Hey Mom!
This last week was nothing short of crazy. Our one progressing
investigator is doing really well. We taught her the Word of Wisdom
this last week, and she had actually expressed the desire to quit smoking that
same morning with Sister Rausch, a lady in our branch who lives right below
and who is good friends with her. She is doing really well with it as far as
we know. She has a really strong desire to give up smoking, and she has been
following the steps in the stop smoking workshop that we show people in our
mission. We haven't heard from her in a couple of days though, but we have an
appointment with her later tonight and will see how she is doing with all of it.
We had a sketchy situation with that guy that I talked about from last
week. He had said that he wanted us to help him be a better person,
which was really cool. Then all of a sudden, we got a text from him a few days
later that said, "Pray for us all. Pray that we are good men for what we
must do." We were a little concerned with what ever that meant, so we called him
up and he told us he didn't want to talk about it, but he saved six girls' lives
and that he had found his purpose thanks to us. It was really weird, and we were
hoping that he hadn't done anything weird or illegal that he thought was our
advice to come closer to God since he said he was doing everything he did
"according to God's will." We wanted some clarity, so we met with him a couple
days later out on the Fuß in public. At that point, he told us that he had
single-handedly gotten rid of a Turkish gang in Idar-Oberstein after he broke
some guy's nose off and told the rest of them to leave. It was pretty unsettling
knowing that he thought he was acting after the will of God when he did it, but
we tried to steer the conversation more onto gospel topics, specifically
scripture. He said he didn't need the bible since it has been translated so many
times and that a bunch of stuff was incorrect inside of it. I was about to show
him the article of faith that talks about the bible being translated correctly,
when this girl came up to him and told him "they're coming." He turned around
and walked away from us, so we followed him from a distance to make sure nothing
sketchy was going on. He turned around and started walking back in our direction,
and when he got to us, he told us to walk with him. He started walking around
saying that "they" were just trying to scare him and that he wasn't afraid
anymore. When we got back to the Fuß, there was a random guy there who he gave a handshake to, and then out of nowhere, these three Turkish guys showed
up and started yelling at him. We realized right away that this must be that
Turkish gang that he was talking about, so Elder Fausnaught and I got out of
there as fast as we could. We watched from a distance to make sure nothing bad
happened and could be witnesses in case something did happen. After a bunch of
threats and cussing back and forth, and after a couple more Turks showed up with
some beers, the guy and all the people from this gang started drinking with each
other and stopped yelling. At this point, we left and haven't heard from him since except for a text where he said he hoped to see us at church on Sunday and
that he hoped we didn't think he was a gangster or something. Either way, he
didn't come to church and we haven't had contact with him since Thursday, when
it all went down.
Besides all of that craziness, we had some really good member appointments
this week as well. Our branches are doing pretty well, and we are getting better
relationships with some of the members that we haven't had a ton of chances to
meet with yet. We got some good news from our mission office as well: we are
getting brand new cars in the mission, so on Wednesday, we drive to Frankfurt to
exchange our Opel Corsa for a new Toyota Yaris. I'm excited for it since
our car is really lame.
That sums up the week. Have a good week, and I hope everyone is
happy!!
Liebe, Daniel
