We had transfer calls this week, and I know you will be interested to
know what happened. I am staying in Langen, but Elder Brown is
getting transferred already. He is going up to Mülheim, and
replacing him as my new comp is Elder Overall (I am pretty sure that is what his
name is). He is only in his 3rd transfer, so it is just another young comp for
me! This will be my second time golden busting (being the next companion of a
missionary who just got trained) for Christmas. Last time it was Elder Fowler in
Solingen. Probably the most interesting news of transfer calls was
Elder Hutchings though. He is going to
Idar-Oberstein! I am glad he finally gets to
experience the small town life I have had pretty much my whole mission,
considering he has been in these huge cities and wards his whole mission. This
will help us relate to each others´ missions a lot better
haha.
We had a strange week this week. It was kind of hard.
Monday was a good day though. We went to the Wagners for
FHE and talked about having a testimony of the Book of Mormon.
Brother Wagner is my favorite, and their whole family is really awesome and
funny.
Tuesday was actually fantastic. Since we are so close to
Offenbach, we got to go there to hear Elder Osguthorpe, the President of the Sunday
School for the church, and Elder Ridd of the General Young Men´s
presidency, speak to us. The only missionaries that got to go were the
missionaries in Frankfurt Zone, and then my district and Elder Hutchings´
district, just because it is easy for us to get there but expensive for the
other missionaries. It was awesome. Elder Osguthorpe talked a lot
about ways to help investigators and less-actives, and also about Ammon´s 3 D´s
of success (desire, decision, determination). Elder Ridd spoke of
having real intent in all that we do, including praying, doing morning exercise,
eating breakfast, study, etc. It was very informative and helped me a lot. Elder
Leimer, the area seventy, was also there and spoke about being
clear and honest about our purpose as missionaries, especially in expressing the
importance of and the goal to get other people baptized, and letting them know
it. The best part of the day was that after the meetings, we came back to
Langen and had a lesson with a potential investigator, in which we
got to apply everything we had just learned. The lesson went really well and
this guy, Jonas, knows exactly why we are teaching him and what we expect of
him. He was excited to read in the Book of Mormon and was rethinking his
decision to get baptized in another church.
Wednesday was also a good day. We went by on a family that I thought was
less active, but it turns out that they were just really old and can´t
physically make it to church anymore. They were workers in the Temple for 14
years and take the sacrament every week, so that was cool. They were surprised
that we had not been over in so long. Later on, we had an appointment fall out
with Eva Sonn again. It sounds kind of weird, but I like working
with less actives and there are not a lot here in Langen, and
sometimes I wish there were more who were willing to meet, but the activity rate
in Langen is one of the highest in the mission, if not the highest
(around 85%). We later on had a dinner appointment with the
Dietsches, and that went well. We shared the Mormon Message about
the currant bush.
Thursday was the day that things started getting hard and disappointing. We
were supposed to have another appointment with Jonas, but he didn´t come to the
appointment and now hangs up the phone when we call. We went on a split with the zone leaders as well. I went to Heidelberg with
Elder Stimpson, and we had a good split. We got to talk to a lot of
people because there are people all over the place, unlike in
Langen, and we had a couple good appointments. On the way back from
the split, we got a call from President Schwartz, who told Elder
Stimpson that he would be getting a new zone leader companion,
Elder Wardrop, who is Breck Naylor´s cousin. The other
zone leader, Elder Lindsey, just got called as assistant to the president. On
his split with Elder Brown, he said we needed to spend more time with the
members, trying to have 9 to 10 appointments a week with them. That will be
really hard to do since most of the members have a ton of work and work shifts,
but we need to try and do something else than what we have been doing because
what we have been doing hasn´t seemed to work very well.
On Friday, we had some service at a sister's house,
where we were cleaning our her basement. She is 92 years old, and she is a pack
rat. The basement is full of thousands of jars of preserves and a lot of other
junk from the last 30 years. It was really disgusting. We filled up an entire
dumpster with old junk and only cleared out a third of the basement. There was
also one of those big freezers, like a lot of people have in their garage, that
was all rusty and not plugged in. It had probably been shut off for about 25
years, and they opened it. It was full of boxes of food that has been rotting
for the last quarter century, and some people were having a hard time not
throwing up from the smell. It was awful. We later on had the
Bibelkreis, which was good, even though not many people
came.
On Saturday, we had our weekly planning session in addition to transfer
calls. I also spent some time preparing a talk about missionary work that I had
to give the next day. It was kind of a slow day.
I gave my talk on Sunday, and I talked about how we and the members are all
on the same team. I mostly just quoted the apostles from the broadcast
"Hastening the Work of Salvation." I also spoke of the need to perk peoples´
interest and then not just answer all of their questions, but instead invite
them to talk with us since we are called and set apart to teach with power and
authority. I used the example of saying that I had something in my pocket that
none of them had ever seen before and would never get to see again except at
that time, and that after the meeting they could come up to me and see what it
was (my American driver´s license). I briefly showed it just so they saw that I
had something and then put it back in my pocket. I then read the story of
Abish from Alma 19, where Abish perks peoples´
interest and then the people are taught and baptized by Ammon, who
was called to preach the gospel. It went well, and there were several members
that came up afterwards and said the Spirit was there and wanted to see what was
in my pocket. Later, after church, we went to the Stübe´s for lunch and then had
a fireside about genealogy, which was cool. It was a good day.
Well, that is pretty much it for the week. We are having District Meeting
on Wednesday, after which the senior couple in Darmstadt is making
us a Thanksgiving dinner, so that will be really good. I hope that you have a
great week and a good Thanksgiving!
LG, Daniel
