Hello family and friends (I'll write my general letter here and answer your questions as well)
This second week in Deutschland has been great!
On Monday last week, we went to the grocery store (which happened to be inside a mall) to buy our groceries. The food (at least the milk and meat ) is really cheap here and everything is delicious. Ive been getting a little sick of all the pork however. As we were picking out which yogurt to buy, i happened to pick out some yogurt with alcohol. Luckily my companion knew that some yogurt had alcohol but that was a close one haha. The Germans love their beer. At the grocery store i went shopping for toiletries because I had to get rid of just about everything to get my bags below 50 pounds. But apparently Germans don't believe in personal hygiene; only the the essentials.
On Tuesday, we had an appointment with a couple of Jehovah witnesses! It was awesome We taught the first lesson about the restoration and the book of Mormon. We had one of them read Moroni 10 verse 4 and 5. The spirit was very strong and i could tell he felt something. After that, he did not speak the rest of the time.
Saturday was especially memorable this week. We took a 40 minute bus ride into the countryside. In the middle of nowhere. The scenery was beautiful with the rolling hills and little villages scattered throughout. I thought we were going to die on the road, or path that we were driving on. At first the road was pretty narrow as it wound through the hills and was surrounded by trees and reminded me of Yosemite. I'd consider The road a one way street. Apparently it was not. Cars would somehow sneak past every couple of minutes and I was scared for my life. The road then proceeded to grow ever more narrow, and each time a car would pass it seemed like a miracle. After about 20 minutes on this road we decided to go off-roading... in a bus. I'm pretty sure this path was a hiking trail. Hahaha It was fit only for a 4 wheeler. I'll never forget that ride. After we finally reached the outskirts of the middle of nowhere, we had the opportunity to teach sister braun. Sister Braun is everything that would come to mind when you think about a crazy old German lady. Although I could only understand about 5 percent of what this 80 year old woman was saying, I gathered that she had been alive during the war and she would go on monologues for 20 minutes at a time, about the war. She cooked us some delicious cake-pizza dish, I'm not really sure what it was, but it was great. We taught her the doctrine of Christ and committed her to baptism. She said she wasn't quite to that point yet but said she would pray about the book of Mormon!!! its a step in the right direction.
As I think i mentioned in the last letter, We are also teaching a man maned Joe;Joe Schwarz. He's amazing and loves the scriptures. Every time he reads a verse, he says "ahh, da stimmt", meaning oh that's true. He is thirsting after the word of God.
I love it. but as of Friday, he has a girl friend who lives with him. She is a self proclaimed white witch. I think he can work something out with that because she really enjoyed our lesson and even prayed for the first time (to one of her goddesses named Dianna) but she really enjoyed it and everything will be alright. But he is very curious about baptism because we mentioned baptism a couple times. We were about to commit him to baptism last time we met with him but his girlfriend had an appointment at the hospital and he had to go. AHH it was so frustrating! But we will teach about it next time. He is a bit hung up on our belief that his baptism isn't valid because it wasn't done with the Priesthood.. But we will explain everything later.
Father! my second Sunday was much better than the first, but unfortunately we did not have anyone come to church. They were busy or working or sick or a family member came to visit. I could understand much more of what was being said and my head did not hurt quite as much. I still miss my Sunday naps and it was difficult for me to stay awake in church. Most of the people are old and crazy, but they are all very nice and everyone asks me if I'm related to Alma Sonne. They also always mention that the sonne or sun is shining in church. We meet in an old school that the church bought out and there are about 80 members. Contacting was fruitful this week and although we did not set up any appointments, we did contact about 8 potential investigators; most of whom i am scared of. they are Russian or Greek or Somalian or Nigerian.
We always do street contacting on the way to and from most places, it doesn't work too well unless they are working on their lawn or something.
We have been visiting a refugee home recently and most people are open and humble there.
We may go to a mosque next week.
I am getting better at teaching the lessons; its a bit tougher than the memorized discussions i think because they let us say whatever we want haha. I am getting better and have learned that asking questions is important in fact this Sunday we had a very spiritual meeting with a member family and an inactive son who ended up sharing his testimony. Also the father had dreams to confirm the truthfulness of the church and about his wife that she had been hit in the face with a money bag from heaven while they were about to go to sleep at night. This answered their prayer about tithing
I am studying the missionary sons of Mosiah and I like Alma 18 right now;I am currently trying to memorize the scriptures that go with the lessons, questions to ask, and examples of the principle that I then translate into German.
we email in a little shop that provides internet service.
I have had to be humble and have more faith because I know I can't speak German and that I can't coherently teach the gospel in English, and especially in German.
elder sonne
My comp and i were not able to get a hold of a lot of our investigators, but we are still making progress.
