Miracle Sunday and a Good Birthday

Hey Mom!

Thanks for the birthday wishes! And you don´t have to worry about the
birthday package not getting to me, I will spend my last 5 weeks here
in Hagen with Elder Moore.

It sounds like it was an eventful week at home. I hope Dad´s shoulder is ok.

Well, I have a restricted amount of time to write my emails, so this
will probably be a little shorter, but we will see how fast I can
type. We have to catch a bus in a little while to an appointment.

This week was pretty good in spite of some appointments that fell out.
On Monday, we had a pretty typical Pday followed by a member lesson in
Lüdenscheid. It was a pretty average Monday.

Tuesday was our district meeting plus a little bit of finding, all
topped off with our English class. Also an average day.

We had to deep clean our apartment on Wednesday due to the cleaning
check we had the next day, and that took a little chunk of time. Later
in the evening, we had another member appointment, this time in
Herdecke, another city in our area.

On Thursday, after our cleaning check, we did some street contacting
for a while and then went to help a member with his home teaching.
Later on, we were going to have a member appointment, but it did not
work out. The buses drivers were on strike for Wednesday and Thursday,
and the appointment was too far away to try and take a train and then
walk or anything. So that fell out.

On Friday, Elder Moore and I did our weekly planning, and we also did
some street contacting on the way to the grocery store so we could get
brownie supplies. We usually make brownies for our members when they
have birthdays, and two member had birthdays. On top of that, Sunday
was ward conference, so we made three sheets of brownies for a kind of
potluck after the meetings. In the evening of Thursday, we were going
to have a member appointment with an active family, but they weren´t
at home. We called them and they had forgotten, so they hurried home
and took us to a little Greek restaurant to eat, but we were not able
to share a message with them because of the time constraint and the
atmosphere in the restaurant.

Saturday was filled with a little bit more action. We had a street
display in the middle of the city, and a pretty decent amount of
members showed up, as well as the missionaries from Unna. We were
there from 10 a.m. till 1 p.m. and gave out 5 copies of the Book of
Mormon as well as a ton of cards. We had some interesting
conversations and rejections from people, but anything for the Lord,
right? Later in the day, we had to cancel our appointment with our
investigator Manuella because no men in the ward could accompany us.
We did have our appointment with Bruder Kramer though, and it turned
out really good. We got to teach his son as if he were an
investigator, and I think it was really helpful for him. He said we
could practice teaching 2 times a week, and that is really good for
him.

Sunday was probably one of the best Sundays I have had on the mission.
We were blessed with a few miracles. Moritz, our main investigator
right now, came to ward conference. We had a lesson with him the
previous week, and he said that he would be baptized when he received
an answer that the church is true. The talks in ward conference were
about acting in faith without a perfect knowledge, especially with
baptism. It was really good. We had a lesson later that evening with
him about the Plan of Salvation, and we invited him at the end to be
baptized on April 26th. He said yes! He just needs to clear it up with
his family so he is allowed to get baptized, but other than that and a
few more lessons, he is prepared. Another miracle that happened at
church was that an 18-year-old girl came who met with the missionaries
before and wanted to get baptized, but her parents didn´t allow it.
She still had that desire, and now is old enough to act for herself. A
girl in the ward who is friends with her in school asked her, "Why
don´t you meet with the missionaries?" She wants to meet again and we
received approval to teach her as long as it is her wish to be taught.
We will meet with her at a member´s home on Wednesday. It was a really
great Sunday.

Well, I had a good birthday today. The Elders from my district as well
as some from Dortmund came to Hagen and we played games and hung out.
I also signed up for classes for Fall Semester at BYU, so I think
everything should be ok there.

Anyway, I hope you have a really great week, and enjoy conference!

LG, Daniel

Last Zone Conference and Splits

Hey Mom!

It sounds like all of the Sundays leading up to my return home are
going to be busy in Vegas/Utah. I am sure it will make time fly like
crazy. Time is going by really fast here. It seems weird to think that
I hit the less than 50 days mark this last week.

Well, we had a relatively good week this week. We had to travel a lot,
seeing as we had two splits since the split we were going to have last
week didn´t work out. Elder Haskell got sick so we had to push the
split until this last week.

Monday was a less than typical P-day. We had all of the usual things,
but we were in a hurry the whole time. The Paderborn Elders came to
overnight with us considering the next day was zone conference. So we
had a member appointment with the Kleinerts, and the Paderborn Elders
came as well.

Tuesday was my last zone conference. Elder Timothy Dyches of the Area
Presidency (I think) came and spoke to us about being master teachers.
It was really uplifting and was really a good thing for me to hear. We
also heard from his wife who spoke a lot about genealogy and using it
with missionary work. Präs. Schwartz spoke to us about how we need to
keep our commitments to the gospel if we expect investigators to keep
theirs, and his wife spoke about the "unto what were ye ordained"
scripture. It was really good. Once we returned back to Hagen with the
Paderborn Elders, Elder Waterböhr and I got our stuff and headed to
Paderborn for a split.

Our split on Wednesday went really well. We had a lot of time to
contact people, and we found two pretty cool potential investigators.
We also made these little origami white dress shirts and delivered
them to some members in the branch there. We split back later that
evening.

On Thursday, we had a rather odd experience. We tried to go by on the
man who had spoken with us the previous week in the Döner shop and
asked us to come to his apartment to teach him. He and his wife were
home, and they let us in. The wife told us she was a Jehova´s Witness
and didn´t have interest in our message. We started to teach the man
about our purpose and the Book of Mormon, and he stopped us after a
few minutes, asking, "Wait, are you guys not Jehova´s Witnesses?" We
told him we were not, and he said he didn´t have any further interest
in our message. It was kind of strange, but at least the wife asked
for a Book of Mormon at the end. Maybe someday they will get back in
touch with the Elders. A little earlier in the day we were also able
to find a man who accepted a Book of Mormon and gave us his number,
and we are still trying to get in contact with him. We ended the
evening in Dortmund, where we visited Institute. We had two
investigators there as well as a less-active who prepared the food, so
that was a really successful evening.

I went on another split on Friday, this time with Elder Haskell in
Unna. We also had a pretty legit split.  We went by on a few people,
and the first guy, a former investigator, let us in. He is active in the Catholic
church and said he thinks it is great what we do but there are just some
points of doctrine where we don´t agree. He had a friend from his
church there, and the friend asked us a lot of questions. Eventually
we came to the Book of Mormon, and it was probably one of the most
natural intros to the book Elder Haskell or I had ever given. The man
asked if he could keep it and was very nice and interested. It was a
cool experience.

On Saturday, after splitting back and going to Hagen, Elder Moore and
I had a lesson with Manuella in Iserlohn. It went well for the most
part. We talked a lot about the Holy Ghost and his role as a
comforter, and the lesson was relatively smooth until the very end. We
came to the part where we were going to bear testimony and close, and
Manuella asked kind of a random question about Elder Moore´s little
sister and it kind of got out of our hands. Manuella and one of the
people we had as a joint-teach just kind of started a completely
different conversation, not about our lesson at all, and it kind of
made it really hard to get back the focus and close. It probably
wasn´t the worst thing in the world, but it could have ended better.
We then went to Bruder Kramer´s like usual, and his son, Chris, was
there this time. We did some grilling and played a little bit of
darts, and had some good bonding time with Chris. Bruder Kramer had
some heart pains after eating, so we didn´t actually get to talk to
him much.

Sunday was a really good day. We had church, and our investigator
Moritz came again. He really likes the church and how friendly
everybody is. After church, Elder Moore and I had lunch with the
Bensches and then dinner/FHE with the Schumaiers in Lüdenscheid, where
we taught Moritz again. We watched the Restoration DVD with him, and
it went really well. He said before that he wasn´t exactly sure how
the First Vision went down, but now he understands everything much
better. He also had a good question about the Word of Wisdom, which he
had learned about during some spare time at work. He said he believes
he received an answer to a prayer through the Book of Mormon, and he
is just doing great.

Well, that is pretty much the week. Transfer calls are this week on
Saturday, but I would be surprised if either Elder Moore or I were
transferred. We also have a street display in the middle of town on
Saturday, so I hope that all goes well.

I hope you have a great week! Love you!

LG, Daniel