Opposition

Hey Mom!

Well, this last week was pretty interesting and busy week.
I had one of the strangest appointments of my mission on Tuesday. The
week before, we got a call from a woman living in our area who said
she was a less-active member of the church, and she wanted us to come
and talk to her daughter. She didn't speak the greatest English or
German, so we couldn't find out exactly what the purpose of our visit
should be or what we were supposed to talk about with her daughter. We
drove over there on Tuesday afternoon with our ward mission leader.
The woman was an Asian lady, and she invited us into her small
apartment. She first asked us to look around the apartment and tell
her what we thought. She then proceeded to tell us about how she had a
few kids that weren't allowed to live with her and she didn't really
know where all of them are, she had recently been divorced for the
third time and her husband had her scriptures and member records, and
that she didn't want to get a job since the welfare in Germany was
giving her more money than a small job in the town would. It was all
just a strange situation, and we couldn't really tell her what she
should do since that is not our responsibility. We later left with a
prayer, and then she followed us all the way out of the apartment and
to the car, which was a good distance away. When we finally drove
away, our ward mission leader said he realized during the appointment
who she was and that she tells a bunch of weird stories and doesn't
look for work so that the church will pay for her to travel around to
visit her kids. It was a sad situation, but we couldn't really do
anything. Anyway, later on we had our English class, which went well.

On Wednesday, I went on a split in Paderborn with Elder Richards. It
was kind of a bad day; all of the appointments they had set up fell
out. So we spent some time finding and also updating information on
the referral manager system the church has online.

We had a back to back split with the Paderborn Elders, so I went on a
split on Thursday with Elder Isham. This time I was in Hagen. We spent
a good 4 hours on trains going from Paderborn to a town called
Lüdenscheid. It is a long trip anyway, but our train got delayed by
about 45 minutes so it took a while. We visited a less-active member
there who is actually the brother of my old Elder's Quorum President
from Langen. He is a cool guy, he is just kind of tangled up in the
ways of the world right now though. We watched some of the church's
new videos online with him, and he seemed to like them. We will start
meeting with him a little bit more regularly, and hope that we can
help him see the fruits of living the gospel.

Friday consisted of district meeting in Unna and then later on a
street display in their pedestrian zone. We didn't see a ton of
success, but we were able to give out 4 copies of the Book of Mormon.
That took up the rest of the day, pretty much.

On Saturday, Elder Moore and I visited a member who is moving next
week and helped him work in the garden at the new apartment, getting
it ready to plant grass on top. As we were doing that, we got a text
from Moritz, who said he had started to face opposition in his family
against him getting baptized. I got kind of worried and thought maybe
it would keep him from getting baptized on his scheduled day. He said
his sister and brother-in-law said he is not old enough to make such a
big decision so quickly and that if his girlfriend (a member) dumps
him, he won't even want to be in the church anymore. We planned to
talk with him about that the next day at church. We ended the night
with our weekly Bruder Kramer appointment.

We went to church on Sunday morning, and I had a nice surprise there.
The Helzers, one of my favorite families from Solingen, were at church
because a relative's baby was getting blessed. It was cool catching up
with them and getting a picture together. Moritz showed up during
opening exercises at priesthood, and we took him aside with our ward
mission leader to talk about his situation. It was kind of intense. We
shared with him the story of Joseph Smith being persecuted for his
beliefs, and I also talked about Eric Corpuz's story when he got
baptized. Moritz said at the end of the appointment that he was still
planning on getting baptized on the 11th, and he prayed at the end for
strength to overcome the opposition in his family. It was awesome. We
had a really good Sunday with church, and later on an eating
appointment with a cool family in the ward.

Well, today is my second to last P-day. The Unna Elders are coming in
a little while, and we will chill and then I will go on my last split
with Elder Haskell. It should be fun. We will meet with our ward
mission leader tonight and then have district meeting tomorrow.

I hope you have a great week, love you!

LG, Daniel