A Successful Week in Gera

Hey Mom!

 

This week was probably our most successful week in Gera so far. We taught 2 good lessons on the street on Monday after Pday, and then 3 more on Tuesday. We also had an appointment with that referral that we contacted, Raymond. He is a guy from Zimbabwe and is super religious. He is also hilarious. He likes to talk a lot and it is almost impossible to stop him. He kept us there at the first appointment for a little over 3 hours and when we told him at the beginning of that lesson that we would probably have 30-45 minute appointments, he was kind of disappointed. The second lesson that we had with him was only 2 and a half hours long, but was really good. He has a ton of good Christian values, has a good understanding of the Bible, and is willing to read in the Book of Mormon. At our last appointment, as he was closing the door right after we had given him the assignment to read 1 Nephi 8 in addition to reading from the beginning if he had the desire to know the story, he was like "Okay I'm going to go read the Book of Mormon!" It was way cool. He also already told a bunch of his friends about us and our message, and took a German Book of Mormon to give to his wife who is German. He also said he would try to come to our ward evening and bring some friends. He is legit.

 

Other than that, we had a really cool service opportunity on Saturday. Alex Krause, a YSA in our ward (the only YSA) did a bunch of track and field things when he was younger and now is in charge of the tournaments at the stadium in this one park, and he invited us to help keep things running during a track and field meet. I got to help pick up these balls that little kids were throwing as far as they could, and then help measure the length that these older guys could shotput. The coolest part was that I was helping with this girl and her boyfriend the whole time. We had contacted the boyfriend on the street the last day, who said no like most everyone else. I got a good chance to get to know him, explain why I had talked to him, and it was just a really good opportunity to show him that we were normal people with a higher standard. He wasn't interested as far as I know, but he now has a different impression of the missionaries. He told us that when we talked to him the day before, he thought we were Russians trying to sell him something haha.

 

Well, there were other good experiences this week, but I can just talk about things when I get to Skype home. I hope you have a great week, and I will talk to you on Sunday! Love you!

 

LG, Daniel

A Ton of Work

Hey Mom!

 

Well, for lack of time, I will keep this email short (that and that I started a new planner for the new transfer and all of the week's activities are in the old planner). I will first announce the transfer call info. Elder Goodrich and I will stay together; Elder Waterboehr will be joined by Elder Hunter, who will be the new district leader; Elder Ludlow from my MTC district has been called to replace Elder Fausnaught as a zone leader in Jena (awesome!); and Elder Moore will be joined in Werdau by Elder Warr, Elder Fausnaught's companion that he trained in Idar-Oberstein after we served together.

This week was ok. We did a ton of work, probably more work than I ever did before on my mission, and probably saw the least success as almost any week on my mission. On one day, I think Thursday, we did around 6 hours of finding time, which was really intense, and the only lesson we taught within that whole time was a girl from Mexico on vacation. We did get some info from another pretty cool kid, but his girlfriend came up and interrupted right as we were going to start teaching him about the Restoration, but oh well. We will probably call him tonight and invite him to our weekly ward activity that is tomorrow. We also had a good walk-in appointment with a less-active guy named Lutz, which went really well. He is an interesting dude and speaks incredibly fast with a real hard accent, so he is kind of hard to understand sometimes. He has kind of fallen away from the church over the last few years and told us that he knows he needs to get active again. He said that we could meet with him regularly, so we will probably call him in a day or two and set up another appointment with him. I got to go on a split with Elder Fausnaught before he goes home (in two days), which was great. We had a good lesson with that lady who took her name off the records of the church. Besides that, we didn't have too much going on this week unfortunately. Just a lot of finding time. Oh yeah, we also got a referral from the other elders since they had not contacted him yet, called him, made an appointment which fell out because of his work, and then told us to call on Tuesday.

Well, I am out of time. We had a sport Pday in Weimar and that took up most of the day, so hopefully next week's email will be more detailed. Love you!

LG, Daniel