Parable of the Bowl of Soup

Hey Mom!

 

This week was pretty awesome. First of all, we got to go to the IAA in Frankfurt, the biggest car show in the world. It happens only once every 2 years. Looks like I got transferred just at the right time. It was awesome. I think I took over 250 pics. The cars there were incredible, and I am sure there were several that I saw that will never go into production and stay just concept cars, so not many people will probably ever get to see some of those cars again. The coolest part of the show was the Audi display. It was like an upside-down city and the whole middle section of the ceiling was a giant screen with videos of cars driving on it, it was crazy. We later on went to our branch president´s house to be there for his 20-year-old son, Robin´s, birthday. It was good. We sang some church songs and had dinner. 

Tuesday was probably the slowest day of the week. We had a meeting with our ward mission leader that evening, and wanted to prepare for that because we had a lot to discuss. We also had some go-bys on a few people, but we mostly had that appointment with him, after which we had ward council meeting. There wasn´t a whole lot of time for appointments that day.

Wednesday was interesting. We had a member lunch appointment with Gary Hess, who is originally from America. He served in Germany when he was younger, and he served in Solingen, so that was fun to talk about with him. We also taught him the Restoration as if he were an investigator to gain his trust in us as teachers and to sharpen our teaching skills. Later on, we went to an appointment with an eternal investigator named Erika, who has been kind of investigating  for 12 years or something. It was one of the weirder appointments I have had on the mission. Every time we wanted to discuss something, she just went off on the most random tangents. Eventually, I asked her if she knew what our purpose was as missionaries. She said something about God having an eye out for us, and then promptly began to talk about her neighbor for a few minutes. It was a little frustrating. We set up another appointment with her for this week, and if it goes about the same, we will probably not go by there often anymore. Right after that, we had a much better, more focused lesson with a less-active sister. We talked about the armor of God, and she enjoyed it. 

On Thursday, I had a split with Elder Standring in Langen. We went and did some service in the Mühlmann´s garden. While we were there, their 14-year-old daughter, Zinnah, brought one of her friends over to meet us, and then went back to school. They were on a lunch break. The parents later told us that Zinnah had been talking about wishing there were more youth her age in the ward, and they told her to find some herself because they don´t hang out with 14-year-olds. Zinnah watched the "Hastening the Work of Salvation" broadcast by herself and decided to start introducing her friend to us. Next time, she might invite her friend to a family home evening that we will be a part of as well. It was an awesome thing to see the principles learned in the broadcast actually put into action. And that was just the beginning of the awesomeness.

Friday was just as amazing. We had Zone Training in Heidelberg, which was great, and then afterwards went to the Mühlmann´s again for Sister Mühlmann´s birthday. She had invited a non-member man named Frank, and we sat by him and talked to him the whole time we were there. She told us before we sat down that he was against religion, but he was actually very nice and asked us quite a few questions. At the end of the night, we asked Bruder Mühlmann if he could give us a ride home (about a 15 minute ride), and Frank´s car was in the way, so he volunteered himself to drive us home. We talked about the church and us as missionaries the whole way back and he opened up to us why he had left his old church. Apparently a pastor had told him that anyone who is not baptized is not Christ´s friend, and we told him that was not true. He seemed to be glad we told him that. We invited him to church as he dropped us off, and asked the Mühlmanns the next day if they would invite him as well. 

Saturday consisted of weekly planning and going by on some people. One of the families we went by on was one of the families we met at Zinnah´s violin concert last Sunday. We made them cookies, and to our surprise, they were home and let us in. We talked for about an hour or so and didn´t get to teach much, but we invited them to church as well and they said they would try to make it the next Sunday (there was a castle show they were going to that Sunday). All of those things that we experienced in those three days were just because of simple efforts of members to have us conveniently where their nonmember friends were. I think too often, the members of the church want to explain everything at once to their friends. While they should answer questions, they sometimes don´t realize that the missionaries are trained and set apart to do that job. I kind of came up with a parable that makes sense in my mind at least, which I call the bowl of soup:

Once someone finds a soup he really likes, he wants to share it with his friends. He doesn´t realize that the soup might be a little hot for most people at first, and they can´t eat it all at once. He sometimes ends up spilling the soup all over his friend or trying to force feed it to him all at once, and the friend gets burned and never wants to eat the soup again. To avoid this problem, he should show the soup to his friend, maybe let him smell it, but then let it cool and let him eat it at his own pace. 

When you replace the soup with the gospel, it is no wonder that members lose friends sometimes when they introduce them to the church. They have to go about it the right way to see a positive result.

Sunday was a good day. None of those people came to church, unfortunately, but that is ok. According to the Mühlmanns, Frank couldn´t make it to church this week, but is going to talk about it with his wife for next week. We got a lot of assignments from the Elder´s quorum, which we will be doing this week. We also went by on some people, but none of them were home. And that was about the extent of this week.

I hope that you have a great week! Love you!

LG, Daniel

 

 

P-day With Elder Hutchings, Productive Meetings, and a Concert

Hey Mom!

 

This week was another hard one. Monday was probably the best day since we had P-day in Darmstadt and I got to chill with Elder Hutchings for a while. I still can´t believe we are in the same district.  Later that evening, we met with the Mühlmann family, probably the coolest members in our ward. We had a great night with them and invited them to have an activity where they invited Bru. Mühlmann´s less-active brother to, and they we pretty excited about it. 

We headed back to Darmstadt on Tuesday for district meeting, which went well. Our district leader, Elder Standring, is way cool. He trained Elder Hawker in Köln and then just got sent to Darmstadt this transfer, so he has now served with or been in the same district as everyone in our mission that went to Palo Verde HS. Later on that day, we had a bit of time to do some finding, which didn´t bring much. We then got to teach our English class to Mike, the guy from Ukraine. He was preparing for an interview, so we were helping him with that. We then had our ward mission correlation meeting with Bruder Sauer, our ward mission leader, and that went surprisingly well. We got a ton accomplished and now have a bunch of plans to get some new activities in place that can bring the ward closer together and create a nice environment for members´ non-member friends. 

Wednesday was a slow day. We made up some flyers for these new activities for a while, went out for some contacting in a different, nearby city, and made a bunch of calls. 

 

Thursday was a bit better. We have started taking an extra 15 minutes in the morning after our studies to get a testimony of our goals and plans for the day, and I was praying and just had this feeling that there was going to be a guy in a red shirt that we needed to talk to that day. We went by on some members, the Wagners, and taught them a lesson about faith. We asked them to pray for us that we could go contacting for an hour and find people. We left their house, and for the entire hour, we couldn´t get anyone to stop and listen to us except for this probably 20 year old guy in a red shirt. He ended up not having a ton of interest, but we at least got to talk to him. We told the Wagners about that later and they thought it was cool. Later that night, we met with our branch president, Präs. Kempener, and discussed missionary work and all of these new activities and plans we have. It went really well, and he really wants the church to be more well-known in Langen. He is a beast and hopefully we can help him turn his desires into reality. He also likes and trusts me even though I am new here because he used to be the branch president in Idar-Oberstein years ago. 

On Friday, we had our weekly planning session, as usual, and later on had English class with Mike and Bruder Schwarz. We got to teach a lesson there about patience. Normally Elder Young said Mike doesn´t really participate in the spiritual thought, but he was even reading scriptures this time. I think it helped that we talked about something more general and not about the Restoration or anything. Maybe one day his heart will be open to the gospel. 

Saturday was kind of another slow day here. We rode our bikes out to this guy's house to drop off directions to the church so he could find it (he still didn´t come, though). We later went to Neu Isenburg, a city in our area, and tried to drop off cookies at some members´ houses, but we couldn´t get to one of them and the other one´s gate was locked and we couldn´t get in. It was kind of lame, and it rained a bit. 

Yesterday was a great Sunday. We just had our normal church services in thr morning, and I got to know people in the ward a little better. During all of priesthood, I was answering questions and reading scriptures, and the teacher, Bru. Wagner, kept calling me Elder Squirrel, so eventually I just stopped answering questions haha. Germans have a pretty hard time saying Squires. After church, we had lunch with the Stübe family, some more members in our ward. It was great, but we were kind of in a rush and didn´t have time to share a lesson with them unfortunately. We had been invited by the Mühlmanns to their daughter´s violin concert, so we had to get there on time. We had called Präs. Schwartz to see if it was ok if we went, and he said as long as it was productive to missionary work. So we asked Sister Mühlmann if she would introduce us to people there, and she did a great job. We got to know a bunch of people and had more good conversations there in a couple hours than we had for the rest of the entire week. There was one particular woman who was really nice and seemed pretty open. Sister Mühlmann found out the area she lived in and told us to look for her there, so we are going to do that this week. We want to invite her to one of these acitivities we are planning.

Well, that is about it for the week. I might not be able to send pictures as often as I want here; the internet shop we go to has locks on the cabinets with the computers in them, so I have no access to the USB ports. Next time we are at the church on a P-day, I will see what I can do. 

This P-day should be pretty awesome. There is a car fair in Frankfurt, and we got permission to go. Apparently it is the biggest car convention in the whole world, so I am pretty excited. I´ll tell you how it was next week. I hope you have a great week! Love you!

LG, Daniel