Hey everyone!
German word of the week is... TAUFE! (baptism) We had an
epic week and we finished off with a super awesome baptism of a young student
who´s grown to become a very good friend! And on top of that we found 3 new
people this week who all accepted baptismal commitments and one even commited to
cook for us the next time we meet which is also a wonderful commitment we
missionaries love to hear. :)
So the week began Monday at 6pm after
P-day was over. We had just planned 3 hours of tracting since we felt we needed
to find more people, and after a couple of hours I was getting a little tired and
wondering if we should just go by on an eternal investigator who lives next to
home, but we kept on dooring and ended the day with a SAWEET walk in with a
really cool young student who will be moving to the US in 2 months to the city
of Providence, Rhode Island, the current missionary city of a good friend of
mine. So ya, we´re working on a trans-continental referal. ;)
The next
day we had 2 appointments with 2 Chinese guys we had made apps out with last
week and both of them were drop dead golden and ate everything up we had to
teach. One of them even gave us jade necklaces. They´re super super awesome. We
also taught a few of our refugee friends who are all kinda struggling at the
moment. It´s really humbling to walk from a big beautiful European city to the
outskirts where there´s a fenced off compound full of refugees from everywhere
from Afghanistan and Sudan to Vietnam. It´s a night and day difference in style
and living, but also in faith and hope... the refugees have tons more faith and
hope and in a lot of ways are far more rich than many of the Germans we speak
with.
Wednesday we had a great district meeting and one of the sisters
who´s going home tomorrow gave a fabulous thema about what she had learned on
her mission. It´s always something special to hear finishing missionaries talk
about their mission. I always sit there and just think "I hope I can talk about
my mission like that when it´s o.... oh"
The other days were just
filled with lots of teaching appointments, eating appointments, and preparations
for the baptism. One appointment was with a guy we found doing a street display
who had been taught and baptised in Paris and just didn't think the church
existed here. He was teary eyed as he thanked us for "helping me get back on my
feet." Baptism prep was great too. I think this was the first baptism I have had
where everything went 100% smoothly and there was no last minute rushes to do
anything. FINALLY, I have everything down and it´s almost time to head home. I
guess I´ll just have to try and stack a whole bunch of baptisms in before that
time comes.:) After our investigator´s baptismal interview though, the
interviewer, who is a good friend, pulled me aside and asked, "How can someone have that thorough a knowledge of the gospel and the
commandments before baptism? I´ve looked my whole mission for that." So ya, he´s
ready and I think he´ll be a great member.
Sunday was just a great day.
Had a good amount of investigators at church, including a nice young college
student, who just returned from living in Utah as an exchange student with an LDS
family, who just came all by herself. She seems really interested, but wasn't
really willing to meet with us during the week, so we´ll just hope she keeps
coming and feels the Spirit. The new stake president was also there (the
last one just got taken to the Seventy recently) and he gave a great talk. He
shared -a story about his recent trip to America where he was visiting his
daughter and son-in law in Cali. He really wanted to do a hike in Zions on his
trip, so he and his son-in-law woke up early one morning and drove 8 hours to
Zion, hiked 4, and drove the 8 back. He made a great analogy with how that trip
can be compared to life. Had they been forced to do that trip, it would
have been miserable and they would have found a million reasons not to like it,
but because they both chose to be there and make it, it was one of the most
wonderful experiences he´s ever had and he grew a lot closer to his new son-in-law. Sometimes in life we forget that we choose to come here, and that we can
choose to find great joy in the journey and at the end of it all we can look
back and say we loved it. Had we been forced to come here and do
everything, we would have a very opposite opinion. His main theme was "the
church will grow when the members get happier." It was sooo true! Out of everyone
on the earth, who has more reason to rejoice than us! Nevertheless we forget to
show it sometimes.
So ya, it was a great week this week and I hope the
next couple weeks go the same! Thanks so much for all the love and support back
home. Love you guys!
No comments:
Post a Comment