out. Elder Haskell got sick so we had to push the
split until this last week.

Monday was a less than typical P-day. We had all of the usual things,
but we were in a hurry the whole time. The Paderborn Elders came to
overnight with us considering the next day was zone conference. So we
had a member appointment with the Kleinerts, and the Paderborn Elders
came as well.

Tuesday was my last zone conference. Elder Timothy Dyches of the Area
Presidency (I think) came and spoke to us about being master teachers.
It was really uplifting and was really a good thing for me to hear. We
also heard from his wife who spoke a lot about genealogy and using it
with missionary work. Präs. Schwartz spoke to us about how we need to
keep our commitments to the gospel if we expect investigators to keep
theirs, and his wife spoke about the "unto what were ye ordained"
scripture. It was really good. Once we returned back to Hagen with the
Paderborn Elders, Elder Waterböhr and I got our stuff and headed to
Paderborn for a split.

Our split on Wednesday went really well. We had a lot of time to
contact people, and we found two pretty cool potential investigators.
We also made these little origami white dress shirts and delivered
them to some members in the branch there. We split back later that
evening.

On Thursday, we had a rather odd experience. We tried to go by on the
man who had spoken with us the previous week in the Döner shop and
asked us to come to his apartment to teach him. He and his wife were
home, and they let us in. The wife told us she was a Jehova´s Witness
and didn´t have interest in our message. We started to teach the man
about our purpose and the Book of Mormon, and he stopped us after a
few minutes, asking, "Wait, are you guys not Jehova´s Witnesses?" We
told him we were not, and he said he didn´t have any further interest
in our message. It was kind of strange, but at least the wife asked
for a Book of Mormon at the end. Maybe someday they will get back in
touch with the Elders. A little earlier in the day we were also able
to find a man who accepted a Book of Mormon and gave us his number,
and we are still trying to get in contact with him. We ended the
evening in Dortmund, where we visited Institute. We had two
investigators there as well as a less-active who prepared the food, so
that was a really successful evening.

I went on another split on Friday, this time with Elder Haskell in
Unna. We also had a pretty legit split.  We went by on a few people,
and the first guy, a former investigator, let us in. He is active in the Catholic
church and said he thinks it is great what we do but there are just some
points of doctrine where we don´t agree. He had a friend from his
church there, and the friend asked us a lot of questions. Eventually
we came to the Book of Mormon, and it was probably one of the most
natural intros to the book Elder Haskell or I had ever given. The man
asked if he could keep it and was very nice and interested. It was a
cool experience.

On Saturday, after splitting back and going to Hagen, Elder Moore and
I had a lesson with Manuella in Iserlohn. It went well for the most
part. We talked a lot about the Holy Ghost and his role as a
comforter, and the lesson was relatively smooth until the very end. We
came to the part where we were going to bear testimony and close, and
Manuella asked kind of a random question about Elder Moore´s little
sister and it kind of got out of our hands. Manuella and one of the
people we had as a joint-teach just kind of started a completely
different conversation, not about our lesson at all, and it kind of
made it really hard to get back the focus and close. It probably
wasn´t the worst thing in the world, but it could have ended better.
We then went to Bruder Kramer´s like usual, and his son, Chris, was
there this time. We did some grilling and played a little bit of
darts, and had some good bonding time with Chris. Bruder Kramer had
some heart pains after eating, so we didn´t actually get to talk to
him much.

Sunday was a really good day. We had church, and our investigator
Moritz came again. He really likes the church and how friendly
everybody is. After church, Elder Moore and I had lunch with the
Bensches and then dinner/FHE with the Schumaiers in Lüdenscheid, where
we taught Moritz again. We watched the Restoration DVD with him, and
it went really well. He said before that he wasn´t exactly sure how
the First Vision went down, but now he understands everything much
better. He also had a good question about the Word of Wisdom, which he
had learned about during some spare time at work. He said he believes
he received an answer to a prayer through the Book of Mormon, and he
is just doing great.

Well, that is pretty much the week. Transfer calls are this week on
Saturday, but I would be surprised if either Elder Moore or I were
transferred. We also have a street display in the middle of town on
Saturday, so I hope that all goes well.

I hope you have a great week! Love you!

LG, Daniel