Always have a prayer in your heart

Schön guten Tag Familie und Freunde! Another week is in the books as a missionary. This coming week I hit my 6 month mark. Wow! Already a quarter of the way through. Can you believe it?!

 

We had a solid week despite me not feeling too well for most of it. This week was wicked cold. It was at freezing or below everyday. Monday afternoon on preparation/off day we went to this awesome antique shop not too far from the church building. I have been here for 5 months and I am not quite sure why that was my first time going. It was amazing. The store is mainly military antiques which of course was cool for me. Lots of hundred year-old books, medals, swords, helmets, coins, and steins. The guy that owns it loves missionaries. He said we have been coming into his store for years.

 

Tuesday was Elder Gibbs' birthday. Elder Morton slipped me some cash and so Elder Oldroyd and I went and got Elder Gibbs one of the Germany World Cup jerseys he has been drooling over. Elder Morton also got it approved for us to use some P-Day time on Tuesday to go to the museum here that Elder Gibbs has been wanting to go to. The natural history part of the museum was standard—you can get that anywhere. But the other half of the museum was the story of Magdeburg from its beginning 1000 years ago. Now that was cool. All the displays lead you through chronologically. Magdeburg has a pretty interesting history—from Martin Luther to Otto von Guericke to being almost completely flattened in WWII.  Throughout this post I will add photos from the museum--here is a picture of one of the kids books that promoted the Nazi party:

 

Tuesday afternoon we had an appointment with a man we found last week—false address. That is really getting old. Fortunately we made up for that with a good appointment with Claudius. Our lesson was on revelation through church attandance. We talked about all of the blessings that we receive from showing our faith by coming to church, including that we can always have the Spirit with us as stated in the sacrament prayers. We committed him to coming to the ward activity that we had on Friday. He came! Tuesday night we had English class. The topic was traveling. We also addressed the difference between a and an.

 

Here is a picture of the labels that the Nazis had all Jews wear so that they could be easily identified:

 

Wednesday I woke up feeling like I was going to throw up and that continued into Thursday. I got a blessing from the other missionaries at district meeting so that helped me feel a little better. I was given 10 minutes at district meeting to talk about praying often, specifically as missionaries. I focused on the section in Chapter 4 of Preach My Gospel about praying with more faith. I talked about how we should strive to always have a prayer in our hearts. I have seen how that helps, for example when finding. I am one to get a little sassy with people on the street when we go contacting. I have noticed the difference when I have the Spirit with me finding and when I don't. It is when I have a prayer in my heart that I have the Spirit and we find new investigators. After district meeting we traded companions. Elder Oldroyd went to Köthen and Elder Short came here with me. We met a less-active member, Mandy, at a bus stop that afternoon in the north part of the city and had a chilly lesson about the importance of the sacrament. She said she really wants to come to church to partake of the sacrament and so we committed her to doing that. We then went to Marian and Galia's place for dinner. We helped them prepare mini pizzas--they were super good and then we gave a simplified lesson on the Plan of Salvation with Rafael. We are going to have simplified lessons with Rafael because it is impossible to teach him and Marian at the same time. It was really good though because Marian and Galia helped teach which also builds their faith.

 

Here is a picture of a newspaper in Magdeburg with a headline about a failed assassination attempt on Hitler:

Thursday morning Elder Short and I went contacting at the university. WE FOUND VINOD! We did a little creeping (talking to his neighbors) and then walked around the computer science building until we found him. He looked a bit like he had been hit by three buses and an elephant. His hair was grown out; he had a beard. I didn't recognize him. He said his thesis was rejected. So basically he has been depressed and has cut off all communication to the outside world. He has just been trying to rework his final product. On top of that, his financial aid is up in a month. We comforted him a bit and testified to him that this is the point at which he needs Jesus the most. Read, Pray, Church. Thursday afternoon we traded back companions and Elder Oldroyd and I had a lesson with Johanna. We are in charge of her new member lessons. We taught the Plan of Salvation and the Gospel of Jesus Christ together. Afterwards we talked to her about life. I gave her the same talk my parents used to give me—you do well in school, you give yourself options. If you don't, well...then you don't have options.

 

Here is a painting of Magdeburg from a few centuries ago--notice the Latin labels:

 

Friday we had weekly planning in the morning and then the ward activity that evening. Marian called me that afternoon troubled, asking us to come to the church because he needed cousel. On the way there my mind was racing, "What did we do wrong?"  Apparently, he forgot to renew his electricity contract so the electric company didn't take the money out of his bank account automatically so he never paid and their electricity was shut off. They have heat and hot water, just not light or appliances. He went around all day looking for someone to loan him money or to buy his phone—no takers. I told him all we could offer were comforting words. He and Rafael are fine living by candle light until next week when his paycheck comes but its Galia's birthday on Monday and they can't have a party at their house anymore. He felt so bad. We are going to have the birthday party at the church tonight (Monday)—they will be there along with the four elders and the Romneys. The activity Friday went well though we only had 15 people show up. We watched The Testaments. It is a great movie. Everyone loved it. There was food afterwards. It was Claudius' first time in a church building in like 15 years—cool!

 

Saturday we played soccer with Marian, Rafael, the other elders, and one of their investigators Matheus who is Brazilian. Matheus brought two other Brazilians so it was a party. The field still had snow on it from the little storm we had at the beginning of the week so it was pretty interesting. Afterwards we ran home, changed and went to an appointment with a man we met last week. He didn't answer. We ended up klingling (ringing the door bell) in the whole building until someone told us there was another house in the back. No one answered there but on the way out we bumped into the man. He was running to visit a family member who was just put into the hospital. We exchanged phone numbers so we will get in touch. Saturday night after practicing the piano for sacrament meeting we got in contact with a woman we met a few weeks ago and set up an appointment for last night. We also found a new investigator! He was very nice, a student at the university, and he already had a solid knowledge of Mormons. We are meeting with him on Tuesday.

 

Yesterday we had church per usual. Marian, Galia, and Rafael came. Overall, though, not a lot of people were there—maybe 20. I stummbled through on the piano again. I am still amazed I can somewhat play for a group of people out of the hymn book. I was never able to do that at the peak of my piano career at home. We had supper with the Wlokas. Study followed and then our appointment with Anne, the woman we followed up with Saturday night--it fell through.  Tonight is Galia's 33rd birthday so we are throwing a little party at the church!  Should be a good time.

 

I want to thank everyone for their love and prayers. I sure do feel them. I wish you all a successful coming week. Try to always keep a prayer in your heart!

 

Love,

Elder Tanner Germann

A slower week after Johanna's baptism

Hallo family and friends! I hope all is well on the homefront and that this past week treated you well. We had another solid week here in Magdeburg. Between the two Magdeburg companionships, I think we found over 15 new investigators this week!

 

On Tuesday we had a lesson with Shuei. He is the Chinese student that we met with the week before Christmas. The first two times that we met with him were really tough. His English isn't terrible but there is definitely a language barrier. For example, when we met last time, we asked him to say the closing prayer. He refused and he wouldn't even let us say a closing prayer.  Eventually, we figured out that he had confused the words prayer and baptism. However, this time we were smarter and brought Qi along. Qi is also a Chinese student. He was baptized here in Magdeburg a year ago. He is a super young man and actually knows Shuei from a couple of classes at school. Right off the bat we cleared up the difference between prayer and baptism. Then our lesson on prayer flowed really nicely. Qi helped overcome the language barrier. And I was really proud of him because he bore really powerful testimony of the Book of Mormon. In the end, Shuei said he wanted to find faith and he said the closing prayer. That's a step in the right direction. Tuesday night we had English class per usual and our meeting with the branch mission leader followed.

 

Wednesday morning we had district meeting. Following district meeting we did some street contacting and then went to Johanna's. We were supposed to do some family history and prepare some names for her to take to the temple but we ended up teaching a lesson on the fruits of the Spirit. Since her baptism, she said she had been feeling really down, to the point where she had come home early from school that day. We explained that her baptism was a spiritual high, but then when she went back to school, that same Spirit was not as easily recognized. We read together Galatians 5:22-23 and talked about how we can more easily recognize the Spirit. We encouraged her to always have a prayer in her heart, simply asking for the companionship of the Holy Ghost. So yeah, that was a pretty cool lesson. We were definitely able to provide some comfort and now she is doing better.

 

Thursday we had an appointmennt with two Greek men we had met on the street. I had run into one during my month with Elder Sagmeister so I knew their address already, but let me tell you, that building is a blackhole. We never found him the first time nor another investigator, simply because the klinglebox is broken, and no one knows who their neighbors are. It was a wild goose chase again to find their apartment but I think we narrowed it down. They weren't home for their appointment nor for the second time but we'll see them soon. Fortunately, I do know where another investigator lives in that same building so we went to see her. We had a pretty good half-hour long conversation at her doorstep. She was the one Elder Sagmeister and I met with once and she refused to even take a Book of Mormon before God told her that she should read it. She was telling me about how she's waiting for a sign. I tried to explain to her that we must try and then ask God, just like it says in the Bible. I bore testimony and asked her again to take a copy and read it. She almost gave in but wouldn't quite say yes. We will continue to follow up there. We did more street contacting and then we were supposed to have an appointment with a guy we had met the day before but he gave us an address to a steak house.... I hope that wasn't him trying to play a joke.

 

Friday was the 70^th anniversary of the Madgeburg bombing during WWII. Every year on that day, Neo-Nazis come out and have a memorial. The problem apparently isn't the Neo-Nazis—it's the people who come to demonstrate against the Neo-Nazis. Apparently last year more than 1,000 showed up and riots broke out and the bridges were shut off by the police. So we were told to stay inside as much as possible Friday and Saturday because the next day after the anniversary has historically been a response memorial and riot. We didn't really see anything. We avoided the center of the city both days. But apparently this year it was kind of a dud. Only 300 Neo-Nazis showed up and they only congregated in the north part of the city. But let me tell you, there was not a lack of police, that is for sure. I don't think I've seen so many police in my life. Groups just stood on the corners of the street with their riot gear on. Fortunately nothing really happened.

Saturday we had a really good day. In the morning we had a great lesson with an Indian student we met two days before. He is Muslim but he said he's been looking for a book that contains the full gospel. BOOM. Book of Mormon. He liked the first lesson on the Restoration and we are going to meet early this week. We also went over to Marian and Galia's house. Their friend Flor came too! We had a really good lesson on keeping the Sabbath day holy. We also set a new goal for baptism. We had to make sure they're working towards Galia's official divorce and getting officially married. They are going this week to start the divorce paper work. This could be fast or this could potentially be years. Marian said, 'Hey if the rules say we have to be married for me to be baptized, then let's do it so that I can be baptized.' That's the perfect response. Galia then extended an invitation to Flor to be baptized! She said she would be baptized once she hears all of the lessons and comes to church more.  Yes!

 

Yesterday we had a really good sacrament meeting. Marian, Galia, Rafael, and Daniel were all there. It was our big member missionary work Sunday. Sis. Gehrke gave a super good talk, Elders Oldroyd and Gibbs gave nice testimonies, and then Elder Morton and I both took 13 minutes each to bring it home. Giving a talk in another language was really intimidating to me but it flowed. Mom sent me some of her thoughts last week and I was able to use those. I talked about 1 Nephi 8:12. This is Lehi's dream. In this verse he eats of the fruit (the gospel) of the tree of life and his first desire is to share with his family (other people). I said, 'Imagine your life without the gospel. All of your problems and stuggles without any help. We want others to have that same help.' Then I read and talked about Alma 32:27 and how all we need to have is simply a disire to believe. Elder Morton read Moses 1:39 and talked about different ways we can share the gospel. The Spirit really put our words together. We got lots of compliments afterwards.  My piano playing went well this week. I played some more familiar hymns—Choose the Right and Do What is Right. Fitting for a sacrament meeting about sharing the gospel with your friends.  ;) We went to the Staigers for lunch again and then had study pretty much the rest of the day.

 

We are looking forward to another busy but successful week. We have an activity at the church on Friday—hopefully we can get our investigators and friends of members there.

 

Take care this week.

 

Elder Tanner Germann

GETAUFT!! (Baptized!!)

Liebe Familie! Ich hoffe das alles ist in Ordnung! Really, it has only been a couple of days since my last letter. Nevertheless, lots has happened since this past Wednesday. We had a baptism! Oh, and we also had Elder Kopischke from the first quorum of the Seventy come on a Mission Tour this week.  Here is a picture of Elder Kopischke and the missionaries from in and around Berlin:

Wednesday we had a good day of contacting. My go-to question on the street this past week was, "What do you know about Mormons?"  That proved to be not only successful but quite revealing. Many people seem to mistake the Amish for the Mormons.  We struck up some good conversations and then invited them to learn more by offering to bring by a Book of Mormon. We found three new investigators Wednesday evening and several more contacts throughout the week. We also created a baptismal calender for Daniel Jaffke. It has a scripture for him to read each day up until his baptism on the 14^th of February.

Thursday we had a pretty productive day. After study in the morning we went to the church and I practiced the piano for an hour so that I could be ready for Sunday. Following that we met the Romneys at the Hundert Wasser building for an appointment with an 80 year-old woman. She was in our area book so last week we decided to go by and we caught her at home and were able to make an appointment. She is super nice. She was never married. She grew up in a village outside of Magdeburg and worked as a teacher in west Germany when she was younger. She has traveled the world. Her apartment is full of artifacts and knick knacks from all the places she has been. She loved the Romneys and she loved reading in the Book of Mormon. We talked about temples a lot because she said she wandered onto temple square in SLC. We committed her to come to sacrament meeting, health permitting. We rode straight over to a less-active member's apartment building following that appointment. Mandy was baptized in 2008 and has since gone inactive, mainly due to her epilepsy disorder; she has spent months at a time in the hospital. She said she still reads a lot in the Book of Mormon. We committed her to coming to church, health permitting. Thursday night the Romneys were so nice and took us all out to dinner.

Friday we had the Mission Tour (essentially a zone conference) by Elder Kopischke in Dresden. We were up at 0430 for the 0600 train to Dresden. Our whole district was on the train together. We played Monopoly for three hours. The Mission Tour was really good—I really felt the Spirit. I liked several things that were said and took down lots of notes, especially on attitude and member missionary work. On the train ride back we played Monopoly again and then basically went to bed when we got home.  Here is some of the countryside as seen from the train:

Saturday was the big day! Saturday morning we were supposed to have transfer calls. On transfer call Saturdays, we are not allowed to leave our apartment until we receive our call, but that's alright because they are made during study, 0900-1200. The catch this timewas that we had a service project to go to Saturday morning—we were helping a member move. We asked the assistants to the mission president earlier in the week if they could call our two companionships first so that we could go to the move which started at 0900. They said yes. It got to be 1130 and we still hadn't received our call yet. We soon found out that no one in the entire mission had received their call yet. The APs were in a meeting....  Needless to say we missed the service project. But the day was saved by having the baptismal service! The service started at 4pm in Köthen.  It was the best baptism I have ever been to!  Elder Morton and I got to do our musical number again. We heard some really good talks on baptism and the Holy Ghost.   Br. Titigue was able to baptize Johanna.   Everything went super smoothly. Johanna got up at the end and bore her testimony and she did an awesome job. I was so happy! We had a less-active member come as well as one of Elder Morton's investigators. The young man loved the baptism and afterwards said, "Yeah, I definitely want to be baptized." Sweeeet!  Here is a picture of me and Johanna shortly after her baptism:

                               

 

After the baptism, we had an appointment with Daniel. The Romneys drove us.  We showed up an hour late. By then Daniel was gone to a friend's house. It did, however, turn into a pretty good visit with his parents. His mom is not too active and his dad is an atheist. We talked about the plan of salvation and how families can be together forever.

 

Yesterday we had church. Johanna was confirmed a member of the church.  She also gave an awesome talk on the Holy Ghost. She is amazing and she is going to be a great example for the few youth that we have in our branch here. We are meeting with her this week to do some family history. She is going on the youth temple trip this coming weekend.   On a sour note, literally, they took 15 minutes in the men's meeting yesterday to complain about my piano playing.... :)   Mandy called on Saturday and cancelled. She had another siezure. I went with Br. Wloka to pick up the 80 year-old for sacrament meeting but she was sick and sent me away.  I struggled through the hymns in sacrament meeting because I was just boiling over what the men said about me.   I'll get over it. We went to the Staigers for lunch. That was delicious as always. We had cabbage-wrapped sausage. They basically said come over any week you are not invited by anyone else. We came back and hit a couple of contacts, put a Book of Mormon in one's mailbox, and then we studied for the rest of the night.

 

Tonight the Romneys are taking the whole district out to dinner. Elder Pilling is being transferred way up northwest on the sea. Elder Glissmeyer is being transferred as well. Our dream district is slowly breaking up :(   The good news is that Elder Morton and I are still together here in Magdeburg. After this transfer, we will have spent a quarter of our missions together...Wow! I just can't get rid of him. I am looking forward to another successful transfer here! Elder Oldroyd and I can still see many more baptisms here while he finishes up his training period.   Here are me and Elder Glissmeyer:

                                     
 

I hope all is well back home. Know that God loves you. Look for opportunites to share that love with everyone around you. I saw some of the joy it brings this weekend. I am looking forward to speaking in church next week about member missionary work—that's going to be a rich experience.  :)

 

Have a good week!

 

Elder Germann

New Year's and John's baptism

Hey y'all!  Sorry for being a couple of days late.  We had a district preparation day on Monday and played soccer all day.  The Bernburg elders brought John along.  He is from Nigeria, played soccer all his life, and has amazing talent!

Last Tuesday we had a couple of hours to go street contacting.  We decided to try something new and go to another city in our area.  Our area is huge.  You could ride on a train for two hours and still be in our area.  Magdeburg is definitely the biggest city but there are some decent sized places around too.  I have wrestled in my mind for awhile now trying to decide if we would be more effective staying in Magdeburg proper like we usually do or if it would be productive to go to some other smaller places in our area.  I truly believe there are people in every town who are prepared to hear the gospel.  We decided to try it out and went down to Schönebeck which is only 20 minutes south of Magdeburg.  Not really much of anything came of it.  Hardly anyone was on the street and so then you resort to knocking doors and that is the least effective thing you can do.  I think that's the problem with these smaller cities.  People don't really walk around.  They just live there and commute to Magdeburg or they go to work in the factories everyday.  I think what I realized this past week is that we can just walk down the main street of Magdeburg everyday and have a continuous flow of people who we have never talked to before all day.  We had our meeting with our branch mission leader Tuesday night.  I think we made progress towards getting a branch mission plan and pushing member missionary work.  We are going to have a theme every month with a regularly scheduled activity the third week of every month.  The missionaries will be giving the talks in sacrament meeting on the 18th to speak about member missionary work and to roll out this new plan.  We are asking some members to accompany us as well--should be good.  English class turned into German class this past week.  Galia has been begging for us to teach German.  I copied a bunch of practice stuff out of my Missionary Training Center books for her.  It was interesting to have her practice German with our churchy German books! Tuesday night ended a bit disappointing because the Turkish family that we found last week told us to not come back when we showed up at the door.

Wednesday we had district meeting.  Following district meeting the Romneys picked us up and we made a surprise visit to the Jaffke family down in Barby.  They had not been answering calls so President Romney was like, "Lets just go down there!"  So we did!  It was only a 20-minute visit but that was enough to commit Daniel for sure to be baptized on the 14th of February!  We set up a regular appointment so we are going there once a week until then in order to help him progress in his faith.  Coming back we had a bit of car trouble but after a prayer the car started working again and were able to make it back.  The Romneys took the four missionaries out to dinner that night to celebrate New Years Eve.  We had to be in our apartments by 6pm that night (mission rules) because of the craziness.  We weren't allowed to leave our apartment Thursday until 1pm.  It was like a war of fireworks all night, it was crazy.  Surprisingly, the German government allows any type of firework you could ever imagine to be used.  The last firework I heard went off at around noon on Thursday. Still loving our Christmas sweaters!!

After we emerged on Thursday it looked like a war zone.  The streets were filled with trash and beer bottles.  All the glass at the bus stops was shattered.  The city was thrashed but no one was out by then.  Unfortunately that meant that street contacting was hard.  We tried out a new thing this week--a survey!  The other companionships in our district have been using it and in Köthen they found 12 new investigators in one day.  The one we used this past week was five questions:  Are you religious?  How have you come to this decision?  If there is a God, and you could ask him any question, what would you ask?  Have you ever sought out an answer to this question?  If there was a book that could answer your question, would you read it?  Then of course we begin to talk about how we have that book--The Book of Mormon.  And then we testify of it and ask them if we could bring it by.  I think it has got some really good potential to be a really awesome finding tool, but I just don't think we have figured out quite how to use it yet.  We found only one new person with it this week.  We went by a less-active member, Mandy, on Thursday.  We are going to meet with her tomorrow and hopefully bring her to church on Sunday.  Her excuse for not coming to church has been about how the bahns (traines) don't run too frequently on Sundays.  No problem!  We will come pick you up and show you there is a bahn to and from church :)

We utilized our area book this week and found two new investigators from old teaching records in the past.  We are really excited about that.  It is a testament to how useful and important the area book can be.  Friday we went by Johanna's house and planned out her baptismal service with her.  She is super excited for this Saturday--as are we!  

Saturday we went over to see Marian, Galia and Rafael.  They invited all the missionaries over including the Romneys!  Galia prepared some really good lasagna.  Galia said we are like her family--awww.  We had a good lesson afterwards about following the prophet and the word of wisdom.  We also followed up on temples and answered their questions about the angel Moroni.  We commited them to living the word of wisdom (our code of health) and following the prophet.

 

I was the pianist again for Sacrament Meeting on Sunday.  I bore my testimony and testified that I know that the gospel is a blessing for our families.  That crazy man showed up in church again and tried to speak but Br. Wloka ushered him out.  Fortunately the Spirit came back after some really good testimonies by members.  Sunday afternoon we rode down to Köthen for John's baptism.  We stopped in Wulfen and the Staigers fed us dinner and took us to the baptism.  The service was really well done.  Elder Morton and I performed "I like to look for rainbows" song as the special musical number.  I was a little nervous but I played all the right notes.  John was super happy.  I was super excited that Elder Pilling got to baptize him.  Here is Elder Pilling in his whites with John:

Here are all of us after the baptism--everyone is really happy!!

 

 

Monday we had our district P-Day.  That night we traded companions and I went to Köthen with our district leader Elder Short.  We were traveling a lot between appointments city to city and all of the appointments kept falling through.  Not to mention yesterday was another holiday so everything was shut down again.  We did manage to find three new investigators for them in Dessau.  We rushed back to Magdeburg and went to Johanna's house so that Elder Short could conduct her baptismal interview.  Everything went well and I think we are almost all prepped for Saturday.  Next weekend there is a stake youth temple trip so we are going to do some family history with Johanna next week so that she can take some names of her own to the temple--perfect timing!

 

We are really excited to see some of the fruits of our labors this weekend!  Look out for pictures next week!

 

I'm wishing you all the best!

Elder Tanner Germann