Week of February 25 from Berlin

Well the crazy week is finally come to an end and I´m finally back home again in Berlin. It´s been a pretty long week with very little sleep, but we survived and finally have a bit of time to shoot some quick emails off.

 

So to start off the week we had an awesome day Monday.  We had tons of stuff to do in the office, and tons of things to get ready before we hit the road, but we had lots of good appointments too. We had a way awesome family home evening with a super cool family, and the kids all interviewed us as missionaries, and it was just a good time. We also found a WAY cool new investigator.  He´s a super cool lawyer from Sri Lanke, so we´re super excited to get to meet with him in the near future. I´ve got a really good feeling about him. He´s from the New Apostolic Church, but is super open and ready to accept truth as he finds it. We stayed up pretty late making the final preparations to hit the road, and then the next day it was off to my favorite zone- DRESDEN! The interviews were pretty good there, They started at 9 am and we ended at just after 730 pm.  I don't know how president does it, but ya, had a great time in that city again and finally got to see snow there! Dresden is gorgeous as it is, but I think it´s even more amazing with snow. That night we left up to Leipzig to stay overnight for the next round of interviews. That was interesting, because 3 of the 4 missionareis living in the Leipzig apartment are from St. George-2 from Snow Canyon, and one from Dixie- so the 4 of us had a nice chat about the ST Geezy together. Leipzig took just as long, and we found time to sneak out of the meeting and head over to visit a guy who just got baptised by my companion, which provided a nice breath of fresh air. It was also my companion's birthday, so that made it even more fun. We left then from Leipzig to come back to Berlin and change out supplies for the next, longer leg of the journey.

The next day we made the drive over to Hannover and had a good meeting there as well. Got to see lots of mission friends, including my last companion here in the office who is currently serving there. It´s my favorite thing in the world to visit with old companions.  It´s just so fun!

Following those meetings, we spent the night in Hamburg for interviews there the following day. We woke up early in the morning and went to the stake center and played some serious bball there and had a good time. Those interviews went a long time as well, but finally they ended and it was time to make our way to the promised land- KIIIEELLLLL!

KIEL WAS THE BEST. I love that place so so so so much! It was kind of a bitter-sweet moment though, because that very well may be my last time in that city on my mission. We aren't scheduled to be back up there until after I´ve left the office. :( But it was still great to be up there. I just couldn't help but smile.

Then we made the 350+km drive back down to Berlin that night, and after almost running out of gas and having to hunt for a small little dorf to fill up, we got home pretty late. It was a fun week though. During interviews, districts have their district meetings and we get to sit in on them and observe them, which I love because I always get to learn so much. I sat in on 14 district meetings, and got to hear so many cool ideas and things.  It´s definitely one of the many blessings that come with the current assignment, haha I almost feel like I´m cheating or something. We taught about "commitment centered teaching" and how as a mission we need to 1- Live commitments ourselves before we give them so that we can teach with conviction and have the Spirit seal our testimony, 2-Focus on teaching with a commitment in mind the entire lesson, which can totally transform how we teach. 3-Following up with that same conviction you commited with. We watched a pretty intense missionary training session with Jeffrey Holland where he tells us to "be devistated" when people don't keep commitments. Overall it was well recieved I think.  We´re really focusing on bettering the quality of our teaching as a mission, because we work so hard, and filling our teaching pipeline with so many people, we just need to focus on plugging all the holes in that pipeline which leads to baptism.

Today was kinda a special day as well. We had stake conference. Despite being half-dead due to fatigue, my comp and I sang in our ward's choir for the conference. Our super golden investigator came as well and loved it, so we´re excited to see if that helps her at all. We were in our seats about ready to sing an opening song when I saw her come in and hurried up and ran down from the choir to greet her.:) The conference ended up being a satellite transmission from Salt Lake. A seventy, the first couselor in the primary presidency, Elder Nelson and President Eyring spoke to all German-speaking stakes. It was pretty cool, the seventy spoke and conducted the meeting in his thickly accented German he had learned on his mission here. The coolest though was when Elder Nelson stood up, and then asked for permission to wave to his grandson through the camera who is actually serving in our mission at the moment.  It was a pretty big shock for everyone in the room when he announced his grandson was serving in the Germany Berlin mission.

So ya, good week of travel followed by a great stake conference- can't complain at all. Really hope we can find some more investigators in these next couple days at home.  We´re leaving up to Hamburg this Thursday for a conference and then back down to Leipzig the next day. It´s going to be quite a drive, but we just keeping doing the best we can! Hope you all have a great week back home, love you all!

Week of February 18 from Berlin

Hallo schöne Grüße euch alle!

So another week is come and gone.  We had lots of time to work on our area this week, which made things go quicker and made things very enjoyable despite a few disappointments we had. The new companion is awesome and things are just going great.

The week started out with the normal fallout from the first week of the transfers.  Lots of little projects to do, lots of things to follow up on. Also had a couple incidents requiring some emergency transfers, which can be very time consuming in and of themelves, but overall everything went pretty smoothly. We met a couple times with our super golden investigator who totally came to church last week! Everything was just perfect, then came time for a perfect baptismal commitment to which she said, "Yes, I will 100% be baptised... the only question is either with you or the Jehovah´s Witnesses. I´m meeting with both of you." NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!! Bleh, every time we find something good, some sort of opposition always has to arise! That´s a really big problem in this country. Most everyone who is willing to meet with you has already been found and met with by JW´s. It´s super frustrating, because even though our church has been here twice as long, they have more than twice as many members here, and EVERYONE always thinks we´re JW´s. With their conviction from members to do missionary work, yea even unto tracting, and their mastery of the language and culture of those they teach, I suppose it shouldn't be the biggest surprise. Still makes me sad though. So we now have a battle for this person´s soul coming up, and we are out of town next week, so we´re fighting with one arm. We´re getting some members involved though and hope to build better contact from their side.

Aside from that, most all of our other investigators played a successful game called "Avoid the missionaries at all costs this week" and since we´re traveling all next week they´ve got a double bonus 2 week pause from us... argghhh. We found some awesome new ones this week though, so hopefully they´re still around when we get back from our trip. We met a lot with some key ward members this week as well and built up a good relationship with them, so that was good also.

Yesterday we had our first round of zone meetings for mission president interviews. It was 2 zones combined- the smaller Neubrandenburg zone and the large Berlin zone. We started at 9:00 am and poor President wasn´t done until 7:30 pm. Sooo many interviews, it just takes such a mental toll I would imagine. Luckily it was in Berlin, so we took off to go by on some people and do some doors and didn't need to stay the whole time. Next week we begin in Dresden, then Leipzig, then Hannover, then Hamburg and Oldenburg combined, and ending in Kiel with the Neumünster zone. We´re going to be talking about teaching ´commitment focused´ lessons and the importance of commitments. Should be fun.

Well today we´re headed to go bowling with President´s son and enjoy the quiet before the storm comes next week. We won't have a p-day next week, so we´ll make this one count.:) Anyways, hope you all have a wonderful week back home. Love ya bunches!

Week of February 11 from Berlin

Wow, the first week of the transfer is finally come and gone, so many crazy things happened and it was truly an amazing week!

 

Sunday night we picked up my new companion at the main train station in Berlin.  The new assistant gets picked up early so he can be at our office staff meeting Monday morning. He came from Kiel, so that was an instant ice breaker we had to talk about, but we´ve known each other from zone leader meetings pretty well also, so we´re going to get along great no doubt about it.  He´s one of the most loved missionaries in the entire mission.

 

 

But Monday ging alles los, we hit the ground running trying to prepare for all the new goldens coming in the next day. Planning everything out, printing off all the materials they needed, and making sure we were in the best position to help them start right. Tuesday came eventually and we got to go pick the goldens up from the airport, easily my favorite part of being here in the office.  It was so fun to see all their bright, smiling and confused faces as they got off the train. We´ve had a pretty bad cold front here lately.  We´ve made it all the way down to -15 C° so the goldens got a good taste of the cold European wintertime when they got here. It´s always so refreshing to spend time with them and reflect on those days way back when when we were starting our missions as well and how nervous we were... ahhh i love it so much! We spent most of the day with them though, and at night we took them out to eat and then took them to do their first street contacting.  It was super cool.

Wednesday we met with all of the trainers in the morning to train them and then we had our golden conference. I always feel so envious doing the trainer training, because I´ve wanted to train so bad my entire mission.  It´s the coolest experience to watch as the companionships are announced and how excited everyone is. Usually in that meeting we talk a lot about the Standards of Excellence in the mission, and my companion and I enjoyed getting to bear testimony to the goldens that their assignments came from the Lord, because we witness it first hand, and how they can expect to see miracles in every single area in which they serve, of which we are also first hand witnesses.  It´s a great group though and they´re going to do fabulous here in Germany!

 

 

The next days consisted of entering numbers and generating reports for our Zone Leader Council, and preparing for a special visitor from the first Qourum of the Seventy. He had visited our mission before and is notorious for being pretty intense and critical. So we were all pretty nervous, and by this point in the week I was already feeling like a zombie from lack of sleep and all the mental exertion. Most of the time were weren't in bed til after midnight working on everything, but every morning we started at 6:30 and worked the whole day through. Anyways yesterday morning was the meeting. The general authority´s flight came in later so he was only going to attend the middle portion of the council. He came in right as we finished going through each zone's status report and as we started going through the mission charts, it was kind of nerve wracking trying to facillitate the conversation, but it went super well! After that we broke for lunch and my companion and I got to sit next to the visiting authority and talk with him. He was super nice, and in our short conversation I felt like I learned a lot about him. After lunch he gave a two hour instruction period and then left the meeting. After he left, we finished some number stuff up and then gave a quick workshop on comp unity. Overall it was one very memorable meeting and it was so awesome to be a part of.

On the side of all this, we taught some awesome lessons this week too. We met with our new Russian investigator as well as our RLDS family and had some good appointments. It was good to get out and teach a bit as well.

So ya, after all the stress and things to do, which I cannot even begin to convey in writing, p-day is finally here and it´s time to unwind.:) We´re going to go to the stake center in the middle of Berlin and play some sport together, so we´re super excited. Hope you all had a wonderful week back home! Love you all so much!

Week of February 4 from Berlin

Moin!

Another great week here in big beautiful Berlin! We had lots of good times this week, and did lots and lots of work as well. This week was probably filled with less office work than any other week I´ve had thus far, which means that we have many hours of pure finding to do. It´s kinda frustrating when all you do is finding and you end up having to probably just pass investigators off, but it´s just good to go about doing the work of the Lord. We saw some ridiculously cold temperatures this week, and had our first snowfall of the year. The other night while we were doing finding it was hovering at around -15° C, and it made for a long 3 straight hours of street contacting and going by on contacts.  It was good though. We did get to teach a couple cool lessons this week and have some cool little miracles.

So the other night we took president´s son to institute, which is about a half an hour drive straight through the city from our house. We had forgotten one of our planners and didn't have the address for an appointment we were running close to being late for. It was kinda a flaky appointment on the street, and the guy said he was moving back to India the next morning, so we wondered if it was even worth it running back to grab the planner and get there 45 minutes late. We felt though that it might be worth it, so we did it anyway. We showed up, and the guy had just walked in the door.  He said "Oh I´m happy you came.  I tried to text you to let you know I´d be late for our appointment.  I just walked in the door." We then had the opportunity to teach him a bit. He was super interested, but wanted an English book instead of the Hindi one we gave him, and of course, it turned out we had an extra one in the car. He said he would read the whole thing and research the internet sites we gave him.  He was super excited. Now I know that probably doesn't sound like much to you, but experiences like that make your week sometimes over here in Germany.  It really was just a tender mercy to us.

In another light, we were teaching one of our new super promising investigators and had one of the worst lessons of my life. I don't know what it was, but the Spirit just wasn't there and I think we just weren't prepared as well. That is one of the worst feelings as a missionary though, when you have a bad lesson where you don't feel satisfied. I think of the scripture in D&C that says "if ye have not the spirit, ye shall not teach." The "ye shall" is the old English command form, which brings thoughts to mind that that is really more of a commandment than a suggestion. All you can do though is repent and try and do better the next time. He´s pretty quiet, which makes it difficult, but he´s got potential, and I´m pretty sure we can get him on baptismal date this next lesson. He committed to come to church this week too, so we´ll see how it goes.

Wednesday I got to head into the heart of Berlin, tiergarten, for an awesome exchange with one of my best friends in the mission field. He´s a long time Zone Leader and I´ve known him since my second transfer in Prenzlau. I had a BLAST getting to spend a full day doing missionary work again in an awesome, booming, thriving area. We had a great time getting caught up as well. It was super stressful because I totally know his future for transfers, and he and his companion devised very elaborate and thorough strategies to get me to spill the beans, but I stayed true and didn't say a word.:) Transfer week is one of the longest weeks because for some reason, everyone you talk to asks you what's going to happen to them, and they can be pretty cunning in how they go about doing it. Transfer calls are taking place here in a few minutes though, and everything will finally be over with.

Well can´t think of much else new other than that to report. Our new convert had a birthday this week, and we gave her a booklet we made from pictures of the baptism and notes the ward members wrote to her to congratulate her. She said it was the best birthday she´d ever had and was super happy.

Well it will be exciting to have a nice relaxing P-day today. We´re going to the Olympic stadium here in Berlin. Tomorrow my new comp will be coming in on the train. He´s a super super awesome guy and I´m excited to work with him. He´s currently a Zone Leader in Kiel, so we´ll have lots to talk about when he gets here.:) Hope you all have a wonderful week back home!

Week of January 28 from Berlin

Hello Everyone!

Well today has been a great day already to bring an end to a long long week of travel. So basically just a few hours ago this morning I was standing in the baptismal font in our church baptising one of our investigators, and now I´m here writing this email. It was a great baptism- definitely one of the better ones I've attended. The Spirit was strong, and she was very very happy. Normally when we asked her in the past how it´s going, she would reply with a "Bad, life is horrible" or a "Naja, life could always be better" but it was fun this morning when we asked the same question she replied with an emphatic "WUNDERBAR!" She´s made lots of progress, and now she´s finally a member! Everything went very smooth and just as planned and it was no problem... we were initially a bit concerned since she´s super old and not a big fan of water, but she did it and everything went perfectly.

Well aside from that this week was a pretty good one itself. We had lots of Zone Conferences to visit, but it´s always fun to get out and see all the missionaries, to be taught from them, and to teach a little bit yourself. It really is a great blessing to be able to visit and participate in every single one and to get to see so many different view points and ideas for improving yourself as a missionary! Tuesday we started in Berlin, the next day in Hannover, the following day Hamburg, and we ended in Dresden, with each city hosting 2 zones. Dresden was beautiful as always. It was great to be back there. Also, most all of my ex-comps and good friends are in the Dresden and Leipzig zones down in Saxony at the moment, so ya it was super special. Following the meetings we drove president and his wife down to Freiberg where he had a quick meeting while we ate and then we all did a temple session together. I love that little Freiberg temple!  It was so beautiful with the snow everywhere on the ground, and it was another great temple session. I went with a few problems and opinions and left with lots of answers and confirmations, so that was really really good. I wish I would have had my camera to take some pictures of everything, but sadly I left it in Berlin and the ZL´s there grabbed it and are holding it hostage and I have to go on exchange with them if I want it back. Yes, apparently there´s no rules against blackmail in the white handbook, so I´ll probably have to surrender to their designs and just go on an exchange. The tricky part is just working it all out and balancing it with the hours of transfers we have to do this week.  There are lots of decisions to be made, and there is going to be a lot of change in the mission in preparation for the new mission president coming.

So anyways, for our thema we focused primarily on a section in Chapter 10 of PMG focused on "Teaching for Understanding." We started off with a quick role play which began in a doctor's office. I would come in and diagnose a selected missionary and give him instructions for treatments using complicated medical lingo (conjured up by my father of course-thanks dad ;) ) and then watch their eyes fill with confusion. Then we´d do the same role play using simple, easy-to-understand lingo and see the difference. We emphasised how crucial it is to teach for understanding and not leave our investigators confused or overwhelmed. We taught that we would better teach for understanding if we first, studied and treasured up the doctrine ourselves, second, understood the principles of expounding on doctrine, and lastly if they would develop more trust in the spirit. So we expounded upon those things a bit and it ended up turning in to a great thema and one that was lots of fun to teach. We said that as a mission if we would do the 3 S´s- that is Shorten, Simplify, and Sequence our lessons more properly- that we would see more success and teach with for better understanding.  Sometimes missionaries fall into this once a week for one hour schedule with investigators, which in reality PMG calls for us to have 15-45 minute lessons multiple times throughout the week. I likened it to treating a public pool.  You don't roll up in a truck and zap-fry a pool every month, but instead it requires short constant sequenced treatments to purify the water, and it´s the same principle with our investigators I think. So ya, it was fun to teach and I hope to see some results come as we all shorten, simplify, and sequence our lessons better.

So ya, that was our week this week. Ended with an awesome baptism! This next week is going to be full of prayer and big decisions.  It´s fun to seek revelation with my companion and president though, so it will be interesting. I´ll also find out who my new companion will be this week as well, so it will be even more interesting.:) Hope you all have a wonderful week back home.  Luv ya lots!

Week of January 21 from Berlin

Hello, schöne Grüße aus Berlin!

Well it was definitely a good week back here in good old Berlin. Glad to have some time to devote more to our area this week. We had an AMAZING week of missionary work here in the area though, found 3 awesome new investigators (FINALLLYYYY!!!) and just got a lot of work done that needed to get done.

The beginning of the week was pretty normal as far as beginnings go. Collect all the numbers from the zone leaders in the morning, prep reports for staff meeting, have staff meeting, office lunch, and then our meeting with president, followed by following up on the dozens of assignments that seem to pop up after all the meetings. So ya, lots to do in the office, but we got out a lot and got some solid finding and teaching done as well. Wednesday we had our district meeting, and then I finally got to go on my first exchange since being here in the office. It was so great! Our district leader happens to be a good mission friend who was in my district as a junior companion in Prenzlau. It was totally weird because we had exchanged before, but that was like literally 10 months ago haha. It was weird that that long ago we would freak out to come down to Berlin for P-day and eat at this Döner place in Neukölln, and now he´s literally serving in that area as my district leader and we´re going on exchanges together again. It´s always was cool to see those blasts from the past. In a couple weeks I´ll be getting to go on exchange with the Berlin ZL´s, one of which is also a good friend from that Prenzlau district, and the other comes from St. George who I know. So ya. I LOVE EXCHANGES, but really not because they´re sometimes missionaries I know, but really because you can learn SO much and it´s just so healthy. So ya, I´m super excited to get exchanges going back in the office again.:)

So ya, Wednesday we met with a new guy. He´s a way cool guy from Egypt, and a pretty strict Muslim. I´ve loved getting to know Islam more on my mission and meeting with Muslims, but it is still hard to teach them sometimes. Usually it just turns into them trying to teach you about the Qur´an and ya, it´s just a mess. But he was very open and willing to listen. He´s going through a pretty rough time right now, but knows faith can help him. The cool part is that his family, who aren't religious, are going to be there next time and he wants us to teach all of them, so we´re excited for that. That night we went down to an unexplored part of our area on a big lake called Wansee, and found some saweet neighborhoods to do doors. They were just like millionaires every! Biggest houses I´ve ever seen in Germany. Some of them had doorbells for their boat houses out back. Everyone needs the gospel though, and it was just a really enjoyable evening of work. It was just a great exchange!

The next day my companion and I hooked back up and we went and taught another really cool new guy we just found. He´s native German, but just got back from living in Rwanda for 10 years with his wife he found there. He´s super cool as well, and super open, so we´re excited to continue teaching him.

Friday, or yesterday, was probably the coolest day though. In the morning we had a conference call with all of the zone leaders in the mission and spent a little over two hours discussing things and taught a little lesson. Big news though was an announcement that is kinda going to rock my world in a couple weeks. One of the members of the 1st qourom of the Seventy, a gentlemen from Portugal by the name of Jose Texeira is coming to visit the Zone Leader Council in our mission. He´s a pretty notorious figure here in Germany, known for pushing baptising pretty hard and not hestitating to grab you by the lapels a bit and singe your eyebrows. So we going to have to prepare a bit to host a general authority. I´m trying not to worry about it to much, haha, it´s just that it´s going to be weird trying to facilitate our numbers discussion with him sitting in the room observing, but I´m hoping everything goes alright. But ya, anyways, we also had the COOLEST appointment with a new investigator, who lives in this millionaire neighborhood I just talked about.:) She met the missionaries (one of whom comes from Texas and is from the home ward of my best friend while I was living in Japan) and now we´re teaching her. She lives in this insane huge modern house designed by her husband who´s a famous architect. It´s just full of modern furniture and art and is just SO COOL. Looking out the window you could see their glass garage with a new Mercedes S Class sitting in it, it was pretty cool. But, all that being said, the coolest part was just who she is. She´s from Russia and is a professional pianist and like model, but her main focus right now is raising a strong family. She is SOOOO COOLL. Maybe one of the coolest people I've met on the mission. She is just so inteligent, and open, and just eating everything up! It was just one of those appointments where she says something brilliant and then you look at your companion and just think "Is this for real?" So ya, I don't want to hype it up any more so we dont jinx ourselves, but seriously, she is solid.

To top everything off, we met with our baptisimal canidate yesterday with our ward mission leader. The baptism is all planned and ready to go for next Saturday. This last week has been another hard one. She had a violent fall down her kitchen stairs and her daughter had some serious problems, and it has just been kinda another crazy week. But she´s finally come to the conclusion "The devils trying to get me, but I´ll show him!" It´s pretty awesome to see how she´s become a more positive, laugh in the face of trial, kinda of person. So good for her! The whole mission will pray for her daily next week and hopefully it will help her before her baptism.:) It´s been such a blessing to find such good people in all of my cities on the mission who have taught me so much. Today, a Chinese student my companion and I found and taught while I was in Dresden is getting baptised, so it´s a special day today as well! I won't be able to travel down there, but it´s just been great to see how in every city there´s been someone ready to be baptised. Take that Euro-German mission stereotypes!!!

Well today will be a great day. Gonna go bowling for my first time in almost 2 years, so we´ll see how I fare. Other than that I´ll just have to tidy up a few things and get ready for another week on the road. Gonna be teaching a 30 minute lesson 8 times next week , so it´s going to take some mental strength haha. Hope you all have a wonderful week back home, love you all so much!

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.