Germany Week 15

Dearest Mumsypoo,

My week was pretty good. We weren't able to meet with M2 because his phone seems to not be working again, but the high councilor for Bamberg lives near him, so he's going to try and go by where we think he works and see if he can get in contact with him again. We also had the Elders from Coburg come down on Saturday and all six of us walked around for a few hours talking to people. Through all of that we met a really cool Chinese dude who we gave a Book of Mormon and who should be playing basketball with us on Tuesday. We also met with a few less actives and part member families, and that was awesome! In fact one of the less actives came to church the last two weeks, and yesterday he even got up and bore his testimony. It was so powerful and so awesome to see him truly wanting to come back, and what's more he is truly trying to prepare himself for the Melchizedek Priesthood. One of the things in his testimony that I really liked was when he was talking about how the greatest batt
le we will ever have is the one within ourselves. He then said that it's a battle we can't win by ourselves and he talked about all of the people who have helped him as well as how the Spirit has helped him. It was so amazing and so spiritulal.

I feel like there were probably some other things that happened this week, but I really can't remember them, so I'll just leave it here.

Love you more!!!

Germany Week 14

Hey Sister Mom,

Those temple dedications sound like they were probably pretty cool. Man, the moment I leave the stake suddenly turns into a super-charged spiritual party. I'm super neidisch (jealous).

However, I enjoyed my week too. It started out like almost every other week we've been having here in Bamberg, with finding people. We did a lot of walking around trying to talk to people, and per usual they did a lot of not listening to us. In fact that's pretty much all that happened this week. Until Friday, when we did some Weekly Planning instead of walking around. Well, as we have more or less no investigators at this point we decided to call a former investigator named M1. He didn't answer, but when Elder Swan found his number we also saw M2's number. I think I've told you a little about M2, but not too much, and in order to understand the full miraculousness of this story I'll have to tell you all of his background.

M2 was one of the other Elder's investigators, and he decided he wanted to be baptized. He said he wanted to live the standards of the church for a month before his Taufe (baptism) though, which made sense. One of the things he had to do was quit smoking and he went from smoking a pack and a half a day, to none. It was amazing. He also had to break up with his girlfriend, which he went to go do on the same day he quit smoking. The man is awesome. Unfortunatley at this point his life exploded as his girlfriend thought she was pregnant and some things happened to make his financial situation a bit stressed. At this point he fell off the face of the earth and we couldn't get a hold of him. Until Friday. We called him up, and he answered. He then explained that due to his financial situation he's not able to make phone calls, but he can recieve them. He also was more or less forced to move into a place with his girlfriend and move over to Graf because he couldn't really afford to live anywhere else. But when they moved there, he demanded his own room, and made it very clear that nothing was going to happen. He's also started to go to school and has a job, so he can now move out which he will hopefully be doing sometime this week! He's also been reading in the Book of Mormon about an hour every week, even though he hasn't met with the missionaries in over a month, and he's cut his smoking down like crazy. Sadly for us, he no longer actually lives in our area, but he has to come to Bamberg every weekend to see his son, and he wants to meet with us either on this Saturday or Sunday, and is hoping to come to church! It's awesome! He is so prepared for baptism and he really knows this church is true, and I know that he can do it!

The Lord truly does work miracles! This is His church!
Love you more!
Elder Isaac

Germany Week 13

Dear Mother,

Our potential investigator in fact did not show up, but we called him about the day before and when he said he wouldn't be able to make it we rescheduled for sometime this week, so hopefully he'll actually be able to make it to that one. As for Elder Carson, he's not being trained by Elder Nilson, but he is in the Zone, so I'll at least get to see him a few times.

As for the rest of my week it was again mostly spent on the streets of Bamberg talking to people. The big exception was Friday when the whole mission went over to Frankfurt to listen to Elder Ballard as well as a few seventies. That was super good. He talked about a lot of different things, including how we need to feel the power of the gospel so we can better help others feel that same way.

Tanner's already going on a mission too? But he's still 11! Man, everyone's on a mission now. This is crazy. Well I hope you had fun at Grandpa's and teaching and everything else you do this week!

Love you more!
Son

Germany Week 12

Hey Mom! Sounds like a pretty awesome Regional Coference. You got to listen to two different Apostles? That's so cool!

Over here in Germany we had a pretty interesting week, at least as interesting as it can be contacting people almost all day everyday. Elder Swan and I made a goal this week to hand out a Book of Mormon for every ten people we talked to, and while we didn't quite schaff that goal, we did pretty good. On the first day we were doing it we had talked to nine people who all said "Keine Zeit" and walked off. The tenth person told us about the same thing, but he also said he could listen for just a bit. We told him a bit about the church and then gave him a copy of The Book of Mormon. He seemed to take it a bit reluctantly, but we kept talking to him for a bit more and we were able to get his number and make out an appointment with him for this Thursday! Pray for him that he'll actually come!

Well, that was probably the most exciting thing that happened all week, so I'll leave you with that thought, that God really does answer our prayers, and while sometimes it's not the way we wanted or expected, sometimes it's exactly the way we asked for.

Love you more!
Isaac

P.S. I knew I forgot something! We had transfer calls on Saturday, and I'm staying in Bamberg with Elder Swan, and since Elder Swan is going home at the end of this transfer I'll most likely be in Bamberg for another transfer, but we'll see about that for sure in six weeks. We're also getting a Golden in Bamberg, and I'm really hoping that Elder Nilson ends up training Elder Carson. Elder Carson was in my MTC group, but he injured his knee so he's just coming out this transfer, and he's awesome and I keep telling Elder Nilson that that's who his Golden is going to be.

Germany Week 11

Hey Mum!

My week was still pretty slow, I talked to a lot of people and we even gave out a few copies of The Book of Mormon, but that was about it. Thankfully August is over so Bamberg should again be full of people that actually live here and not just tourists, and the ward members should be back too, so that should help.

We also had a Zone Training this week. We talked about a lot of things there, including the fact that we're having a Devotional thing with Elder Ballard (and possibly Elder Bednar) on Transfer Day. We also talked about a goal for the Zone for the end of the year. The Zone Leaders challenged each area to have a baptism by the end of the year, and in that moment I felt such a powerful spirit that that truly was possible. I was also reading in the scriptures today, and one of the verses I read sort of reminded me of this. It was in 2 Timothy when Paul is speaking about the Apostasy, and in chapter 3 verse 5 he says that men will have a form of godliness, but deny the power of it. It made me wonder how often we do that. How often do we recieve a spiritual prompting, but then decide that it's too hard, and deny the power of God in our lives? Hopefully we won't do that, and we will instead accomplish what the Lord has in store for us.

Love you more!
Isaac