Weihnachten was awesome!!

Hallo everybody! I sure had a great Christmas and I hope you did too! 

This past Monday following our emails we found success following up on a contact that we met a couple of weeks prior. We went by a Turkish family's home and explained our purpose as missionaries and asked if we could come by another time when the whole family is home in order for us to share the Book of Mormon with them. The wife said sure! The husband owns a shop in Köthen so he is gone a lot but we set up an appointment for this Tuesday night when he is supposed to be home.

 

Tuesday we had a really good lesson with Johanna. We brought Christian along. Christian is a super young man in our branch. He and his wife just had their first child. He went on his mission to the Hamburg mission but he learned American English from the missionaries. I literally thought he was American when I first met him. But anyways, we had a super lesson about the temple, family history work, and eternal marriage. Johanna said that as soon as she gets baptized, she wants to go to the temple and be baptized for her grandmother. Cool! Tuesday night we had English class again. It was a lot of fun. Marian and Galia said they have a friend who wants to meet us!

Wednesday morning was Christmas Eve, or Heilige Abend. In Germany, there is a bigger celebration on the 24th than there is on the 25th and 26th. Oh yeah, by the way, Germany has a second day of Christmas on the 26th. This week it was hard to get around or just do anything in general because the whole country basically shuts down. Bahn (trains) seldomly run, stores are all closed, and no one is on the streets. We had our usual district meeting that morning. Afterwards, we all went to H&M and bought each other sweaters and then we took district pics. That afternoon we took a train to Wulfen and were at the Staigers the rest of the night. We went to the Evangelische church's Christmas service that evening. Afterwards we had dinner, the normal bread, meats, and cheeses abendbrot. Potato casserole is traditional on the 24th. We also had raw fish wrapped around a pickle. Apparently that is traditional as well. It was actually pretty good. We read the Christmas story out of the Luther Bible and then the Weihnachts Mann came (Santa). In Germany, all the presents are opened on the 24th. The Staigers really took care of us. We were literally a part of their gift unwrapping circle and they had presents for us every round! We each got the traditional pyramides and nutcrackers. It was so awesome!

 

After our study on the 25th we went over to the Wlokas for the rest of the day. They fed us a huge, delicious lunch and then we played board games for the rest of the day. Who knew the German version of SORRY! could last three hours. I got to talk to my family for about and hour, too! That was so nice. I love them so much.  Here I am talking to the family:

 

Friday, the four of us went to the Gehrkes. It was Schwester Gehrke and her daughter. They made us so much food it was ridiculous. Rabbit, roast, green beans, potatoes, rotkhol. I ate so much I was sick afterwards. Friday night we conducted our weekly planning. On the way home Friday night, a little boy and his grandma came up to us at Hasselbachplatz and asked us about or church. They are from Serbia. The little boy is the most out-going 10 year-old I have ever met. He told me all about the fight he got in at school last week. We were able to make an appointment with them after only missing our train stop by 10 minutes.

 

Saturday we had an appointment with Shuei fall through in the morning. He slept through it. Then we met with Marian and Rafael and Galia. They brought their friend. Her name is Flor and she has a four year old daughter named Elisabeth. Flor is from Spain. She speaks absolutely no German or English. I need a translator just to say hi to her.  But we had a really good lesson. We taught about the temple, eternal marriage, and we even got to family history. Marian and Galia want to get married but we found out that Galia is still married to her first husband, even though they have been separated for three years. So we have another hurdle before baptism but we are going to work on it. Marian said he read Alma 32 this week and loved it. He said that's exactly how he thinks! He is really making progress. They said they ultimately want to get sealed in the temple. I think it was a great first lesson for Flor to hear too. She got a Spanish Book of Mormon and Galia explained it to her. Marian and Galia want to get into family history as well. 

We also had a lesson with Johanna Saturday night--kind of bad news.  There was a miscommunication and for some reason her dad didn't understand that the 3rd of January was a set date, even though he was there when we set it a month ago. He scheduled work.  I just told Johanna, no problem, we will move it to the 10th and it will all be okay. She was visibly frustrated and I felt so bad for her becuase when we set these dates with people for baptism, its a goal. She set the goal for herself, prepared, and is now ready. And now she has to wait an extra week. Sucks but we are just staying positive and pumping her up. She is nervous but she is so excited to be baptized. We can't wait for the 10th!

 

Yesterday in church we had Marian, Rafael, Galia, Flor, Elisabeth, and Johanna. It was a great turn out. I played all of the songs for sacrament meeting so that was a bit nerve-wracking. We had lunch at the Weners, a family in the branch. All four of us gave a sweet combined lesson and tied the temple, family history, the plan of salvation and member missionary work all together in 20 minutes.

 

This week will be exciting because we are going to try to put together a branch mission plan, something that we can get members to rally around. We also want to put together a family history night and more activities. Busy, busy, busy but we can always be doing more! Bernburg is having a baptism this coming Sunday so we get to go to that. Elder Morton and I have been asked to prepare a musical number. I just think its funny because all of the sudden I am now considered a pianist!

 

Have a good New Year's everyone! 'Til next year! ;)

 

Elder Germann

Pictures from Christmas at the Staiger's!!

Merry Christmas everyone!!  I and the other missionaries here in Magdeburg were invited over to the Staiger family's home for Christmas eve--we had dinner and they gave us a number of presents including fancy new Christmas sweaters!!

Here are the Staiger's:

This was our feast:

Here are Romneys, the senior missionary couple also assigned here in Magdeburg--we love them!!

We got a number of amazing presents:

 And here are all of the missionaries in our new Christmas sweaters:

My dad has posted the rest of the pictures on my Facebook page.

Merry Christmas everyone!!

Elder Germann

Frohliche Weihnachten!

Ich wünsche Alle eine frohliches Weihnachten!  I hope everyone is prepared for the big day on Thursday.  Here in Germany, the 26th is Christmas Part II so I get two days of it!

 

We had a really solid week this past week.  On Tuesday we had an companion exchange with the District Leader so Elder Oldroyd went to Köthen with Elder Short and Elder Glissmeyer came here to Magdeburg with me.  On Tuesday, after a meeting with our branch mission leader, we really had an awesome English class at the church.  In all my time here in Magdeburg, the missionaries have had an advertisement for an English class every week but we have never done it.  On Tuesday we had four people there!  Galia, Marian, Rafael, and an investigator from the other companionship's teaching pool was there.  We had a lot of fun and it was actually really good that Elder Glissmeyer was there because they actually have an English class in Köthen every week so he knows what he is doing.  We printed off worksheets and stories and worked with them on simple sentence structure.  It is definitely hard to try to explain your mother language.  We are supposed to have the same turnout this week as well.

 

Wednesday was a really good day.  Following district meeting, we exchanged back and had a lesson with Marian and Rafael.  Marian really wanted us to hear his life story and it was actually such a good idea because we know exactly where he is coming from.  It is so long and eventful already that you could write a book about it and he is only 21.  Long story short, his mom and dad moved them to Spain when he was six because that were in debt over one million euros to several different individuals.  Then his mom and dad split and his mom got a restraining order on his dad after he tried to burn their house down.  After the restraining order, his dad became an alcoholic and died after falling down the stairs.  His mom found a lover and he moved in with their family.  He was abusive and she kicked him out several times but she always let him back in when he came crawling back.  Eventually Marian gave his mom an ultimatum, him or the lover.  She chose the lover and so he moved out.  When he was 15 he was riding on the back of a motorcycle with his friend and they got t-boned by a car.  It crushed his whole leg and foot.  They took him to a hospital that didn't accept his insurance so he sat there for three days without being treated before he was moved to another hospital that would treat him.  So he had several surgeries and years of physical therapy.  He can walk now but he still needs more surgeries.  So basically Marian has been through the ringer and he needs the peace the gospel can bring.  We offered to give him a priesthood blessing and he accepted.  He asked President Romney to give it.  It was a very nice blessing and we left there on a spiritual high after he agreed to read the Book of Mormon and to pray specifically about it.  He says he wants to be baptized and we set a new goal for Jan. 24th so we are shooting for that now.  As for Rafael, it is a little different for a nine year old.  He is already super spiritual and he is coming to church every week and I think he likes it but he is sooo shy to the point it is hard to get anything out of him.  Galia has been really helping though because she knows church is where she wants to be/needs to be and she wants him to be baptized, too.

 

We had two really good lessons with Johanna this week, one on Wednesday night and one on Saturday night.  She is progressing really well towards her baptism on the 3rd of January.  She is so excited about the gospel and loves to talk about it.  She is a really mature 14 year-old.  She even expressed interest in going on a mission some day.  She is a little concerned about being the only Mormon in her school.  There is a lot of peer pressure.  We talked about being an example of the believers.  I talked about how there weren't too many Mormons in my high school but everyone knew I was Mormon and everyone knew my standards.  My license plate said MORMON!  She is already doing a lot of missionary work and telling kids at school she is Mormon and why we have/live the standards we do.
  

Thursday we went by Dinh's place but she told us to come by after Christmas :/  We had a successful power visit to a member family that evening.  One of our companionship goals is to have one power visit a week to a member.  I talked to Elder Morton this morning and we decided together that we are really going to make a push to get members doing mission work here.  It's great that we have Magdeburg back on its feet after showing up and only having six people between the two teaching pools when we got here but that is not enough.  We need to take the next step to cranking it up a notch and that is getting the members more involved in their own missionary work.  The two companionships are going to sit down tomorrow and sketch out a plan of action.  We will get the Romneys on board too and Magdeburg will become a thriving city for the work.
 

Friday after weekly planning we had an appointment with a Chinese man who I had called last week.  His name was on a potential investigator list in our area book.  After playing a little bit of soccer at the church, we sat down and had a lesson.  He has absolutely no religious knowledge so we are really starting from square one but that's okay!  I think the hardest thing is the language barrier.  He refused to take a Chinese Book of Mormon.  He wanted an English copy.  We met again Saturday and after we read in it he understood absolutely nothing. He also refused to pray with us or even have us say a closing prayer because he doesn't know if he wants to join our religion yet. I think he was confusing prayer and baptism.  "This is going to take a lot of work..." *Anthony Hopkins voice*
 

Friday night Elder Morton and I went to Bernburg and Elders Oldroyd and Gibbs held down the fort in Magdeburg...pun intended.  (Magdeburg was a fortress)  They went to a couple of lessons together.  Trainee exchanges are the best.  My favorite day on the mission so far was a trainee exchange.  Elder Morton and I had the second of the Christmas choir concerts that night.  The concert went well.  Elder Morton did well in his solo O Heilige Nacht.  People told him, "Oh that was so good, much better than last week in Köthen!"  Backhanded compliment?  Saturday we had the second lesson with Shuei, the Chinese man, and then Johanna.

 

Church yesterday went very well.  I played the piano a bunch throughout the meetings including accompanying Elder Morton in Stille Nacht during sacrament meeting.  People really liked that musical number together.  It was cool becuase that was the first time I had ever accompanied someone solo before.  I'm like a real pianist now or something!  Not.  But we had the other two hours combined to watch the First Presidency Christmas Devotional, taped in Salt Lake a couple of weeks ago.  Comparing that to watching General Conference in German back in December, I understood probably 90% as opposed to 5%.

 

I am so looking forward to Christmas this week and talking to my family!  We have dinner appointments the 24th, 25th, and the 26th so the members are taking care of us.  I hope everyone has a wonderful week at home spending time with their families!

 

Liebe,

 

Elder Tanner Germann

#EristdasGeschank = #HeistheGift

Hey y'all!  Is everyone prep'd and ready to go for Christmas already?  It is definitely Christmas time here in Germany.

We had another great week.  We had an awesome lesson on Tuesday!  We met with Johanna, Brother Titigue's daughter.  She gave that awesome testimony on Sunday about how she wanted to start coming to church every week because she knows that is where she should be.  We had a great lesson on the Restoration.  Br. Titigue was super excited that his daughter was finally meeting with the missionaries and he was more than willing to contribute to the lesson.  Johanna asked a lot of good questions but since she has been to church a couple of times throughout her life, she has a general understanding of things.  Elder Oldroyd asked her if she would be willing to prepare herself to be baptized on the 3rd of January and she said yes!  All of us are super excited for her!

Wednesday morning we had an appointment with Vinod.  He had been taught some of the commandments in Lesson 4 of Preach My Gospel in the past but we recapped those and taught him about the rest.  He happily committed to living the commandments.  He does have a small smoking addiction--he smokes about five cigarettes a day.  We are now working with him to stop that completely.  He knows it is bad and wants to stop.  He has become more comfortable with being baptized sooner rather than later.  He even set a new goal for himself--he knew he would not be prepared to be baptized this Saturday so he is now working toward Jan. 24th.  Vinod is an awesome guy and we are going to help him reach his goal of being baptized on the 24th.  Wednesday afternoon we went to Char-Ly's house and had a short lesson with him.  In the end we told him that we could not keep coming by because he is not willing to keep commitments and make progress toward finding out for himself if the Book of Mormon is the word of God.  It is sad but we need to focus all of our efforts on the people who truly want to progress.  We found two new investigators Wednesday night while street contacting!  We had an exciting conversation with one girl--she said she doesn't believe in God but she has always believed in a guardian angel of some sort.  That reminds me of King Lamoni in the Book of Mormon.  But she is willing to meet with us and give it a try!  Wednesday was Elder Morton's 19th birthday.  We decorated his apartment while he and his companion were out that day.  :)

 

Thursday morning we were up at 0430 to catch a 0600 train to Dresden for Zone Conference.  Here is a picture of a brand new train we rode on:

 

Zone Conference was really good.  The theme was Christmas and the new ad campaign the church is doing for this Christmas season--#HeistheGift.  If you haven't seen the video, go look it up on YouTube!  Elder Morton sang O, Holy Night as a special musical number and killed it.  At the end there was a little testimony meeting--you could feel the Spirit strongly.  We rode the train back and by the time we got home, it was bedtime.

 

On Friday, we had a really good lesson with Marian, Galia, and Rafael.  Marian has been a little skeptical about prayer since it is such a new concept for him.  We talked to him about praying with real intent and we bore testimony that we know that when you combine reading the scriptures, praying for specific things, and going to church, it's like a catalyst in a reaction--the reaction is faster and stronger, or in other words, you receive a stronger answer in less time.  He committed to reading and praying often.  With the help of Galia, we are helping Rafael to gain his own testimony.  Marian wants to meet more often so that he can tell us more of his background in order for us to know how to better help him.  We are going to hold an English-German class on Tuesday night for both of them and then we have another lesson on Wednesday.  Making progress there!  The Romneys took us to dinner to celebrate Elder Morton's birthday that night.  :)

 

Saturday morning we had another really great lesson with Johanna.  Her dad was there again and the Romneys came along, too.  We taught the Plan of Salvation.  We were able to answer all of the questions she had.  It's nice though that she has somewhat of a church background.  She is making good progress.  She is reading in the Book of Mormon, praying for specific things, and she is coming to church.  We are meeting with her again on Wednesday this week.  Saturday afternoon we had an appointment fall through with a woman who called us back last week.  She gave us a bad address. Saturday night we visited with the Le Roys--a less-active couple.  They are super nice and are always willing to invite us over and hear a spiritual thought.  Saturday night we found two more investigators!  Here is a neighborhood in Schönebeck which is almost completely preserved from the days of the Cold War:

We had a good day at church yesterday.  Johanna, Galia, and Rafael came.  Marian has the flu.  Elder Morton and I taught the Church's code of health, the Word of Wisdom, in our Sunday School class.  We went to the Staigers for lunch after church and then rushed to the Köthen choir concert which Elder Morton and I sang in; Elder Pilling accompanied on the piano.  Elder Pilling was awesome as was Elder Morton who had a couple of solos.  A lot of people showed up and filled the chapel--I'd say over 200.  

 

We are looking forward to another great week here in Magdeburg!

 

Take care, everyone!

 

Elder Tanner Germann

Rolling right into training a new missionary

For some reason I feel like it has been an eternity since last Monday. But it's probably because this week was so busy!  I sent my trainer to Berlin on Tuesday and picked up my trainee on Thursday in Berlin.  So much happened this week!

Last Monday night, the Romneys took us out for a goodbye dinner since both Elder Sagmeister and Elder Stringham were leaving for Berlin the next morning.  I am already missing both of them.

Early Tuesday morning they got on a train and so I paired up with Elder Morton and we worked together until Thursday when we went together to Berlin to pick up our trainees (He was my companion at the Missionary Training Center).  The Romneys conducted an apartment inspection in Elder Morton's appartment late that morning...his apartment has obviously housed missionaries for a long time.... We did a little finding that afternoon before riding down to Schönebeck to an appointment with a new investigator in his teaching pool.  The man gave him a bad address. You know, that's actually pretty common.  Last week someone gave us an address to a government building. I am sure they thought that was pretty funny.  But we decided to do some street contacting in Schönebeck.  We talked to a woman who was very interested and she invited us to come over later on in the week.  Unfortunately, Elder Morton managed to lose his planner that had the address in. We came back and met Maria and the Romneys at the church.  Maria is an investigator in Elder Morton's teaching pool.  She has been meeting with the missionaries for the past four years.  Since Elder Morton came, she has finally been making some progress and is set to be baptized on the 20th.  We had an interesting lesson about the nature of God.  We read from Genesis in the Bible about the creation and how we are created in God's image.

Wednesday we did a bit of street contacting following our study that morning.  In the afternoon, we went to Dinh's house with the Romneys.  I had made an appointment with her for that time but it was like she totally forgot.  She was surprised to see us and the house was a bit of a mess.  We taught the plan of salvation.  The girls were pretty unruly.  Dinh told us that she really likes us and what we do.  She says she has started the Book of Mormon and wants to learn more.  But she kept telling us over and over that she cannot switch her religion from Buddhism.  She said it's tradition in her family and it goes back generations.  At the activity last week she was asking me if she could have two religions--it was like she was implying Buddhism and Mormonism.  I am pretty disappointed with the situation right now.  She says she is too busy taking her kids to Vietnamese school Sunday mornings to come to church.  I have talked with our District Leader, Elder Short, about the situation.  He said that before he was converted, he was deciding between becoming Buddhist or becoming a Mormon.  Basically Buddhism has many of the same aspects of the gospel, so we need to help her see that there is more and that the LDS church has the fullness of the gospel.  We left feeling disappointed but we are not giving up on her.

Thursday morning our train to Berlin left at 0600.  We had a couple of connections, especially in Berlin to get to the right station.  Thursday morning we had a Trainers Conference with President Kosak and the Assistants to the Mission President.  That was very helpful.  Then they filed the new missionaries in.  The individual trainers got up, gave a two minute overview of their areas, and then President Kosak announced the companionships.  Elder Morton and I were the last two companionships to be announced. 

 

My trainee is Elder Oldroyd!  He is from Utah.  His family lives in a little industrial town near the Colorado border.  He just graduated from high school in May so he is 18 years old and he wants to get certified and be a welder after he finishes his mission.  He is super nice and super quiet.  I'm sure though that as he gets more comfortable with the schedule, the area, and running around all day he will open up more.  Thursday night when we got back to Magdeburg, we literally dumped his bags in the apartment and went to see an investigator.  We went and invited Galia, her son Rafael, and her boyfriend Marian, to the branch Christmas party that we were going to have on Friday night.  Here is a picture of me and my new companion, Elder Oldroyd:

Friday was a busy day.  We had study in the morning but then we had district meeting at 1000.  Everyone got to meet Elder Oldroyd, Elder Gibbs (Elder Morton's trainee), and Elder Grieves (Elder Pilling's new companion).  District meeting went well. Following district meeting, Elder Oldroyd ate his first döner.  It is a missionary tradition here in our mission.  He liked it!  Our apartment got inspected that afternoon by the Romneys.  They both showed up with white gloves on, specially bought for my apartment--just like at the Air Force Academy!  Sister Romney was pretty impressed--she didn't find any dust.  (Disclaimer: She wasn't as aggressive as they are at the Academy during inspections).  That afternoon we had about an hour to do some street contacting.  We found a new investigator--a young man that lives in a village outside of Schönebeck.  Ya gotta love finding a new investigator on your first day!  The branch Christmas party was Friday evening.  Galia, Marian, and Rafael came!  President Romney and I talked to them all night.  I think they had a really good experience.  We, the four elders, sang Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer.  I think they loved hearing an American Christmas song.  They read the Christmas story out of the Bible and then there were a couple of more songs performed and poems read.  I have never been to a party where they read poetry so that was interesting. Then they served a super good dinner.  Overall I would say that the activity was a success.  Brüder Titigue's daughter Honig came.  She is 14 years old but she was never baptized.  I talked to Brüder Titigue afterwards and told him that I wanted to teach his daughter.  He said "Yes, please!"  More info on that to come later.

Saturday we basically went contacting all day after weekly study.  When you have all day to contact, you're going to see some success.  We got a pair of contacts, a referral for elders in Berlin, and we found some Syrian guys that are going to meet us so that we can give them a Book of Mormon.  It was the funniest thing.  They literally spoke no German and little to no English.  One of them took out his phone and we tried to go back and forth on Google Translate but that was a fail because what he typed in Arabic literally made no sense in English.  So then he phoned a friend and we passed the phone back and forth.  She translated from German to Arabic for us.  We are supposed to meet them tonight.  I hope it actually works out and that they show up but I am afraid there is too much of a language barrier.  We shall see!  But that exchange was pretty cool!

Yesterday was crazy at church!  Marian, Galia, and Rafael came to church as well as Vinod!  Honig came too!  I had the opportunity to teach our Sunday School class and we had Galia, Marian, and Honig in there as well as an investigator of the other two elders.  The lesson was on gospel of Jesus Christ and I think it went pretty well.  It was my first time actually leading a lesson in church (in German) so it was a bit nerve-wracking.  Sacrament meeting yesterday was one for the books.  As soon as the branch presidency member said that people could come up and bear their testimony, this random guy that I sat next to jumped up and talked at the pulpit for 20 minutes.  I had sat next to him because I didn't recognize him and I wanted to figure out if he was trying to learn more about the church.  It turns out that this guy has come once before but he is obviously a bit disturbed.  He literally talked about nothing and you couldn't understand a word of it.  Brüder Titigue started to yell at him in French to sit down.  Brüder Vloka had to escort him back to his seat.  I thought the place was about to erupt.  Everyone looked so uncomfortable.  Then, with about 15 minutes left, that crazy man stood up and yelled, "I'm going to another church!" And then stormed out.  Besides all of these happenings, sacrament meeting went really well and there were some really good testimonies.  Honig got up and talked about how she had such a good experience at church and she wants to keep coming back and she thinks this is where she needs to be.  Yes!  After sacrament meeting I ran around and made appointments with everyone.  I was on a roll.  We have at least one appointment every day this week.  I talked to Marian a bit after sacrament meeting.  He was wide-eyed.  He was so shocked by the crazy guy.  I told him that wasn't normal.  I think he had a good experience overall and I think he will continue to progress to his baptism on the 27th.  We have an appointment over there on Friday and we might try to get together with Galia to help her with her German since she really struggles.  I talked to Honig after and she wants us to come teach her.  We are really looking forward to our lesson with her and her Father Tuesday night.  That was the first time Vinod has come to church since I have been here.  We are meeting on Wednesday and are planning to teach some commandments as well as talk about how he is feeling about his baptism on the 20th.  After church we went to choir with the Staigers in Köthen and then we ate dinner with them.  Next Sunday is their last Sunday in the Magdeburg branch.  

Just this morning on the way to do emails, we had a Syrian couple come up to us at the bahnstop and start asking us about our church.  We are going to try to meet with them tomorrow!  Miracles!  I have realized several blessings this week.  I was pretty nervous to begin being the leader--the senior companion--and be the person that the other is relying on to communicate because I was literally just got here.  But seriously, I have been able to communicate just fine.  Like I loved finding on Saturday.  We talked to everyone we saw and I had to do 95% of the talking but it was a lot of fun and I realized that I can hold a conversation with someone.  I did not know I could do that.  But I think it's a huge blessing.  I don't really know what I am doing but I figure as long as am a good example of an obedient missionary then everything will be fine.

I hope all is well at home.  Have a good week!  Until next Monday!

 

Elder Germann

My last week as a trainee!!

Guten Tag! Can you believe that December has arrived?! I hope that everyone enjoyed their Thanksgiving dinner in the States and are now preparing for Weihnachten! We had another exciting week here in Magdeburg and I received big news this week!

Elder Sagmeister and I had a lesson with Frau Flemke this past Tuesday. She was referred to us by her husband. We took the Romneys along that morning. I thought that we taught a really powerful lesson about the Restoration. Unfortunately, she didn't take it as well as we had hoped. Much of the lesson she spent trying to convince us that the Bible is the only word of God, that God would not bring forth another record, etc. In the end she said that she will pray to know if the Book of Mormon is the word of God but she refused to take a Book of Mormon and read from it. She said she doesn't want it in her house until she knows that it really comes from God. How are you supposed to know that if you don't read it and then pray about it? Heavenly Father and his prophets have promised us that if we read the Book of Mormon and pray about it with real intent, having faith in Christ, we will receive an answer through the Holy Ghost. After the lesson the Romneys took us to lunch and then dropped us off at the other two elders' apartment. We went with the other two elders with all four of our bikes to a bike shop to get a quote on them. The mission office wanted to take an inventory of all the bikes in the mission to see how much it would cost to get them all fixed and in working condition. The second bike shop took them and said he would have the quote by the next day. Our appointment with the Aleksandroves fell through again Tuesday night. They have not been home everytime we have stopped by and their phone doesn't have any minutes left so they can't use it. They have been in Bremen a lot because she can find work there. They said they will probably be moving to Bremen. It is sad that they are probably leaving but I know that they need money for food so that they can live. We are going to keep in touch with them as much as possible and when/if they move, we will transfer their records.

The Zone leaders stayed the night at our appartment because they were coming to District Meeting on Wednesday morning. Elder Thorley and I did push ups together while reciting quotes from basic training/freshman year at the Air Force Academy. It was Elder Sagmeister's first time as District Leader here. He did a solid job running the meeting. The Romneys came as well to the meeting this week. We took district photos afterwards. Elder Sagmeister traded companions after lunch with Elder Glissmeyer so he went to Köthen and Elder Glissmeyer was here with me.  Here are a couple of pictures of our district, including the senior couple, Bro. and Sis. Romney:

 We went to our lesson with Dinh that evening. The Romneys came along. She fed us so many homemade spring rolls and they were the most delicious spring rolls I have ever eaten. We gave a lesson afterwards on the importance of prayer. The original plan was to teach the second lesson but the Spirit led the lesson to prayer and at the end, Frau Dinh said the closing prayer. I think it went pretty well.  Here is a picture of the Dinh family, Elder Sagmeister, and the Romneys: 

Elder Glissmeyer came in this last transfer so he is pretty new. He has a crazy story. Spring break 2012 he almost died when he fell off a 60 foot cliff at Lake Powell on the Utah/Arizona border. He cracked his skull, broke his tailbone and pelvis, and broke his left humorus. He is totally fine now but what an experience.

On Thursday afternoon we went to Galia Franco's home with the Romneys. She is the less-active member we found from Peru and she has a son and they live with her German boyfriend. She fed us a delicious Peruvian dish with this special Puruvian chili sauce. Afterwards we taught the plan of salvation. The lesson went really well and at the end we committed the boyfriend and son to be baptized on the 27th of December. Very exciting. The boyfriend did a really nice job saying the closing prayer. Thursday night the Romneys took the whole district out to a 'Thanksgiving' dinner. We ate schnitzel and went around the table saying everything that we are thankful for. Thursday night we had six elders in our apartment.

Friday morning Elder Sagmeister and Elder Haas went to Bernburg and Elder Pilling and I stayed here. We spent the day finding and contacting but had no luck. It was wicked cold and windy--bad combination to be street contacting. Friday we exchanged back our companions.

Saturday afternoon we had an activity at the church for members and investigators. The only members that came were the Egarters, the less-active family trying to fix up an old bahnhof (train station). We had Familie Dinh come and the other two Magdeburg elders brought two investigators. It turned out to be a huge success. We had ping pong and füßball. We had little games for the kids. I was able to reteach the first lesson to Frau Dinh. They had a really good experience. We are looking forward to having a similar activity very soon.  Here is a picture of me with Elder Sagmeister, the Romneys, and the Egarters:

Transfer calls were Saturday night. Elder Sagmeister is leaving to go be a Zone leader in North Berlin. He will be living in Tiergarten, the nicest part of Berlin. Elder Stringham, Elder Morton's trainer, is going to East Berlin after being in Magdeburg for seven months. The big news for me is that I will be TRAINING A NEW MISSIONARY!! Holy cow, this just was my last week of being trained myself and now I will see things from the other side. I am excited for the opportunity and I know the area well, I just don't feel adequate to be a leader, especially since the mission president says that trainers are the most important leaders. I go to Berlin Thursday morning with Elder Morton, who is also training, to pick up our new trainees. Magdeburg will be the youngest area in mission. Wow!  Here is my last picture with Sagmeister:

I will let you know who my trainee is next week! Our picture together will also be on the mission blog.

Love you all!

Elder Tanner Germann