Liebe Familie und Freunde,
Another one in the books, the joys of the
mission are everywhere to be seen! We had a fun week this week, a hard one, but
a fun one. Summer vacation is starting here in Germany so everyone is just
leaving us high and dry and leaving the country pretty much. Two of our new
converts are flying back to China, and 4 or 5 of our most progressing
investigators are flying around Europe to France, Italy, Austria, Switzerland,
and who knows where. It´s kinda sad to have a lot of the people you worked hard
to find and stuff just leave right at the end of your mission, but I´m trying
to keep more of an eternal perspective and try and find more people so that when
our current group gets back, the missionaries here will just be swamped with
teaching. It´s not as easy as I thought it might be though. The other day we
scheduled the first appointment with someone that I wouldn't be here for and it
was a really weird feeling.
We spent a lot of time this week on our
feet in the streets talking to people in between appointments and stuff. We
talked to a lot of cool people though, met some interesting ones as well. We met
a Muslim student and had an appointment with him in the college library, and he
was just asking the weirdest questions and stuff... turns out he´s from some
weird sect of Islam who believes Jesus Christ is never coming back to earth
again (very opposite of normal Islam belief) and that they have found his body
in India. It was weird because as we talked, he just seemed so different and we
had so many things in common religiously. There are soooo many different beliefs
I´ve seen out here who branch off from the main ones and appear to be more
similar to ours, but then there´s always a massive lie somewhere tucked away in
them. It seems like Satan is really good sometimes at the whole technique of
telling 100 small truths with one big lie. "Eat from this fruit, it will give
you knowledge" -TRUE "surely you won´t die" -FALSE Bleh, it´s so
frustrating.
ANYWAYS, we commited 2 investigators who really wanna
get baptised before I go to live some pretty major commandments and they are
having the hardest time keeping them! It´s soooo hard for people to change
behaviors. But just like Elder Packard says, "The study of gospel doctrine will
increase improvement of behavior faster than the study of behavior," so we´re
trying to help them understand the doctrine. One can´t give up coffee and the
other can't get to church. Anyways, this week I´m offering the one who´s trying
to get off coffee a deal that I will give up ice cream (my love here in Germany)
with him for a week, and the other guy we´re waking up early and showing up on
his door Sunday morning, so we´ll see if that helps everything move along a
bit.
Highlight of the week was definitely the confirmation of our
friend and new convert. It was just an awesome experience and he´s getting the
priesthood as soon as he comes back from his summer break trip. We ordered him a
way cool Chinese bible, which we wrote in and put some pictures in. I didn't
remember though that in the old Chinese they read right to left, so we totally
wrote everything in there upside down because we couldn't tell what side was up
or down (it´s written horizontally as well) but it´s just a nice memory of our
incompentency for him haha. He loved it though, and he loves the gospel. People
like him make everything worth it.
Other than that it was just a solid
week, not sure what else I can report on. The church is true, God is great, life
is good. Hope you have a great week back home, love you all!
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