Week of January 14 from Berlin

Well another "travel week" has finally come to a close, and it was really good. Monday was a long day getting everything tied down around the office and then it all started here in Berlin on Tuesday. This week it was leadership training, so it was for all ZL´s, DL´s, and Trainers. It was fun to see so many familiar faces and get to experience so many different workshops from so many different and dynamic leaders for an entire week! Ya it was kinda different giving our workshop over and over again and hearing president´s and his wife´s over and over again, but it´s great how when you´re really set and intent on learning you can just take something new away from it every time. In our workshop we talked about the importance of becoming a "Preach My Gospel Mission." We talked about the principle of fire and how quickly forest fires can spread, and how we want a new emphasis on Preach My Gospel to spread through the mission like a spiritual forest fire, and how the fire sparks with leaders. Overall I think it went alright. We did a few role plays on how to answer questions while on exchanges with emphasis on Preach My Gospel and reviewed clips and things from apostles to shed light on all of the blessings that come from it´s correct application. So hopefully it takes. The coolest thing though was to see how after prayerfully emphasising what you felt needed to be emphasised, to see lots of other leaders make similar points and convey similar feelings. I walked away from our meeting yesterday in Dresden just thinking "Man, it´s like we´re all praying to the same source or something." It was really cool.

So ya, Tuesday was Berlin and Neubrandenburg Zones in Berlin, Wednesday was Hannover and Oldenburg in Hannover, Thursday was Hamburg and Neumünster in Hamburg, and we ended yesterday with Dresden and Leipzig in Dresden. It´s weird starting to have these routes become familiar to you after driving them so much... but I do love being on these roadtrips and getting to converse with your companion as well as President and his wife. My favorite trip was definitely Dresden though. I have so many good friends down there in Saxony and those 2 zones, and getting to spend good time with them there while being in DRESDEN at the same time was just a dream.:) It was also the last meeting, so afterwards it´s just kind of a collective sigh, plus everything runs smoothly because it´s all so polished.

Well aside from that, I can't think of anything too extra ordinary happening this week. So I guess I´m just going to have to leave it a little bit shorter this week. I´ll try and make up for it next time.:) Hope you all had a wonderful week. Love to hear from ya!

PS I attatched a picture of a Zone Leader Council... but that´s usually what leadership trainings look like.:) If you´re ever curious you can always check http://www.germanyberlinmission.blogspot.com/ to see what´s up in the mission.

Week of January 7 from Berlin

Well, last week I almost died from sickness and the pace of the work needing to be done, and of course naturally this week was a week of harvesting the fruits of the sacrifice. I HAD AN AMAZING WEEK THIS WEEK! Easily one of the best of my entire mission. I could probably write a whole novel about everything that´s happened, but I´ll see what all I can convey in this email.

So the week actually started out with a bit of a struggle to be honest. So coming off the hectic week, our one solid progressing investigator started to get thrown right in to the buffetings of the adversary. I hate talking about him, but he really tried to give us a run for our money this week. So this elderly lady started getting phone calls from relatives and people she didn't even know telling her we were an evil sect and just a bunch of crazy bologna. It came so hard and so intense that the result was an 80 year old women balling her eyes out for an entire day and calling us asking if any of the stuff she heard was true. It continued for the next couple days til she finally stopped answering and barricaded herself in her room. We took up daily contact and visits to calm her down, but she was really having a rough time. Eventually we narrowed it down and found out her only daughter had spearheaded the whole thing and was enlisting tons of people to try and talk her out of joining the church. It peaked with her coming over and with a bunch of anti mormon literature and stuff. Ya, pretty bad. As we were praying and thinking about what we could do to help her, the thought hit me very hard, that a certain member in Prenzlau, my "German mother", was around the same age group and had gone through roughly the same opposition as she joined the church and became a strong member, so after making a quick phone call, we put the two in contact and they became best friends virtually over night. That coupled in with a few members fellowshipping efforts, and it´s safe to say that we´ve finally righted the ship, and she´s doing better now than before. Her family has forsaken her, and she´s still facing opposition, but she´s more determined now than ever the reach her baptisimal date, so we´re super excited. Our last appointment, as she was kind of coming out of everything, she asked if I would baptize her as well.:) I think it´s more the fact she thinks I´m really strong and support her than anything, but it´s always an honor to have someone ask you to do that... :)

Now we come to the real highlight of the week.... ROAD TRIP NACH KIEL!!!! OHHHHHH YAAAAA! Oh that was the coolest thing EVER. So basically it all went like this. We left Friday morning at around 9am-ish, and made our way up to a small little place called Lauenburg, a tiny dorf on the outskirts of Hamburg. We did some power-finding there with the missionaries and made out 7 appointments and an old mission friend and I found the COOLEST guy ever! We were just walking down an obscure street when all of the sudden I see this black guy coming the other direction. We talked to him and he said in broken German, "I can't speak German, just English" and I was like, "Oh no prob, I´m from America" to which he said "OH SNAP (bro hug) No way! I´m from Miami!" Anyways, he was like the coolest guy I´ve ever met, and after we had talked some basketball (he offered his condolences for my not having seen LeBron yet play for the Heat) we got to the important stuff, families and the gospel. So anyways, the elders there are meeting with him soon.  I can't wait to hear how that turns out. Haha, who finds a guy from Miami walking down the streets of Lauenburg??? But surely enough he lives there, pretty cool story. Anyways, then we headed up into Hamburg and delivered a bike to our storage unit up there with some other packages, and then went out with the elders in the Hamburg, Altona program and did some good finding. Afterwards, we headed up to the promised land... KIEL! I screamed like a little girl driving in to that place. We got in at around 9, but squeezed in an appointment with a good old investigator/friend as well as another less-active member we did lots of work with, and committed both of the them to come to the baptism the next day. It was one of the most joyful/weirdest experiences of my life! Joyful because it was awesome, weird because it was all so familiar, but I would have never in a million years would have thought I would be retracing my footsteps as a golden driving the big ole Chevy Cruze down those streets. It is so weird what all can change in one year. But ya, aside from serious reflection, everything was just so lively and happy.:) The following day, we went up to Rendsburg to work with the elders there (actually the first city of my companion) and met with a lot of people that he used to teach there. We also went on the world´s longest escalator there, and a cool car ferry over the river, and then a suspended cable ferry back over the river (all in the car) and it was just super super awesome. After the Tausch we drove by the man I baptised right outside of Kiel to visit, but he wasn't home, so we just headed back and met at the church for the baptism of a lady who was one of the first people I ever found on my mission. It´s so crazy... I would have NEVER thought she would be baptised. She was a strict Buddhist, but we just helped her with things she needed help with and did what we could, and next thing you know, she has a mighty change of heart and is now a member of the church. AHHH!!! That coupled with seeing a bunch of the old members was just so awesome! She asked me to speak there and I gave a talk on the Holy Ghost. As I got up there I said, "Last time I spoke from this pulpit, I cried like a little child because I didn't want to leave this place... and now I´m crying because I´m back." I then went on to say how it was such a special place because of the love and support of the ward which this new member would enjoy, but that she should be even more excited for the constant love and support that will come from having the Holy Ghost as her companion. It was an experience speaking from that pulpit again which I will NEVER forget. I wish I had a count of how many German sentences I butchered from that place as a golden, but to step back up there with confidence to to give a talk with the Spirit, awh, that just made my mission! I have never felt the Spirit so strong at a baptism on my mission as I did yesterday in Kiel. It even brought the investigator, and less active member (who did show up by the way :) ) to tears. It was one of those moments where you think to yourself "I would knock an 1 million doors in a blizzard, and have 999,999 slammed in my face, if I could only experience the joy I´m experiencing now again." I think a lot on nights, like tonight for example, we were just outside talking to people for a long time in the freezing rain, and no one really gave us the time of day. It´s easy to think, "Why do we do this? Almost everyone says no," but that´s really whats so cool about the Gospel... it really isn't about numbers. I think the Germans would be the first to tell you before anybody, that doing something purely because it´s what "the majority thinks makes sense" doesn't always make something right... the Gospel is about individuals. Just like the scripture says in D&C, "If you should labor all of your days and bring save it be one soul unto me, how great shall be your joy." Being on a mission here has shed more light on this principle than ever before. Just do what the Lord asks of you, no matter what. I´m not a big fan or practicer of "blind-obedience", but I do practice faithful-obedience, because I have faith that what is asked of me comes from an inspired and holy source. So ya, long story short, weekends like this are the weekends were you just thank your Heavenly Father for all the MANY blessings he gives you. This was definitely a week of thankfulness!

So ya, after that all, we went by on a family I taught up there, who weren´t home :(. and then began the 6 hour car trip back to Berlin, where we got in late at night. I don't know exactly how far we drove, but I know that from Rendsburg to Berlin is about 400 km and we took probably a 50 km detour to run some elders somewhere, so ya, we drove a LONG ways this weekend. It was totally worth it though and we both had the most wonderful time of our lives, thanked our lucky stars, and got re-energized for the work ahead! Next week we´re on the road again for leadership training. It´s gonna be a long, but fun week. Hope you all have a wonderful week back home. Love you all so much!!!

Week of December 31 from Berlin

Happy New Year!

So I´m sitting at my desk right now typing this email while fireworks are going off like crazy! It´s only around 6 o´clock but man, Germany just seems to light up on New Year's Eve. Today has been a great p-day, so relaxing after having had a CRAZY week this week. Since we have to be back where we live at 6 pm tonight because we shouldn´t be outside, we decided that since we have computers where we live we´d write while we were home anyway and take advantage of the once-a-year longer p-day. We woke up this morning, I got a good P90X workout in, then got all ready, 2 hours study time, and then we were off looking at some of the year-end shopping deals, eating lunch at our favorite italian pizza place here in Berlin, then playing some sport at the Stake center. Ah, it´s just been soooo relaxing and nice!!!

So this week is basically your worst nightmare as an assistant. New missionaries coming in, Zone Leader Council to prepare and just a bazillion reports to generate. I got more acquainted with Excel this week than ever before.  It´s just crazy. The big problem though was that I got pretty sick, too, which held me back a little bit.  But just like I was promised when I was set apart, I haven´t yet missed a single day´s work due to sickness.:) Monday was normal- getting reports and numbers collected, staff meeting, meeting with president, not to mention a couple of member appointments with it being 2nd Christmas as well. Oh ya, I almost forgot- Christmas was last Sunday! Weird. Ya got to talk to the family, and open presents with the apartment.  Man it was a good Christmas.:) But ya, Monday, despite being a holiday, was a normal day in the office. Tuesday, the new goldens came. I LOVE PICKING THE NEW GOLDENS UP!!! It´s really the funnest thing in the world.:) We got a total of 5 sisters and 2 elders from the Provo MTC that day. We brought them home and got all their luggage dropped off, then took them to check in at the office, take a nap to kill the jet lag, and just entertained them for an evening. Now normally when goldens come, they come with the Preston goldens, so we don´t have the overlap, but this time Preston´s came the next day, which left us with a whole entire blank day to spend with the goldens. So the next day we met them at the hotel after breakfast, took them to the mission home, showed them a documentary of the missionary work here in Germany, and did a finding 101 class on basic missionary finding skills to prepare them for the surprise later in the day.:) Then we took them to a special place called Meter Pizza, where they make a pizza literally 1 meter in diameter, and then we took them to dead center Berlin and pushed them out of the van and the other car we were using and had some experienced missionaries pick them up and take them to talk with the people just swimming all around them. Then we took them back to the hotel for dinner and to meet up with the Preston goldens who had finally arrived from their late afternoon flight. After dinner the sisters went back for a sisters meeting and we took the newer goldens and the two remaining elders finding. I took a new Swiss missionary, and we had a great time together. Overall though it was a very stressful couple days, but extremely rewarding. It is SO refreshing being around goldens! Thursday the trainers came, we trained them, and then had golden conference where we hooked them up with their trainers and sent them off all over Germany to their areas. Among the trainers for the 7 new sisters where all 3 of the sisters from my golden group who, and this is crazy, ARE ALL GOING HOME SOON. It´s weird to think about, but it´s the sad truth- the sisters are almost done.  I´ve almost been out for 18 months.

So ya, Thursday afternoon we walked back into the office where we finished up a bunch more things for the Zone Leader council which was yesterday. We worked late into the night, then got up at 5:15am to drive to Hannover. We had a good productive meeting. It was my first time leading the floor on the numbers discussion, which goes a couple of hours in the morning session, and it went okay. I was really scared I might pass out with all the sickness and fatigue, but I was sustained and everything went okay. In the afternoon session my companion and I taught about "returning to PMG". We talked about the importance of Preach My Gospel and how it would have the answers to all of the problems individual zones and individual missionaries are having out here right now. We watched the satellite broadcast which was given to all ZL´s Ap´s and Mission Presidents when PMG was released and talked about how we could implement it more as a mission.  It was a really good reminder and I think it will help in the future. It really is an AMAZING book.  Everything you need to succeed as a missionary is in there. M Russel Ballard promised in the broadcast that if we master PMG we will become better fathers, members, leaders, and teachers for the rest of our lives.  It was a pretty moving promise, and one that I think I´m going to put to the test. I love Preach My Gospel.:)

Well anyways, hope you all had a wonderful week this week and a happy happy new year! Love you all so much and love hearing from all of you back home!

Week of December 24 from Berlin

Frohe Weinacht!

Merry Christmas everyone! Wow this was one of those quick weeks, and the next couple days are going to fly by as well I´m sure. We have a shortened P-day today, then at 3pm we´re headed to the church for the final choir practice... yes I´m singing in the choir at a Christmas concert... AGAIN. It will be way fun though. We have a couple really fun songs and I just hope the other tenor and I can hold it down..:) For those of you who don't know, in Germany Heilige Abend (Christmas Eve) is the man holiday celebrated, so all the kids will open their presents this evening and we´re going to be with a SUPER awesome family in the ward. We´re way excited! We totally have the best ward in the mission.

Hmmm, so what did we do this week? Well before I left on my mission I was given the address of an exchange student and a BOM which I was to give her. I never thought that I would serve here in Berlin, but it happened, and I was able to meet with her and give her the book. It was really awesome to finally be able to take it out of my suitcase and give it to her. I don't know how much interest she really had, but the contact is now there and we´ll see what happens.

Probably the main thing we worked on this week was transfers. We spent many many hours sorting them out, praying about each companionshiop individually, and then looking for confirmation that everything was right. When we first sat down and looked at the chart with all of the missionaries in the mission, I thought to myself, "There´s no way this is going to work out!" There´s just SO many people and SO many factors to consider when doing transfers. But when you do it bit by bit and rely on the Lord for your guidance, everything works out and comes together PERFECTLY. It really is amazing. It´s the coolest thing when you´re praying about companionships and one that makes perfect logical sense just doesn't feel right and later you find out exactly why it didn't... just knowing that for those few brief seconds you were worthy to be guided by the Spirit is SWEET. So ya, we got everything worked out and had a great conference call, and next transfer is going to be EPIC! :)

Other than that, we just tried to get outside and do some normal missionary work, despite this time of year being so hard. We talked to lots of really cool people, and got quite a few to commit to come to church this week and to the concert tonight. One other thing that we did, which was probably the highlight of the week, was district christmas caroling. Our whole district loaded up in the big blue bus (Opelus Prime) after district meeting, then headed to meter pizza. It´s where you get a HUGE pizza 1 meter in diameter. Then we spent most of the day going by on less actives and investigators and singing christmas carols. It was one of those mission memories you´ll never forget- all loaded up in the van with one guy with a guitar just singing away. Good times.:)

Well I´m super excited to talk to the fam tomorrow. I still feel like next christmas I'll still be here in Germany, but the sad reality is that the time is flying by. Christmas time on a mission is FAR different than at home, and we all miss our families lots, but we have a family of 4 in our apartment and are enjoying our German Christmas together! Have a wonderful Christmas time. I hope we all feel the real Spirit of Christmas this year!

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!