Hey Mom!
How is everything going?
This week has been alright here. We have stopped teaching Sis. Alder, who was
pretending to be Anita, and now we are teaching Bro Luna as Karl Knoll and Sis.
Alder as Frau Zeidler. It's pretty cool because these were real people they
taught while they were on their missions. Yesterday we watched videos and
learned about how important it is to get investigators to pray with you so that
they have something to think about and a motivation to pray alone. When we
taught Frau Zeidler, we were running out of time and we started trying to invite
her to pray. She kept saying she would pray alone, and I didn't want to quit
because they taught us to never give up because the Spirit will help them have
the courage and the faith to pray then and there. The only problem is I didn't
know what words to say in German and I couldn't convey the importance of praying
with us. I knew that, as Sis. Alder, she was trying to get us to the point
where Frau Zeidler would feel comfortable praying, but we were running out of
time and Elder Bonzo kind of gave up and let her off the hook saying she could
pray later alone. It made me pretty mad inside, but mostly at myself because I
couldn't say what I wanted to say. I started to feel super inadequate and like
the other companionships were way better at teaching with the Spirit and the
gift of tongues. I felt bad about it for hours.
Then later on that night
when Brother Luna was teaching us as a class we read 1 Nephi 17, where Nephi is
commanded to build the ship and Laman and Lemuel are being huge jerks to him,
saying he couldn't do it. I started to realize that although I may not be able
to do or say everything I want now, I will be able to in the future and the
feelings of inadequacy are coming from Satan and are things I need to forget
about. I don't have my scriptures with me, but I remember there is a verse that
says something to the effect of how Nephi can do all things through the Lord,
even turn the waters into earth. I feel like I am doing everything I can in
terms of keeping the commandments, studying, and learning German and I'm not
seeing any fruits from my labor; however, if Nephi can build a huge boat with
the power of the Lord in the face of adversity, I'm pretty sure he can help me
with my German. I've heard from other Elders that the 3 week mark for learning a
language is the hardest and that after that things will just start to come
naturally. I'm trying to exercise faith that I can do this work, even though it
is harder and harder everytime we teach and practice. My biggest weakness is
that I can pretty much write out sentences quickly and correctly on paper, but
when I am trying to think of how to say a sentence while looking into someone's
eyes, I can't speak quickly at all and I probably mess up a ton of all of the
random grammar principles there are in German. Anyway, enough about that.
As a
district we have started playing sand volleyball and my old volleyball skills
are coming in handy. It's a lot of fun playing when
it's not competitive like it was in high school. I also go to the gym and run
every other gym day with Elder Proffitt and sometimes Elder Kinghorn. Well, the language is tough, the days are busy, and now we are the senior
missionaries in our zone. All of the older elders left early this morning for
Germany, which is more than half of our zone of 37 missionaries. Hopefully we
get more in our zone tomorrow so that sacrament meeting isn't virtually empty.
It was really nice though because we had a TON of Japanese Elders on our floor
that left today as well, and they were really loud all night and disobedient to
the hours we are supposed to be quiet and go to bed. Anyway, Elder Proffitt
and I are total buds here. Well there is nothing more to report; everything else will be in
my letters home. Aufwiedersehen!
Love, Daniel
