Germany week 50

Schloss Drachenburg

Dear Sister Mom,

Sorry I'm writing this on Tuesday, it turns out between having to do non P-day things in the morning, crazy Verspätungen and Elder Bean's email not working that we weren't able to do it yesterday so we figured we'd make up a little of the lost P-day and quickly send emails today. Anyway.

So when you say that Christine is getting married, are you referring to my cousin? Because I had no idea about that. Well, whoever it is it sounds exciting and I hope you have fun. I guess Alexa really wasn't lying when she told me that everyone and their brother was getting married.

Also, life here's been pretty exciting, mostly with J. At that appointment on Tuesday one of the very first things he said was that he knows the church is true because he's prayed about it and received an answer. We haven't met with him in a month or so and he's still been reading and praying and receiving answers that whole time! The kid's amazing! It's been such a cool Bestätigung to meet with him and see how powerfully God answers prayers if we're really looking and willing to listen. Sadly for us he lives in Oberhausen, which is actually in a different Stake, so we're transitioning him over to the Oberhausen Elders so they can teach him and hopefully baptize him into that ward. We're still working with M here and he's great too. There haven't been as many crazy experiences with him, but that's mostly because he already knew that he wanted to get baptized before he started meeting with us, so we've mostly just been making sure that he knows all the things he needs to to get baptized. It's been great to watch him grow too though, and he really seems like he'll be ready for his baptism in two weeks, so that's great too.

Let's see...what else... Oh, on Saturday Düsseldorf also had some awesomeness going on. A bunch of the JAE's that are getting ready to go on missions came and did a street display with us, so we all got to go out with these native Germans who were fresher than Goldens. That was way fun and it was great to get some of their enthusiasm and optimism that they had for the work. I can't think of anything too specific that happened, but it was overall an awesome experience.



We also went spätzieren at a Schloss (bzw Burg, but at least I know it's not a Festung) in Bonn! Enjoy!

Love you more!
Elder Son

Bonn

Me calling the people of Bonn to repentance

Germany Week 49

As for my week, it wasn't very interesting. Oh wait, it was, really just Sunday though. Our one awesome investigator, J, dropped off the face of the earth a while ago, but last Sunday one of our amazing members, M2, asked for his number and got a hold of him. He then invited him to these Mini-fireside things he does every once and a while and he came! What's more, yesterday, M2 brought him to church so we once again officially have contact with him and are going to meet with him on Tuesday! The JAE's in this ward are hammer.

Other than that things are pretty normal. M seems to be right on his way to getting baptized and everyone else seems to be doing pretty well too. I feel like this is a pretty lame email, but I really can't think of anything else to write so...

You're great!

Love you more!!!
Isaac

Germany Week 48

Sounds like you have all been having quite the life up there with all that rain. Over here the weather is still just trying to decide if it's winter or summer. Maybe it will figure it out soon.

Well, transfer calls were on Saturday. I'm staying in Duisburg with Elder Bean. In fact our entire district is staying the same, moreover the entire North half of the Zone außer one person is staying the same. It was kind of crazy. It was also crazy because we're getting a new AP, and he's in his seventh transfer. Poor guy, he hasn't even ever been Zone Leader, or been outside of Idar-Oberstein and now suddenly he has to help lead the mission. But from what I heard from his trainer, Elder Tolson, he should be awesome.

As for everything else this week, I'm not too in touch with everything that happened here because I was basically in Wesel the whole week. Because of some crazy circumstances earlier in the transfer we had to do both of our splits with them last week, and I went to Wesel for both of them so I didn't end up meeting with most of our investigators. However, from what Elder Bean says it sounds like they're doing well.

Well, have a dandy week!
Loves,
Elder Son

Germany Week 47

Dear Sis. Mom

That was dandy. I don't really have much else to say either... I mean all I did after our Skype thingy was go home, eat dinner, and go to sleep, so... Anyway, it was great to see you all and to (sort of) meet Anna and just be all around our family and jabber about absolutely nothing. But that leaves me with nothing to say now because as we established yesterday, our entire family is great at communicating.

So... I feel like I should make this longer, but I have nothing else to say, so... Peace! Have a marvy week!

Love you more!!!
Isaac

Germany Week 46

May the fourth be with you too. We were actually going to celebrate that today by going to a giant Star Wars store in Mönchengladbach, but then we found out that it's closed on Mondays, and we were sad. Now we'll just have to figure something else out. Oh well, at least Jacob, Kyri and Logan can have a richtig gut Star Wars day.

Well, as for all the peeps, unfortunately none of them showed up to church yesterday, but we have gotten in contact with all of them and we have appointments for this week. Also, we had an amazing lesson with J, the kid we met at Bahnhof, this week. We taught him most of the restoration and when we talked about the First Vision the Spirit was super strong. At the end of the lesson we asked him to read and pray and specifically to pray to know if The Book of Mormon was true, and if Joseph Smith was a Prophet. To that he responded that he didn't need to pray about the last bit because he already knew it. Joseph Smith was a prophet. Needless to say Elder Bean and I had no idea what to say to that. Eventually we just ended up saying something about how God can also always reassure us once we already know something, and basically were just super happy about the whole thing.

Well, that was definitely the most exciting thing in my week. It sounds like your week was great, and you should make this next one great too!

Love you more!!!
Elder Cloward

Germany Week 45

This week was pretty crazy, mostly because Friday was spent going to, partying in and coming back from Frankfurt where we got to sit and listen to Elder Bednar for about six hours. It was amazing, but it was kind of a long day because in order to get there on time we had to catch an ICE at 5:12 in the morning, so we had to get up even earlier. The actual conference was amazing and super duper spiritual. Let's see if I can remember anything especially cool without looking at my notes, which I left at home. Hmm... He told us we were super weird because we were a bunch of 20 odd year old sitting there on a Friday for six hours talking about how to use technology to spiritually uplift people's lives instead of whatever a normal 20 year old would be doing at that time. It was also way cool to just see how he taught. You see, he didn't just talk to us, in fact he really didn't talk all that much. Mostly he would say one or two things about it and then just ask for comments and what we were thinking. It was especially interesting because before we really started he made a clarifying declaration that he wasn't going to play a game of "Guess what's in my head" but that he actually wanted to know what we were thinking, and not just get us to say the answer that he was already thinking. It was way great, but I'll just leave it at that because there was way too much to even scratch the surface of what he said.

As for the peeps, M and K still seem to be doing pretty well, they've still got things to figure out, just like everyone, but they still seem to want to know, and that's what matters. As for the random guy, I have no idea what happened to him, he lives in Wesel's area after all. But last week because of some crazy Verspätungen we were waiting for the Zone Leaders so we could split with them at Bahnhof when a 20 or so year old kid walked up and asked us if we were Jehovah's Witnesses, and we said no and then he asked us if we were Mormon. At that point we were pretty impressed and then he started asking us more questions, took a copy of The Book of Mormon and agreed to meet with us later that week. On the Scheduled day we waited for him at the Church, and he called us to say he couldn't come. I was just happy that he had called us. What's more, he actually came to church on Sunday, listened to a lesson afterwards and agreed to meet again this week. Should be epic.

Well, those are definitely the highlights of the week.
Have a great one!

Love you more!!!
Elder Cloward

Germany Week 44

Hey Mom! Sounds like you still are having some pretty crazy weeks even though you're moved in now. (Ish) And what the snow? It's been getting pretty hot here lately. I was on split this week and we had to walk around the whole day in the blazing heat. It was about 25 degrees that day. Crazy. Speaking of that split, that made the rest of the week way more exciting because on it Elder Bean lost his wallet, so we spent a lot of our time the rest of the week trying to deal with that.

As for K, we haven't actually been able to meet with him because we had to move our appointment from last week to today. He did come to church again though, and he seemed to really enjoy it. We watched the last session of conference and he seemed pretty interested in all of it. There was also some random guy who showed up yesterday because he's interested in religion and specifically our church. He arrived a half hour early and talked to us the whole time, stayed for the whole meeting and then spent another hour and a half or so talking to the bishop about all the questions he had. It was pretty crazy and I hope he got a lot out of it and felt the spirit. As for other people I'm actually teaching, there's a guy whose name is M. He referred himself and actually already received all of the lessons in Russia, but had to move just before he could get baptized or something, so now he's here and he really wants to get baptized, so hopefully that will happen fairly soon. We have to teach him all of the lessons again to make sure he understands everything, but otherwise he's ready to go, he's already keeping all of the commandments and reads and prays and everything, so that's pretty cool.

Also, I can't think of anything else...except that you should all be jealous because I get to met Elder Bednar on Friday. Of course we learned this week that in order to get there on time we're going to have to catch an ICE at 5:12 in the morning, so we're going to be running on not too much sleep, but it should still be great.

Bis nächste Woche!

Love you more!!!
Me