JAAAAA!!!

This week was pretty amazing. I spent Tuesday and Wednesday in Hannover on a split and then another split while my comp was at leadership training. Hannover is a super awesome huge city. There are four elders living there. Super fun to have 4 elders in the same apartment. I'm jealous. The ward is really big there and they go to young adult FHE everyweek and Hannover is just an awesome place to serve. Hope I can serve in a big city like that sometime. I do love Hildesheim though.

So we had a baptism yesterday!! B! He is the coolest guy ever. He was so ready and the service had such a sweet spirit. He kept saying how excited and how ready he was for his new life. He has had a tough life. He is 30 now. He had an awful marriage, his wife is seriously crazy and abusive to the kids. I'm not sure about the details but he is trying to get the kids away from her. He has really been in the darkest part of his life he said. He wanted a new start, and the gospel is giving that to him. He wants to forget the past and move forward. He said, "I'm a Christain! haha and I love it." Super super cool. He is a man with such good morals. A good guy that bad things have happened to. The ward is really taking him in and it's amazing to see. He has friends now and a place to go and most importantly he has the Savior.

We got 2 new investigators this week too! They both seem really sincere. Q and H. We met them both on the street and had the first lesson with each of them already. Q is super smart german guy, but he is searching for truth, Hopefully we can teach him to learn with his heart as well as his mind. H is a super hilarious lady from Africa. She thinks everything is funny. She has a strong belief in Christ and she could really accept the gospel. Her german isn't so good so we are goíng to give her a french copy cause she reads that better.

Had a cool lesson with J this week. He has been meeting with the missionaries for like 5 years. He can't quit smoking. He has been having a really tough time lately with financial probs and so forth. I want to help this guy so badly. We read about the judges system being put in in the BOM and how bad wicked kings are. I compared the wicked kings to addiction and talked about how the people came out of bondage of the damage King Noah had done by trusting in the Lord. I bore testimony of the power of prayer and the spirit was really strong. We told him we would pray for him. Hopefully things look up for him soon so he can concentrate on quitting smoking.

C had the worst week ever. She wouldn't answer our calls all week long so we decided to go by. Her marriage is falling apart, she is losing hours at work and is having financial probs, and her best friend (her dog) died. We brought her cookies and scriptures of comfort. Also brought an awesome conference talk about pain, and how Jesus has felt all our pain and He can help. She was really grateful to have us there and I think we lifted her spirits a ton. She came to church yesterday was going to ask for a divorce that night I think. She needs prayers too. One cool thing is we taught her the plan of salvation last week and she made a super awesome diagram of it on the computer! haha She obviously understands it and really accepts it too.

We were able to reach the mission standard of excellence, 20 lessons in a week, this week. First time since I've been here. Super cool.

Transfer call was saturday and we both are staying thank goodness! Elder O is a ZL now!!! So cool! He is going from this super hard program in a tiny town to a zone leader in Dresden, one of the largest and coolest cities in Germany. Sooo happy for him!

The Christlike attribute I focused on this week was Virtue. Any missionary who has served in Germany knows it's a hard place to have virtuous thoughts. Soft porn everywhere and modesty is not a priority for most of the people here, especially in summer. In the scriptures the word virtue was often used to mean power, mostly when Jesus or an Apostle or someone did a miracle. Virtue gives you spiritual power. PMG says the mind is like a stage. If it's empty, temptation can sneak onto it. The key to virtuous thoughts is to constantly keep the stage of your mind occupied with something good. I have tried to think of investigators, the scriptures, family, or friends whenever my mind is tempted. I testify it really helps and you feel much better when your mind is constantly occupied with good things. Keep your mind too busy for unvirtuous thoughts.

That's it for this week! Love you all. The church is true. Jesus is the Christ. This work is amazing.