Week of December 17 from Berlin

Well another week on the road is come and gone, and it looks like we´ll have a few weeks now to stick around Berlin. It´s nice to be back in my own bed. :)

 

We had a great week of Christmas Zone Conferences this last week. We started off Tuesday here with the Berlin and Neubrandenburg zones in Berlin. Wednesday we drove off to Hannover combined with the Oldenburg Zones, then the next day to Hamburg with Neumünster, and we finished up yesterday in Leipzig with the Dresden zone visiting. It was so great to see all the missionaries and feel the Christmas Spirit in all the different zones. It´s so fun being able to see all your old companions at least once a transfer and reflect with them. It´s just a special time of the year as well, and I feel a little bit more into the Christmas "mood" this time I think. I feel great today, but that´s probably also the fact that it was my first full night´s sleep as well. This last Tuesday night was the worst though. Because we had so many finisher missionaries going home right before Christmas, President made a rare exception and had us help get all 13 of them shuttled around and off with all their luggage. Normally president keeps finishers very isolated so that they don't "contaminate" other missionaries, but this time we took them to the no-mans land of the Wall where we dedicated ourselves as missionaries (at the beginning of our mission) to have them report on their mission, and to the airport and everything, just because we didn't have enough drivers. Man, I can totally see why we usually stay away from them. Seeing your good missionary friends walk through that terminal to go home is HARD and WIERD. We always liken missions to our lives, and when you go home you "die", and so for me that was the closest thing to an out-of-body experience a missionary could have. Anyway, that was a tangent. So that night we loaded all their suitcases into the van to take them to the airport for their EARLY flight. Problem was, we didn't get the van back to the office to load until around 12:30. After loading we got in bed around 1:20 or so, then got up at 3:30 to get them back to the airport... it was a great way to start off a week of already limited sleep. But as always, we had all the strength we needed and everything went well.:)

The ZoCo´s went great though this wek. We gave a Thema on miracles and how they´re everywhere when we look for them- macro-miracles or micro-miracles. We watched the last minute of the 1980 Soviet vs. USA olympic hockey game where at the very end the guy announcing the game yells "Do you believe in Miracles!?" It was great and the missionaries were super energized to see more miracles in the work I thought. These last four weeks of the year we launched a little something called "The Advent of Miracles" where starting every Sunday of the Advent time, we have specific goals and things we work on, and as we pray every day to see miracles and write them on the Advent Wreath Calendar we sent everyone, we expect to see them and see a jump in the work. We´ve seen SO MANY amazing miracles and it´s really just sweeping through them mission like a wild fire. The first week we focused on finding, and we reported the best finding numbers the mission has ever had (we measure it by New Apps. Every day you´re supposed to make out at the very least 1 appointment with someone new (tracting), and as a mission with 210 missionaries we average 6.8 per companionship that week CRAZY!) The second week we focused on Joint Teaches (having a member at lessons) and reported the highest number per companionship on record. The whole focus has been responding to the Europe Area Presidency´s letter calling for inviting people to come to church, and we´ve had the highest rate of investigators at sacrament meeting in 6 months! We are really just seeing tons of macro-miracles, and the micro-miracles are just everywhere every day.

One of the biggest miracles happened to me personally this last week. So I´ve written a couple times about the miracle with this investigator my trainer and I found a year ago in Kiel and how she is going to be baptised in October and how I got to teach her on a surprise Tausch a couple weeks ago. Well, in the short time I got to be there, we talked about if she had prayed to know if her date was right. Well a couple nights ago I got off the phone with the Kiel ZL´s who had just gotten off the phone with her, and apparently she had woken up a couple nights ago not being able to sleep and decided to she had to pray about what we had talked about. And she got a powerful answer.:) She´s now going to be baptised on the 7th OF JANUARY!!! Haha, it was such a wonderful miracle! I get to go back up and have been asked to speak at it.:) So now, not only do I get to go back to Kiel for the baptism of one of my greatest Kiel friends, but I´ll be spending the day there doing work too!!! Yep, Merry Christmas! Life doesn't get any better.:):):)

So anyway, that´s basically what´s been going on with me the past week or so. Transfers start being decided this next week, so we´re gearing up for some late nights with pres. I´m super excited though! Have a great week, love you all so much!

 

PS Oh ya, and I found a wild hedgehog outside the office this week.:) They´re like rats for Germans.

 

 

Week of December 10 from Berlin

Well, we had a lot slower of a week this week, but it was still pretty busy none the less. It never ceases to amaze me, the logistics and just work involved in running a mission of over 200 missionaries- truly mind boggling- but ya, there´s always something to do. Good news this week was that we were able to get out of the office a lot more and just do more missionary work. I love trying to figure out how to run the administrative type of service, but at the end of the day, I think the ministrative service is more enjoyable.

 

So we started off the week with our normal office staff meeting, which increased our big looming to-do list right above our board, and then got to work trying to get all the little immediate odd-jobs done as quick as we could. It ended up being a pretty busy day though and we only managed to slip in a half an hour of e-mail time to make up for our giving up a p-day the Saturday before. Tuesday was a bit better, but we had a blitz transfer and president pulled an Elder into the office, so now we officially have 2 office elders to help lighten our load a little bit, which is really really nice. We got him picked up and all settled in as well as tried to stay on top of our busy work schedule. Most of our preparations this week went toward preparing for the big ZL telephone conference we were going to be having. It´s crazy trying to manually generate so many reports and putting so many numbers into excel sheets.  Man, you just start to feel like a number cruncher sometimes. It was cool though, I got to lead the status reports on the conference call and everything went very smoothly. That´s probably been the weirdest part about this new assignment I´d say-  just having to do all these things that I always would make fun of the AP´s having to do when I was a Zone Leader. But anyways, president gave an awesome Thema and it was a good conference. The other thing we worked on this week was an upcoming mid-transfer transfer. Transfers are actually pretty crazy things as it turns out, and this only affected a handful of missionaries, so I´m sure I´ll have a lot to say after we do it throughout the whole mission.  Basically we three sit together and talk about possibilities, but then spend most of the time in prayer asking if the decisions made were correct and praying about EVERY companionship. It´s definitely one of the most intense revelatory experiences I´ve ever experienced and it´s definitely one of the most cherished experiences as well. Waiting either for the warm burning in the bosom or feeling the peace that comes from a yes answer or the stupor of thought or cold feeling around the heart that comes with a no. One thing´s for sure though, EVERY assignment a missionary gets in this mission is confirmed through the Spirit, so I dont think I´ll complain ever again about where I´m put.:)

Well aside from that... it´s been good to get out lately. We kinda just took over a new area in Berlin called Dahlem, and it´s kinda rough to get things started. Basically when we leave the office to do missionary work, it becomes pure finding. And since we´re on the road every other week it´s kinda difficult to schedule appointments, but we´re trying. We only have a small handful of investigators, but we´re trying to increase the numbers little by little. It used to be that the AP´s had another set of missionaries in the ward who could help out a lot when time was tight, but without that now it makes things a bit harder. The great thing though is the AMAZING ward. It really is just the best ward ever. We had our ward christmas party last night, and it was just a blast. We got lots of non-members out to it and it was just really good. Santa came and after he had had all the kids come up and gave them presents after they sang a song or said a poem, the ward had us come up and they gave us a gift as well. We didn't really know any songs or poems... so we just qouted D&C 4.:) You could just feel the love though and it was a great experience.

Well aside from that, not much new I suppose. Hitting the road again next week for Christmas Zone Conferences so gonna be another fun week. Not as much traveling as for interviews because more Zones will be combined, but I´m excited to get back out to all the beautiful cities again.:) Well hope the holiday season has started right for you all as well. It´s been rough here without snow- I WANT SNOW- but we´re still loving every minute of it. Hope you have a fabulous week back home. Love ya!

Week of December 5 from Berlin (kind of)

Wow! Well we had a really crazy week on the road last week, and sadly it ate all of our p-day, so we only have a couple minutes to write today.  I´ll see if I can maybe explain a little bit what has been going on.

 

So last week we had a normal busy office Monday- taking in numbers, generating reports, sitting in meetings, then packing everything and getting ready to hit the road Tuesday morning at 6 am. Tuesday we headed over to Dresden, which was way way cool to be back there for a little while. It was fun seeing a lot of friends still in that zone and just being in that city again. Afterwards we enjoyed a nice dinner with the Pimentels in the beautiful central garden in Dresden, which made it a very enjoyable evening. We then drove over to Leipzig where we slept and got ready for interviews. Leipzig was one of our bigger zones, and president started interviewing at 9am and we didn't finish until 8 pm. It´s amazing how much time he takes to worry about the individual missionaries. During that long time though I got to do some finding with an old MTC friend.  We found a couple really cool guys, and taught a lesson with one of the ZL´s, so that helped break it up a little bit. Then we loaded back in the van for the 2 1/2 drive back to Dresden to reload on supplies (which we deliver when we go to visit the zones) and get ready to hit the long leg of the trip. We got home late and I wasn't asleep until 1 am, then we woke up at 5 am and made the super long drive to Hannover where we stayed for a day.  I met back up with my good friend from St. George. After that we headed up to Hamburg where we slept over, had interviews, and the next day we drove all the way up to KIEL! Sooo epic being back in that place again. I taught the one investigator we found my first week in Germany, and it was just so so so so so cool! After FINALLY finishing interviews and having given our half hour workshop 12 times, we were able to make the long 4 hour trip home to Berlin.

 

So ya, yesterday was a crazy missionary Sunday.  We still had 5 investigators at church somehow, and today is actually almost even crazier, just trying to get caught up on all the work we missed last week in the office. Good news is though, that president has just called 2 office elders to help relieve the burden a bit because it has been getting bigger and bigger lately. So ya, that´s kinda where I´m at right now, just trying to take a deep breath before we plunge back in for Zone Conferences in a few days. It´s been very enjoyable though, being able to spend great quality time with president and with an awesome companion.

As far as missionary work is going... our new baptismal date had a lot of problems this last week, but she got lots of help from the ward and is doing a lot better at the moment. This family we´re teaching from the RLDS church did end up coming to church and that was super awesome to see them there. We are building a really good relationship with them and hope we can keep getting to know them a bit better. Other than that though we just didn't really have time to teach people much.  We just weren´t really home at all this last week. Oh I found out something really cool at church though... so one of the young families in our ward has a mother who is from the Suttner family back in St. George. I used to play golf with her younger brother and danced with her younger sister in social dance sometimes... weird how small the world is. This ward here in Dahlem though is really just super awesome!

Well there´s lots of little stories that happened as we travelled this week, lots of little miracles too, and as I try to think of what I could share there´s only really one experience that comes to mind. So that morning we woke up at 5 am to leave, we were a bit bummed to have to go get all the ice off the huge van and about how cold and miserable the morning was going to be... but for some reason as we came outside to get all the ice off, we realized that even though all of the other cars were caked with ice, ours didn't have a trace of ice anywhere. How it happened I cannot really say, but we counted it as a tender mercy and are super thankful for it. There are so many little blessings that attend you as you do your best to serve others.  The tricky part is just recognizing it sometimes.  :)

Well, love you all and hope to hear lots more from you soon! Have a great week!

Week of November 26 from Berlin

Wow, I can't believe that it´s already P-day again.... I really think that this week was one of the fastest of my entire mission, maybe even life haha. I can't put my finger on it because technically we didn't have quite as much to do as last week. I think the key was we taught a lot more and did more back-to-the-basics missionary work which felt really really good.

So I think I´m starting to settle in a bit, getting used to the office a bit more. I´m starting to get the dust knocked off of my old computer skills and am starting to get a grip on things. It was really weird having to relearn how to do everything in German haha, but it´s coming slowly but surely. This week we mostly just prepared to travel for mission president interviews which began yesterday and will be going all through next week. It´s kinda frusterating. I´ve learned though with our whole situation, we finally have a week to do more missionary work, but it´s hard to make out appointments because we will be gone the next week and a half, but ya, we do the best we can. We had some awesome teaching appointments this last week though, including one in which we set a sick baptismal date with an awesome elderly lady. The other cool one is kinda a long story, but here it is... so the RLDS church had a ward here in Berlin, but there´s been a lot of contention in the church leadership here and in America, and well, long story short, it dissolved and now we have a way awesome RLDS family more-or-less "investigating" our church, which has proved to be one of the most unique experiences of my mission. We had been working to make an appointment out with them for a while now and finally had our first one last night. It was super awesome. We started with the doctrine we have in common (the Restoration through Joseph Smith) and they shed a few tears and could feel the Spirit. So ya, we´re teaching them regularly now and they have a LOT of potential we think. It´s so interesting working with people who believe pretty much everything you believe already, but just with a couple subtle twists. It´s awesome though and they are amazing people. We also found a bit of time this week to go by on an old exchange student who lived in St. George from here in Berlin... no one was home, but we left her a pass-along card with a little note on it and our number, so that would be awesome to get to see her sometime.

So on the other side of the job, mission president interviews in Berlin went well. We had the chance to give our workshop for the first time and work out all the kinks for the next 15 times we´re going to give it haha. Got to see a lot of old friends though. The Neu Brandenburg zone came down and did everything with Berlin, so I got to see the senior couple from Prenzlau as well as the two elders working there, along with an elder I was with there for 2 transfers, and just lots of other missionary friends. I´m SUPER EXCITED for next week though... let me count some reasons why. 1-Tuesday I will be back in Dresden and see all my friends in the zone 2-Wednesday I will be in Leipzig and see another old mission friend and MTC friend of mine 3-Thursday I will see Paco for the first time on my mission in Hannover! 4- Friday I will get to spend a day in Hamburg, one of my favorite cities in the mission and then... DRUM ROLL PLEASE 5- SATURDAY I´LL BE IN KIIIIIEEEELLL! I´m returning back to my home town for the first time in almost a year! Ah I´m so so so excited.:) And coolest is, I just got a letter a while ago from a lady we met right when I got there on the street who will be getting baptised who I have a good relationship with, and the Kiel ZL´s have made out an appointment with her and I´ll get to surprise her and teach her again. Ah I´m so excited.:):):) It will be AWESOME to be back there again! I love that place.

So anyways, there´s kinda a rough outline for my next week I guess. I´m super excited to get out there and see the missionaries. I´m still working on getting down all of their names and assignments... it´s not as easy as I had hoped. But I´m stoked. And I´m super super excited to spend a little bit of time with president as well. I love that man so much, and am elated to be able to spend some quality time on the road with him.

So ya, I´m doing wonderful. I hope you all are doing just as well yourselves. Love you all so much and thanks for all the love and support. Don't be afraid to write me.:) Love you all! Hoorah für Israel!

Week of November 19 from Berlin

Well survived my first week here in Berlin.  It was just a wonderful, but crazy week here in the office. 1st weeks of the transfer are always the worst I hear, so that´s a good sign. It was a great experience to get to see so many things though and just learn so much. My last email was pretty short, so I will try and get caught back up a little bit on what has been going on this past week.
So I got here to Berlin Sunday night.  I arrived, dropped my luggage off, then headed to an appointment with a member family here in the area. Then we came back and headed to bed. Monday was when the race started though. We started off taking the numbers from the whole mission.  That was pretty crazy.  I always complained because it took so long as a District Leader from 3 programs, then as a Zone Leader taking numbers for like 15, and now we´re kickin' along at like close to 50.  It´s good though-the computer makes it easier. Then we had to stick it in a program to generate some reports, then we had a staff meeting, followed by putting together some more reports for our weekly meeting with President, then we met with him, discussed some things, and then went out to eat with the office staff. Then we came back and got to work on getting things ready Zone Leader reports and Stake President reports. It is hard because I haven't seen a computer in over a year really and I have no idea how I would run all of these programs in English... much less German. But we found a way somehow. Then we spent a lot of time getting things ready for the new Goldens coming in.  We picked them up from the airport on Tuesday. That was really cool because it was exactly a year ago about that I was getting to Germany and having all of those exact same experiences that they were having. We took them out to do their first mission finding time and then got them all back to the hotel for the night. I thought driving in Dresden was bad, but Berlin is pretty crazy itself. The car we have is pretty cool though.  It´s a Chevy Cruz, the only non-Opel in the mission, and the only stick shift, so it was good to go back to those manual days again.:) The next day we had all of the finishers coming in, among other things, and it was pretty crazy as well. Thursday we mostly just got ready for our Zone Leader Council, and Friday we had it, and well that´s just a fraction of what has been going on, and now I´m sitting here at my computer trying to explain it haha. It´s good to be busy though, so I won't ever complain about that.

So I would have to say probably one of my favorite parts of this job so far has been getting to work so closely with President and his amazing wife. They are just two of the most amazing people that I think I know. You really never realize the amount of work that goes on in a mission until you´ve been through the office I don't think. Just the logistics of it all- there´s just so much that needs to get done, and our mission president and his wife do it very very well. The 2 couples here in the office are amazing as well. They take some long nights sometimes, but they are just always so happy and upbeat. I think I´ve come to realize the past couple days just what an amazing/weird thing a mission is. Who sends a bunch of teenage boys into Europe, give them a huge city, a car, and money with little or no supervision, and then expects them to teach people about God... and they do it! I´ve come to learn quite a bit lately that missions are really a lot more about turning young men into what we need to become than I maybe thought earlier. Ya our role is important in finding people and bringing them to the church, but in reality the ones who are most often found, baptised, and become solid members are found by members, or by the Lord first, and then prepared for the missionaries. It´s helped me see that a mission means so much more than knocking on doors.  It´s about becoming someone who the Lord would have you be. It´s just a crazy thing that we do with these missions, but it´s one of the best things I think we do.

Well, can't think of too much else to say. We´re going to go see a bit of Berlin today we think, just try and take a deep breath and try and get some missionary work actually done this weekend. We seem to have very little time to proselyte, but try to squeeze out an hour or two in the evenings. We just re-opened kinda a new area as well, so it´s kinda like we´re starting from the ground up I suppose, so that doesn't necessarily make it any easier. But we´ve made out a few appointments and are meeting with a couple of people which is really cool. It´s crazy, that Mongolian family we found in Dresden, which was moving, is totally moving into the area where I am now... how crazy is that? Lost them, but picked them right up again on the other end... pretty cool. I´ll probably also have the oppurtunity to go by on a girl that a lady in our ward gave me here in Berlin before I left on my mission, so those are two pretty cool possibilities.

Well we´re gonna head out here in a bit, but I just hope you all know how much I love you and I hope you have a wonderful week back home.  Happy Thanksgiving!

Week of November 14 from Berlin

SO much has happened this week and there just isn't enough time to even begin to explain it all... but just to rap it all up in a few words, yesterday I woke up in Dresden, and today I´m sitting in the mission office trying to figure out how in the world to learn how to be a good assistant to the president... and it doesn't appear to be an easy task.

So Saturday morning was a big surprise. I got a call a little bit before transfer calls where President surprised me and said I´d need to be on a train here to Berlin the following day. So yesterday I left Dresden at around 5 pm and got here to Berlin a few hours later. Everything following that has been purely trying to get settled in, and getting barraged with the huge number of meetings that come with the beginning of a new week, at the beginning of a new transfer, trying to get 210 missionaries situated and trying to get adjusted to the new circumstances... just not an easy task. But there´s lots of fun adventures awaiting the next 6 months, I´m almost sure of it.

Leaving Dresden was a bit weird. I was just totally expecting to stay there for another transfer with my dear Swiss friend, but you just never know what the Lord has in store for you I guess. The last Sunday was good though- 2 baptisms from people who I had once taught (not belonging to our program though) and just a nice peaceful last walk aroung the middle of the city talking to people. It was a crazy time to reflect. It´s so weird that with this new assignment, I can basically predict how the rest of my mission will go. Office equals 4 transfers, then I will have 2 1/2 where I can go out somewhere and die training a golden (hopefully). But now it's time to focus on the here and now and trying to figure out my role here and find how to lift, encourage, inspire, and bless everyone I´ll be working with the next little while. It´s been pretty humbling, seeing all that we have to do, but I know that the Lord brings you down sometimes just to lift you higher.

Well I don't have much more time this week. We´re trying to work out an error on some excel stuff to get a bunch of reports done... it´s going to be a LONG night. Hopefully I´ll have time to get everyone more caught up next week. But love you guys all so much! Pray extra for me this week. I´m gonna need it!

Week of November 7 from Dresden

Hola amigos!

Well I had an amazing week this week that´s for sure! It just started right, went well, and ended strong! I think it all started Monday with our family home evening activity. We met one of our investigators right before and he totally brought a way cool friend who was interested to hear about our message too. Now that probably doesn't sound like much, but here that´s kind of a big deal. Sometimes investigators are just like mushrooms- they come in bunches- and we´re finding lots of new people through this one! We also carved Jack-o-lanterns, and my comp and I carved an EPIC plan of salvation pumpkin haha.

The next day we had kind of a longer day.  Late that night as we were driving back to go see a contact by our house I got a phone call from a very familiar friend- none other than the branch president from Prenzlau! WOW, haha it was so good to hear his voice again! He invited us to grab a late night burger with him real quick, so we met up with him and I got to see him again! So so so good. He was down here for a meeting and had just finished his press conference when he realized he could find some time to meet with me, so we got to catch back up on alot. Golly I love that man...

Hmm... one maybe not so cool thing haha. So the elder´s program is helping an investigator quit smoking so they took all of the ash trays and cigs out of her house. Well they didn't have much time I guess so they brought it all home and tossed it on the table real quick. One thing they brought was this cool clamp thing, because poor people make their own cigs here to save money, haha. Ya, we didn't have any tobacco, but it peaked my curiosity so I fiddled with it a bit on our lunch break before we left. Well long story short, a guy came for a surprise apartment inspection, haha and in the middle of the apartment was a cigarette maker with tons of cigarettes everywhere haha. So ya, that took a bit of explaining... just bad timing I guess.:)

We also had our Zone Conference this week combined with the other big zone in the mission. It was pretty stressful but ended up being pretty good. I got to see most all of my MTC district reunited, so that was a really really cool opportunity! So many young missionaries coming into the mission though, it´s weird, and all of my friends seem to be dying. Sad. Anyways, we also had a packed house at stake conference too which was also good.

Well the last and coolest experience happened last night. So a couple days ago, before leaving for an exchange, I picked out 2 streets and said a quick prayer asking the Lord which street the elders should door.  I´ve learned that asking yes or no questions, or questions with 2 options seems to make it easier to feel a confirmation.  Anyways, I gave it to them. Well, they didn't ever get around to it, but we went there last night, and WOW, craziest thing happened. So we buzzed a guy who let us right in.  It was obvious after we saw him and started talking that he was from America. He´s from Detroit, and I can honestly say I felt in him one of the noblest spirits I´ve felt in a long long time. There´s no possible way I´ll be able to describe everything, but we´ll put it this way. He knows the Bible very well, but more importantly understands the Gospel better than probably 90% of our members. He said the opening prayer and prayed to "Heavenly Father" in the name of Jesus Christ. He has had many revelatory experiences throughout his life, and KNOWS the voice of the Lord. About 20 years ago, he was instructed to leave his church, not knowing 100% why. He has spent the last 20 years "searching" and "praying for the Lord to send more servants into the field to harvest." He is honestly one of the most remarkable men I have ever met. And even though he is decently well schooled in our doctrine (he studied to become a priest for 2 years) and I think is a bit skeptical, he knows, just as well as we do, that there was a reason for him meeting us that night. He said that normally he would have NEVER opened his door or answered the buzz because his German isn't the strongest, but that he was expecting something else and we had perfect timing. He´s leaving tomorrow to go back to America for 3 weeks sadly, but I´m anxious to see him again when he gets back. And that my friends was a testimony building experience which I needed desperately. I felt more edified and refreshed talking to him than with many other people I´ve talked to. What a tender mercy, which came as an answer to sincere prayer. I am so thankful for experiences like that. They build me and my testimony up, and help my testimony to sustain me and not vice versa. God is truly there, and he truly does answer prayers, even in mysterious ways sometimes. It´s true, I´m pretty much convinced.:) Have a wonderful week, love you all so much!