Grütize family and friends! 2 September 2011
This week has truly been hectic! Elder Hamilton and I have been really hard at work, trying to find someone who will be receptive to the good message of the gospel. And we have actually found a few potential people this week. I don’t even know where to start! First, we have decided that every single person in all the 25 cities or so we work in will know who we are... so we smile and wave to everything that moves. Cars, trains, buses, people on the street... elder Hamilton accidentally waved at a dog a couple days ago ha-ha. This new technique of ours has actually started to work.... When we say hi to people they often come up to us and ask us why we are so happy and saying hi to everyone. This past week, we waved at a man in a car; he actually waved back and was smiling. There was a red light shortly ahead and we ran to the stopped car with the happy man inside. When we got to him the light was just turning green. The man rolled down the passenger window of the car to talk to us. He said, in a very American accent, VERY NICE BOYS! I was so taken back and I told him who we were, in German, and he responded that everyone is a representative of Jesus. It was really weird! He actually pulled over on the side of the street and we made an appointment with this man for last Wednesday. It was the most ridiculous thing in the world. The appointment with this man was one of the most interesting lessons with which I have been involved yet. His knowledge of the gospel is astounding! He taught us the apostasy of Christ’s church better than I can and we simply picked right up from there and went into the restoration. I was awe struck. Sadly he does not want to come to church or meet with us regularly ... yet!! We gave him a book of Mormon and he said he would read it and we can meet in a couple more weeks! We have been having crazy experiences like this one throughout the past couple of weeks... I have never worked so hard in my entire life and my comp said the first 21 months of his mission combined has not equaled the amount of work we have been getting done!! It’s amazing.
Oh yea... this past week I set my first baptismal date... With a woman named Sinthiya from Nigeria. The story of how we met is pretty amusing. It was a very hot day and we had been outside trying to find someone to teach for some hours. We visited a potential investigator named Buh. He was not home, so we started to head back in the direction of the train station. I recognized the apartment of an old investigator and we were exceedingly hot. I had no more water in my bottle so I thought we could stop by to say hi and ask for some water! The old investigator no longer lived there, but a lady opened the door. We asked for water and she gladly filled both of our bottles. I then thought we could share our message of the gospel. At the end we invited her to church... and she actually came!-- for three hours. At which, baptism was discussed and prophets and covenants and everything that is perfect for investigators! We made two appointments with her for this week and were able to commit her to baptism and set a baptismal date for September 25! She is not sure she will be ready, but if she reads and keeps the commandments and prays she will be ready!!! I love this work.
