Moin!
Good week. Exciting stuff to start off the transfer.
Pday was fun. I took a nice pday nap. We also did our spring cleaning and that was not so bad. I like having a clean apartment so I don't mind.

Tuedsay was real interesting. We were all over the place visiting several people. We taught an investigator and brought him some stuff from our apartment that we didn't need. We had a table that just sits in the cellar so we shoved it in the car and brought it to him along with an abandoned pair of shoes. The table fit his room and the shoes fit his feet perfectly. The funnest part was the car ride to him. We had to push both seats all the way up so we could fit that table in our tiny European car so we looked and felt ridiculous driving with our knees on the dash and our foreheads against the windshield. We also taught a few less actives and a cool family. It was a fun day. It was also transfer day so that was interesting setting up the traveling and such. We are losing some great missionaries but we got a lot of awesome brand new ones to replace them in the zone.

Wednesday was an exchange. I exchanged with the district leader in his area. He is a great missionary but his area was really stuggling.  We worked hard together on that day and talked a lot about enduring and finishing in a crescendo. We actually didn't have much success at all but it felt good to work hard. We had one cool joint teach with a nice man who gets revelation through dreams. He told us he had a dream where there was a waterfall and a pool and a gate that leads to the other side of this big wall. He said somehow someone had to help you go through the water to be clean and then you get to go through the gate and on the other side it was supposed to be super heavenly.  I jumped on that with 2 Nephi 31 about being cleansed through baptism and Holy Ghost so you can enter in the gate to the path that leads to eternal life. That really got him thinking about baptism. It was a cool moment though, interpreting a dream through a scripture that fits perfectly with it. At the end of the exchange we talked about how we can finish strong and pacted to help each other to work our hardest to the end. At the end of the week I talked with this missionary again and he said our exchange helped a ton. It sure helped me as well.

Thursday was a strange but good day. We taught a less active about prayer. He was born in the church but has literally forgotten all doctrine he once knew. We talked about the power of prayer and challenged him to start praying again. It was really nice to bear testimony of prayer. I don't consider myself to be good at praying but I do notice a big difference in my mood, my spirituality, my ability to recognize God's hand, and my overall happiness when I don't pray or pray without sincerity. Later that day we did finding and prepared for our trip to Berlin. We had a great English class right before we left.  That night we stayed in Hannover with some great missionary friends. Great to see them and reminisce on past missionary stories.

Early Friday morning we headed out to Berlin.
Unfortunately I'm out of time. I'll finish this week in next week's letter.  We are doing zone pday today. I love you all!
Elder Clayton

April 29, 2013

What a week.

Monday was my birthday! It kinda was a lame pday and didn't feel like my birthday. I didn't tell anyone either that it was my birthday so it didn't really get celebrated, except I made me a cake, delicious by the way, and my comp bought me a chess set. We were supposed to meet with an investigator and his family but he forgot. Bummer. We even had a sweet joint teach, Elder and Sister Paul, there. Then we did a language study and visited a brother. I love that man. We found him doing doors and he is just the coolest guy and we had a great and spiritual appointment. He wanted to know how his life will go on, his family recently broke apart, and I shared 1 Nephi 11:16-17 and 1 Nephi 10:19. I don't know how it will go on but I know God loves you brother!  And if you ask Him, He will tell you. This was a cool night of inspiration and revelation, as I had had some answers to my questions to God about how my life will go on. That was a special birthday present. President and Sister Kosak called later and sang to me. All in all, God blessed me on my birthday.

Tuesday was cool. We met with a less active brother who is actually making a lot of progress. He came to church again and said he feels welcome in the branch. He is also reading and praying everyday and we can really see a difference there. Also met with another investigator who is doing well. He expressed some concerns of difficulty on believing in a life after death so we have been working on that with him. We also met with a new investigator and that went well. He is a very smart guy, a teacher and he was still open to the Book of Mormon and the message of the restoration. The only things he has heard of mormons is basically lots of anti stuff but he said that doesn't influence his opinion because he likes to make his own opinion. That evening we went by a former investigator and got to bring her some comfort in the resurrection. Her father is in a coma, and she really appreciated the words of comfort that everything will be made right in the end. Crazy how something like that can make a doctrine so important, that before wasn't completely important to the person. Circumstances can really open hearts. A good end to a long day.

Wednesday was leadership training in Hamburg. That was great as usual. It is always good to get together with other missionaries and to learn from our president and his wife. The main things were the new sister training leader position created in the missions worldwide, motivation through 2 Nephi 9, and the purpose brings joy. It was really good and helped my focus. It was soo weird looking around I noticed I was the oldest missionary there, along with some elders in my group that were also there. Crazy. I didn't like it but it is kinda fun to see old friends from the MTC and see how far we have come. Eye opening.

Thursday was pretty awesome. We had a good study, went to district meeting, and then had a bunch of awesome appointments. It was the last district meeting of the transfer so it was nice to see everyone that will leave us next transfer. As a zone leader we aren't really a part of the district, because we travel around each week visiting the different distrrict meetings, but it was still kinda bitter sweet. After that we met with a less active brothert. He is super chill, young and open and wants to come back to church.  Then we met with our favorite family from romania. The father is a professional cook and made us some romanian specialties. Homemade bread, soup, and crepes. Delicious!  We taught his friend about the resurrection.  They loved the Joseph Smith movie and read the Joseph Smith pamphlet 3 times through and told us the movie isn't finished, it needs a part 2 hahaha because the pamphlet explains a lot more after the first vision. Then we did some doors and had english class. After english we were treated to dinner in the church by the primary kids. We were so full from earlier but tried to eat as much as we could and got to know the members a bit better. Really fun. And that was the day, pretty awesome.

Friday was pretty chaotic. As our tires were changed at leadership conference, they told us we need new brakes because our are basically gone hahaha. So Friday morning we had an appointment to get new brakes put in. The problem was that the dealership wouldn't bill our office until they get a confirmation fax from them that the bill will be paid. This was problematic because the mission office wasn't open yet. Long story short we figured it out and 3 hours later got out of there with new brakes and not having to pay ourselves. We felt more secure driving around with brakes again. After that we met with an investigator then visited a less active family to wish a happy birthday and then more visits. Then we rushed to catch a train to exchange with some elders. On the train I just read a bit in the Book of Mormon and reflected on my mission all the joyful experiences I've had and wow. I love my mission. As we got to the other elder's area I was just on cloud nine, just loving being a missionary and talked to everyone on the way to the apartment and made out a couple appointments.

The next day was interesting. We received the transfer call during study time. Our zone is going to be super young. Every companionship is training except two. There are so many new sisters coming in this transfer that tons of sisters are having to train after only 6 weeks! Should be interesting. We will have to take extra efforts to help out all the young sisters in our zone. When I got here our zone was the second smallest with 14 missionaries. We will now have 24. crazy. The rest of the day was rather strange. I've been getting pressure headaches in the mornings lately and I had to take some ibuprofen and lay down. The rest of the day was a little fuzzy in memory but really good. We spent most of the day in the car or train though since their area is so spread out and far away from ours. We decided we were going to strike up conversations on the trains and we did. It was really cool. The elders there are really good elders that have had a tough time lately and they have said already multiple times that this exchange helped a ton so that was a good feeling. One cool thing was that an investigator of theirs talked about somethings that I had been pondering the whole week and it was like wow, God is connecting our ideas here. The chances of this being coincidence are pretty minimal. Wow. My vocabulary is getting much better since I've been with my super smart physics majoring companion. Anyways that evening we decided to go by an investigator and see whats up with her. We had a really good discussion and she is reacting really positively still. She is reading and searching for her answer. She messed up her back pretty bad so that has been making life pretty hard lately. She was grateful for the visits and just needs some time and patience.

Church the next day was good. We were expecting 4 investigators and 4 less actives and got 2 investigators. I'll take it. Better than other weeks haha. We watched the last session of conference and had sacrament. We ha ward council after church.  Probably the best one so far. Everyone was there and we talked about how to help the investigators! We then ate tacos with the branch president's family and then taught some students that evening. I realized just how easy it is to get distracted and tired and lazy this close to the end. I also realized yesterday that being trunky sucks and it is way more fun to just work.  There is just a certain joy you get from missionary work and we were both so much happier after just working. Just like Gordon B Hinckley would say, forget yourself and go to work. Then you can be a happy missionary

Well that was the week. This week is the start of my last transfer!  Wish me luck, there are people we gotta help. 

Elder Clayton