just so you know im in germany. after i got off the phone with you in detroit the plane broke and we were stuck there for 6 or so more hours. then we flew to amsterdam where we obviously had missed our flight. our group got split in two. half of us automatically had tickets to frankfurt, and the rest of us had to sort it out with the aiport people so me and my group headed to copenhagen. from copenhagen we got our flight to berlin where we landed tonight at like 830. thats about 9 and a half hours after we were supposed to land. the other half was supposed to land an hour before us but they missed their flight so they showed up a few hours after without their luggage. president and sister pimentel were there to meet us and greeted us warmly. we are safe and sound at the MH now.
HALLO!
wow so yep. im in germany. what do i say about germany.... the people hear are so divers. im in hildesheim, a city in the middle of germany i think hahaha. there are muslims, indians, turks, afgans, asains, russians, and normal germans too. the most receptive people are some of the not white people haha. some caucasian younger people will listen though. not one caucasion over 30 has stopped to listen to us. maybe thats an exaggeration. idk. anyways all of the people that talk to us are pretty cool. its true there are a lot of hard hearts but i feel like america is almost the same in a lot of places. but make no mistake, there are people hear prepared to hear the gospel. you can do missionary work in europe and you can baptize in europe too. the city smells like smoke because everyone smokes, and the smaller places outside the city (dorfs) are usually way pretty. there are a lot of those giant windmills in germany and quite a bit of farmland too. berlin was sooo cool. hildesheim is pretty awesome tho. there is a lot of huge older churches here. unless you live way outside the city, and sometimes even when you do, everthing is basically apartments. they build up not out. lots in a small space. no one has a truck. all small, fast, german, economy cars. pretty cool. the food is awesome! there is this turkish food called a döner, its like a taco with bread instead of a tortialla, and they put different stuff in it. they have a big slice of meat on a rotisserie and they shave little tiny pieces off and put that in the bread with some other stuff and some sauce and its awesome. they dont drink water here. its always like carbonated juice or carbonated water. and the grocery store has like nothing the same as america. and there is graffiti everywhere! apparently its cool to spray paint english words like beer and outlawz on the buildings haha. some of it is actually artistic and way cool tho. anyways thats a little about germany.
so this week was crazy. cant even believe i was in the MTC a week ago. the hardest thing so far is just missing all the friends you make in the MTC. here its very isolated. just you and your companion, your investigators, and a whole bunch of other people that dont speak your language. the first couple days are tough that way. the investigators help take away the lonliness and they are what makes you want to work hard. we have quite a few investigators, some of them are "eternal" investigators. the work here died down a few transfers back when for some reason a missionary was hurt and ya its been building up for a awhile now. my trainer, elder J is awesome. he is a hard worker and has a ton of faith. we are determined to get some baptisms here soon. we have a goal of 2 bapt dates this week. teaching is my favorite thing. when the spirit testifies there is nothing like it. i was able to give some promises to investigators this week and that was pretty cool. i used moroni 10:3-5 to promise A that she can know God is there and if she prays to know that she will get an answer. i also promised G that if she makes the decision to be baptised (1nephi3:7) that God will prepare her to be able to bear any grief from neighbors in her church choir. we are poised to make some huge progress with people this week. the work is good. its not easy at all but thinking that i can help some of these people recieve the blessings of baptism makes it all worth it.
we had a few really really awesome times with a young spaniard, T. he met us in the markplatz (marketplace, the center of the city with lots of stores) he was like 15 or 20 minutes late and we almost left but he showed up just as we were about to go. he was an honest seeker of truth if ive ever seen one. he had researched the church and had tons of awesome questions! he asked about why we have the lowest divorce rate, and we explained eternal families, he asked what the meaning of life is and we explained a little about the plan of salvation, he asked what real happiness is and we explained that following Christ brings happiness, he asked what makes us different from other christian donominations and we explained the restoration. it was amazing!! we got to do it in english too cause his english is better than his german. he was sooo excited for this new "way of thinking" but we had to cut it short because we were late for another appointment. we were soooo excited that we would be able to give him the lessons when he told us he was going back to spain in 2 days. God was merciful tho, he allowed us to drop him by a book of mormon saturday, and see him again at markplatz yesterday pure coincidence, and this morning as he was on his way to the train with his suitcase to leave for spain. God would have had to fix so many things for us to run into him twice in two days in this city. he said he had already read the introduction and the testimonies of the witnesses yesterday(literally the day after we left it for him) and he was definitely going to read the rest. we were able to let him know how to contact missionaries in spain and i think God was showing him that this is right by letting us run into him by chance everday until he left. it was no coincidence. God is all powerful and is merciful. such a cool little miracle. i have faith he will continue his excitement for the gospel in spain and he will find missionaries or they will find him and he will be baptized. it was really like a dream, too good to be true.
another small miracle we had is friday we got back from teaching with like 15 minutes left of proselyting time. we decided to go out in our neighborhood and street contact instead of calling it a night. we prayed that we would find an appointment before we came in. we talked to 5 or 6 people and none would take the card. i hesitated on the last one because i thought it was my comps turn and we walked right past. we were out of time and i figured that was our appointment and i screwed it up. we headed back and right in front of our door was a younger kid prolly 18 or 17 walking his dog. the dog had stopped to pee right in front of our house. we contacted him and told him about the book of mormon and he was actually interested! we gave him our card and he said we prolly shouldnt bring it by his house but rather he would come to our church. he worked yesterday but he said he wanted to come to church "überwoche" or next week. there ya go. another tender mercy from the Lord.
not being able to understand people is frustrating. it will come though. i can still testify with power and thats is a missionarys most powerful weapon. I dont know what else to say except that this is tough but its possible and it can only get better by working hard and smart. thats it for this week!
if you wanna write straight to me instead of through the mission office the address is
Ludolfinger Str. 9
31137 Hildesheim
Germany
love you all!
No comments:
Post a Comment