December 31, 2012

Hi everybody!!

Lemme give you the highlights of the week...

Monday was Heilige Abend (Holy Night) and we were at our branch president's house. Right before we watched the First Presidency Christmas devotional in the church. That was the first time I felt like it was really Christmas time. I loved the messages from the First Presidency but of course most of all from President Monson. I always loved his Christmas stories the best. Ever since I was a kid. That was a special treat. At the member's house we ate some tradtitional german food, wursts and patatoe salad. Yum. Then we had a great time joking about Christmas stuff and hearing stories from their family and telling our own stories from our families. It was just a real great time. 

Tuesday we opened our presents! (us four missionaries) I got some great stuff from home and we took some hilarious Christmas pajama pictures. Then we cleaned the apartment and made a big mountain man breakfast. We later went back the to the branch president's house and had wok. That is their tradition. The dad makes a bunch of wok assortments throughout the day and we try them all. We got amazing gifts from them too. American foods! Brownie mix, oreos, cheetos, and mac and cheese! The best part of all though was skyping with the family. That was sooo much fun. I can't believe how much everyone has changed. Family just makes me soooo happy. The happiest thing for me is just to see my family is safe, healthy, and strong in the faith. I loved that so much. 

Wednesday we had district meeting, with hot chocolate and cookies, and then we caroled by a few lonely less actives and gave them Christmas dvds. That was fun to give them a little Christmas joy. Then we visisted another member family that fed us. Delicious food. Then we watched Silent Night with them. It is about the writing of the song. Our mission president knows the director or someone and approved it. Cool show. It applied a lot to missionary work and made me excited to share the message of Christ's Atonement. 

After that we taught a lesson to an investigator. He is muslim and we bore testimony of Christ. For him Christmas is something completely different but I think he felt our Christmas spirit. He promised to read in the Book of Mormon to gain a testimony of Christ's gospel.

Thursday, Friday and Saturday were normal missionary days. It is kind of an awkward time to do finding cause everyone says come back after New Years but there were some cool things I'll share.

We have a new investigator from last week and on Monday we got a call from him saying he is going to quit smoking! Just like that he said he was done. Christmas miracle. On Saturday we called him to remind him about church and he said he was about to give in and smoke as the phone rang. Yesterday at church he said he is 1 week smoke free now and he is not going to smoke at all in 2013. He liked church and his faith is growing bit by bit. That was really cool to see in him in these two short weeks.

Yesterday we met with again with a new family. We met for the first time the Sunday before. We had a good appointment then and they told us quite a bit about their beliefs and background. They are super strong christians but don't belong to a church currently.  Yesterday we brought a member and shared the restoration. It went super well and they are very open. They kept saying how great it was to have us over. The spirit was there. At the end the husband said the prayer, prayed exactly like we do (just from paying attention to how we pray) and asked to find out if the Book of Mormon and the church be true. The wife is going to listen to the Book of Mormon online and he read and pray about it. They also asked us before we asked them, if they could come to church! Sweeet!  I could really feel God's love for them too. They are a great family and will become great latter day saints if they keep with it! They have two beautiful little children. It is such a joy to work with such people. The Lord blessed us! I pray He will bless them further to get an answer!! 

Well those are the highlights. The transfer ended and it was good to see where we have come since last transfer and the direction for the coming transfer! The other elders in our apartment are sadly leaving us, but it is going to be a growing experience too. They are whitewashing Forst, a cool branch in the Görlitz district. We will be alone in Oldenburg until Feb, when we will recieve a senior couple! Our zone got bigger too! We are preparing for the increase of missionaries now by changing up some zones. We have two new zones in the mission and we got two new areas added to our zone. We got Bremen! A wayy cool, pretty, big city and some cool elders there joined our zone. Should be a fun new transfer. We are in Berlin two days next week for zone leader council and an exchange with the APs. Should be a super interesting week with the new zone, contacting all the people who said to come back in the new year, and progress with current investigators! Excitement!

Love you all. I know that Christ is the Saviour of the world. I'm grateful for His birth, sacrifice, and ressurection. I'm stoked to renew my dedication to preaching His gospel in this new year and in my last 4 transfers! 

Elder Clayton

December 22, 2012

Hi everyone!

I'm writing early because the stores won't be open here on Christmas Eve. 

So this week was full of ups and downs! What week isn't though?

So basically Christmas season is great and hard. People are friendly and everyone knows it's Christmas and you're happy but at the same time it is obviously not Christmas cause we are so far away from family. Anyway we are trying to have fun with it and make our Christmas good.

So highlights....

Monday we had family home evening with a member family and that was fun. My goodness I've never eaten so much on my whole mission. We were all in pain we had eaten so much. hahha. Fun stuff. We watched "On the Lord's Errand" about President Monson and that was awesome. Then we tried something that is going to be more of a focus for us here now. We talked to the family about doing missionary work and they were pretty stoked to help out in the work which was awesome! 

Tuesday my companion and I held a district leader training meeting where we trained the DLs and kind of talked about our focuses as a zone since the misison tour and talked about and practiced things President Richards taught us. We are focusing on teaching and inviting in our leadership, mainly in our exchanges and district meetings. Our misison is getting a ton of new sisters soon and the district meetings are the main place to train the sisters since we don't do exchanges with them and that is a new focus. Two other focuses are simplifying our teaching so we teach as clearly and briefly as possible so the spirit can witness of the truth. That is something really powerful and something I wish I had done better on my mission so far. The other one is really tough,especially here in Germany but we are going to practice it and use it and make it work. That thing being finding through members. This mission is very good at tracting and always has been. We are a very hard working mission but the truth is that finding through members is much more effective in the end. President Richards gave us a formula for finding through members and we practiced that and want to implement that here in our misison and zone. It has already worked once for us here in Oldenburg and I had some success at it as well in Marzahn but we are making that a focus. Anyway the DL training went really well so we were excited about that. 

After that we were on exchange. I went to a nearby city, Wilhelmshaven, with Elder Wilde. He is in his 3rd transfer and full of excitement. That was a fun exchange. I wasn't feeling too healthy but we had a great day still. 

Wednesday we got in contact with a former investigator.  He has a break from study now.  He accepted the challenge to read and pray and it was a great first lesson. We also found the happiest African dude I've ever seen. I felt the spirit as he talked about what his faith in God has done for him. We also visited this older sister and her grandchildren and that was a sweet visit. She was so grateful for our visit. Her husband has had 3 strokes and he is hardly there anymore. Really sad for her. She has such a great attitude though.

Thursday we were doing a lot of finding without much success. We had tried visiting a lot of members and nonmembers and none of it worked out so we did doors. It was COLD. No one had interest. Then finally we stumbled onto someone.  He met with missionaries like 20 years ago and remembered an impressive amount. He had never fully accepted, or read, the Book of Mormon, and doesn't understand some commandments but the missionaries showed him how to pray and that is something he kept with him. He said learning to pray changed his life. He is willing to try the Book of Mormon again and he said the closing prayer. What a great, heartfelt prayer addressed to Father in Heaven and closed in the name of Jesus Christ. That was a tender mercy to find him. We are excited to see him progress.

Then we taught another investigator. She was super reluctant to even talk to us when we first doored into her. Now she loves us and really really listens. She comes from a very atheist background but she believes there must be something there. She read Alma 32 and the Joseph Smith pamphlet to our surprise and understood it all really well.  We felt we needed to teach her about prayer to build her relationship with God and learn who He is. She related earlier that she worries alot and has lots of fears and we were able to teach and testify to her that praying before you go to bed brings peace as you speak with your Father in Heaven who listens, protects, and comforts. She has never prayed before and certainly has never heard of praying the way we do but she is willing to try it. We are going to teach her again today so ya we are excited for her. 

So ya those are the weeks highlights. Pretty exciting. Besides these few newer people pretty much everyone is busy til January. That is life but we are glad for these new people. 

I hope you all have a great Christmas and that you remember who we are celebrating! Read about the Savior's birth in the Book of Mormon and New Testament this week!
Elder Clayton

December 17, 2012

So hi everybody!!

 

This week was super crazy. We were gone for over two days to zone conferences and zone leader council. The meetings were fantastic. We met with President Richards of the Seventy. He is a great, powerful, loving man of God. I learned a ton from him. I can't really go into specifics because I don't have time but he taught us a ton. About becoming sanctified, which was my personal favorite thing I learned and wanted to work on. He taught us about leadership, how it is composed of teaching and inviting not talking and telling. He taught about working with members and teaching as simply as possible so the spirit can testify of truth. He taught us a ton!! 

 

It is basically a ton to try and take in but those were the main things I learned and some of our main focuses in the mission and zone. The best thing though is he said that this conference won't make a difference at all unless I, each one of us, use the things we learn and try them. He taught that the best teaching is done one on one and exchanged through example. I'm trying to do all these things to see success in my area and help the missionaries around me.  It is going to be great!

 

As far as the work goes, it's going. We were gone most of the week and lots of appointments fell out so it's been pretty tough. We think we are being tested right now. It is frustrating not having success when you are working hard and being obedient but it will come soon. There are little successes along the way and the big ones have to be around the corner.

 

Well I got to go now. Sorry that wasn't much detail but I'll be emailing next week so I'll talk to you all then!

 

Love you all! Don't forget about the Savior this week!

Elder Clayton

December 10, 2012

Hi everyone!

 

This week was crazy fast but I'll try to share some highlights...

I did an exchange with Elder Ott's son this week and that was a blast. He is a hilarious elder and we laughed the whole day as we worked. We talked about Adam and that was also hilarious. But ya we did a lot of finding and had a ton of success. It was fun to be so excited for the work and so spread this joy. It was a great exchange.

 

This week we did a ton of finding. We found 6 new investigators this week! And like 17 new contacts. I'll just tell about a couple of them...

 

A mother and a daughter from former Yugoslavia. They are sooo humble and cool. They are both Christians and pray every night but they aren't a part of any church really. We did some how to begin teaching and then shared the Book of Mormon and the challenge to read and pray. Really coool.  As we testified the daughter really just soaked in what we were saying. As we talked about the Holy Ghost it was really cool to hear how they felt as they pray and to teach them that that is the spirit telling you something is true. We challenged them to read Alma 34 and pray about it in preparation for the plan of salvation that we will teach them this week. Super great! The spirit was strong and they were right there in it, taking it very seriously and graciously.

 

Another new person is muslim but super open to learn more. We got to share the Book of Mormon with him as well as the promise to find out if it is true. He promised to read and to ask God if it is true, although it is not a part of his beliefs that you can ask God questions when you pray. Excited to see if he progresses and how he accepts the plan of salvation next week. My testimony is strengthened every time we tell people not to trust us but to ask God. I love believing in a loving Heavenly Father who will answer our questions and help us find the truth.

 

Anyway I'm unfortunately out of time, we are in Bremen for pday here... so I'll let this be a shorter email and write more next time.

 

Loe you all!!

Elder Clayton