We Press On

Hey Mom!

Things are starting to cool off here, but it doesn't look like fall yet. I think it might be kind of like Vegas here where it just turns from summer to winter. Our apartment gets really cold at night, and the Hausmeister told us that they don't turn the heaters on until October, so we have another week of cold nights ahead.

This week was interesting. We first had a split in Saarbruecken, so I went there and Elder Gautreaux was in Idar-Oberstein. It was interesting being in a huge city instead of a town. The ward was really big and they had a legit church building as opposed to our rented out, second floor building space. I am still focused on Idar-Oberstein, but it will be nice someday if I get to serve in a big city at some point. We visited this one guy who has been smoking for about 40 years and now has to smoke 40 cigarettes a day. He is starting the addiction recovery program there, but doesn't know if he can quit. We also met with a guy who has a disability I think. He has met with the missionaries a lot before but doesn't remember anything that they have taught him. We talked to him about the purpose of the Book of Mormon and then he asked us about the resurrection. We read 2 Nephi 9:10-15 with him, and he pumped his fist with excitement when he read verse 13. Hopefully he remembers it because it was a legit lesson.

When we finished our split, the next day we helped Sgt. Welker clean up his apartment in Baumholder military post. We will probably help him with it a few more times this week since he has no one else to help him. We are trying to coordinate with him and with our branch president in Baumholder to get the young men to come help out. He flies out of Germany in a couple weeks and still has a lot of work to do, so we will probably be there a lot to help him finish up before he goes. We also did service for another member. We helped him move a bunch of big rocks in his yard and then dug up some old patio concrete. We will be helping him again some time this week as well.

Well, today is Elder Gautreaux's birthday (he turned 21). We celebrated in the Kaiserslautern stake center by playing some basketball and other games, and then eating some brownies. It was fun, and Elder Gautreaux is really happy today and pumped to be 21.

Other than that, we are still just on the search for someone to teach. Finding here is really hard without referrals, but we press on. We have quite a few member lessons planned this week and hopefully one of them will have someone that we can teach. Well, I hope everything is going well and that everyone is doing great. Have a good week, love you!

 

Liebe, Daniel

Four Months Out

Hi Mom!

I have been on my mission for over four months now, and it is really weird to think about. The days just kind of blend together, which is kind of good and bad at the same time. Good because I know we are staying busy as much as it is possible, and bad because it is just also endless rejection. We visited with our Ward Mission Leader, Bruder Holzmann, who lives an hour away from us, and he even told us that there is not much potential in Idar-Oberstein and that missionary work would be much more effective and purposeful if we were in Trier instead. There are more members there that have to travel to Bitburg or other wards, there is a university (meaning a lot of YSAs), a really big Fußgängerzone, and just a lot more opportunities to do things. Unfortunately, there are no missionaries or a branch in Trier at this point in time. There used to be a few years ago, and I don't know why they are not there anymore. We have pretty much tried doing everything we can here, but all of our creative finding ideas don't work; when we try to do service, people think that we are trying to sell them something and don't accept free service. When we try to ask the ward for referrals, they say that no one they can refer is new to missionary visits and will not accept us anyway. We can't find YSAs through anything because there are not any in our ward that will meet with us and there are basically no YSAs in I-O anyway.  We met with a woman with our WML and she said that people don't receive us probably because we look like bankers. The other day there was a couple people riding past on their bikes and we could hear one tell the other, "Zeugen Jehovas," (Jehova's witnesses). We are basically down to streets and doors.

Well, on a positive note, we had our concert with the Evangelisch choir like I said last time. It was really cool, and we even were in the newspaper. We also are in another choir in Heimweiler, and we got to sing the other day for this guy's 80th birthday.

We had zone conference on Tuesday this last week, which was really cool. Afterwards though, everything went haywire. Our zone was altogether on the same train back, and when we got out to change trains, we learned that lightning had struck the tracks and the trains were not coming. I don't even know where we were aside from the fact that it was about an hour outside of Kaiserslautern. We ended up having to have some members from the Kaiserslautern ward come pick us all up, and we split up our 10 elders between Ramstein and Kaiserslautern for the night. The next day we had zone training in Kaiserslautern, then headed home.

I hope everything is going well and that everyone is happy. I know that me being on a mission is blessing you guys a ton, and I can see all these cool things happening every week. Love you!

Liebe, Daniel