A Golden, Familial Ties, and a Drummer

Hey Mom!

 

Well, I won´t keep you waiting in suspense in terms of our transfer calls. Elder Fowler is getting transferred to Essen, and I have been called as a trainer!! We head to Frankfurt on Wednesday and we overnight there, and I will pick up my golden on Thursday morning at the golden-trainer meeting. Elder Hutchings and his companion are remaining together in Duisburg, and Elder Proffitt is getting transferred to Aachen, which is in my zone so I will see him at transfers and throughout the next two transfers at least, which I am super happy about. It is a kind of funny situation: Elder Ripplinger, one of my current zone leaders, is getting transferred, and Elder Hall from Aachen is replacing him. Elder Hall trained Elder Proffitt and was training another new missionary this last transfer, but now Elder Proffitt will be taking his place and finishing the second half of training Elder Ellsworth. I don´t know how it was in Mat´s or Ryan´s missions, but in our mission, when someone trains you, you become their "son" and they are your "father," and when you only do the second half of training someone, they are your "adopted son," and if your trainer trains someone else they become your "brother." That means that Elder Ellsworth was Elder Proffitt´s brother and now is becoming his adopted son, so there are some weird familial ties going on there haha.

There is not a whole ton more to report just since it was so recent since the last email. We lost contact with that 17 year old girl during the holidays, but we are meeting with her tomorrow, so hopefully there will be some progress there. We also met with the Maaßs, who are an older couple. Bruder Maaß is a professional drummer and has played with drummers from the Police, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, etc. I am sure Mat would be excited to meet him one day. Anyway, we were having a dinner appointment with him and his wife yesterday. We expected it just to be a dinner appointment, but he brought along his musician friend, who plays the harp in the musical group they are both in, and Bruder Maaß went beast mode testifying of Christ and the Book of Mormon, and then we shared the quote from Joseph Smith about how he said the Book of Mormon is the most correct book on the face of the earth, and the Spirit was there. I hope she at some point decides to meet with us because she is really cool and already has a super strong support system in the church with the Maaßs. The only problem was that at the end of the appointment when we were about to leave something was said about her getting baptized in another church this coming Sunday, which is too bad, but hopefully something will still work out in the end.

Besides that, there is not much to report this week. I will tell you how legit my son is next week on Monday. Have a great week! Love you!

Liebe, Daniel

Missionary Christmas

Hey Mom!

I am glad I got to skype with all of you and it looks like everyone had a really fun Christmas with all of the pictures you sent. Hopefully the rest of the holidays are as much fun.

Well, this will likely be a short email since I will have P-day again on Monday and we just talked the other day. After we finished skyping, the bishop made us finish off some cake that we had begun eating before we skyped, and it was way too much cake hah. Afterwards, we went to meet with Bruder Köster, where we shared a spiritual thought and just talked with him. Then he drove us home. The next day (yesterday), we met with the Helzers for a lot of the day. We played foosball in their basement, which is obviously awesome since all the boys in the family play it a lot. We then had dinner, which was really good. Then we played some games with the family, one of them called Ligretto, which is a super fast and stressful card game, and then we played Trivial Pursuit, church style. It was the same game board and everything, but someone had made a bunch of different cards with various church topics, which was fun. Elder Fowler and I did really bad because every time we were up, we got some ridiculous question that we didn´t know and then everyone else kept getting questions that were easy to answer. Oh well, it was still fun. We then shared a spiritual message with them and they drove us home afterwards. They also gave us each a really cool tie for Christmas, just one more in the collection!

Well, today, the zone is meeting in Düsseldorf to have a sport P-day, which will be fun. The rest of the week will be spent trying to work with less-actives and also working on setting up everything with our GPS. It takes a lot of time, but when it is done, it is going to make the work a lot more efficient and practical with transportation and everything.

I hope everything is good at home, and I look forward to hear from you again on Monday!

 

Liebe, Daniel

It was great to skype with Daniel!  He looks great and sounds great and he is really happy!  His German is awesome.  He loves his mission and we are really proud of him.  Now we have Mother's Day to look forward to talking to him again!