Week of August 22 from Prenzlau

Well we had a week of miracles again here in good old P-town Deutschland...

So the mission had the goal this week of achieving 21 Ballards (talking to 20 extra people a day and making out 1 appointment) and... WE TOTALLY DID IT! It was a great way to retire this Ballard system and move our Standards of Excellence! I´m pretty sure that that is the first time ever that anyone has ever had 21 Ballards in Prenzlau... and well now it´s the last as well haha. It was pretty crazy though. We had like a prayer tree thing going, so basically if you didnt have your appointment made out by 7pm you call your DL and ZL and then they have a list of people to call, so basically you just had a ton of missionaries praying for you! I had the chance to have Paco´s town, Hildesheim, land in my list to pray for, it was pretty cool. So that was pretty epic i must say, it´s crazy how when you have faith and prayers working for you, no goal seems impossible.

Aside from that however, we also somehow found a way to teach a lot this week too. Perhaps our biggest success however, wasnt teaching in the sense of gospel teaching. So we´ve done a lot of work at the Refugee camp here in the city, and we noticed that hardly anyone could speak german. They almost all want to learn German... but there´s no class here they can take. So i said to myself "self, why dont we teach a class" So we got the flyers out and everything, and well, first class we had 10 or 15 people, haha, the room was almost not big enough. A lot of them were from Afghanistan, and there is one guy there, kinda the ring leader (also a great investigator) who speaks a little English and Persian (the main language they all speak) so basically... I teach in german, my comp repeats it in English and then this guy says it in Persian. It was a big success though and the people really liked it. Some people in the community have heard about it as well, a lot think it´s great and some have even volunteered to help sometime, so it´s awesome. One of the watchmen at the camp keeps tearing all of our signs down, and some people try to lock up our building so all the Ausländers (out landers?) cant get in... but we still find a way to pull it off.:)

Well i dont know much else to talk about... basically just had hours of doors and normal teaching appointments this week. One interesting experience though... So we were doing doors in this little dorf, when all of the sudden this van came speading up to us and this tough-looking guy roled down his window and said "Hey... you guys spreading propoganda around here" I was a little scared because he looked like a crazy NPD guy putting up campaign signs (and they´re very anti-american) Anyways, i was just like, "well we´re talking with the people about a book that changes lives" and he was like "i know who you are... youre the MORMONS!" Now i wasnt sure whether to be scared or not, but the fact that he didnt call us JW´s (WHICH IS WHAT THEY ALLLWWAYYS CALL US!!!) roused my curiousity. I said "Well ya, that´s our nickname, people call us that because we believe in the Book of m...." then he interupted and said. "They talk about you all the time on South Park! I LOVE mormons! They say you guys are the only ones going to heaven" So anyways, he said he wants everything we can give him to read about us, BUT doesnt want us to teach or meet with him until he has read a bit. That was weird though... Media Referall???

Well, headed down to Berlin tomorrow for Leadership Training... gotta give a workshop there, hope it all goes well. Transfer calls coming up this Saturday as well... i cant help but think i´ve gotta go!

Have a wonderful week everyone back home! Love you all so much!