Hello family and friends!
I hope everyone had a fantastic week and a spiritual experience watching General Conference. I had some really cool experiences this week--not the least of which was to visit this pancake ship on our preparation day with one of our recent converts:
On Tuesday we traveled to visit Richmond. Richmond was baptized in Ghana several years ago but when he came to Germany, he had no idea where the church was or how to get in contact with the church. Seems to be a common occurrence. He lived next door to the chapel in Ghana apparently. We had a good lesson about the Restoration. The bishop asked us to go through all of the lessons with him as a refresher. He has a testimony of everything. It's sad though because right now he is not allowed to go to work or school so he just has to sit around all day. He doesn't have enough money so we gave him an old shirt or two, a tie, and some pants so that he can look good for church. He was really grateful. That afternooon Papa, an investigator from Gambia, invited all of the missionaries over for Gambian food. It was delicious! We had or ward missionary correlation meeting that night and following that, I began my exchange with Elder Bakly. Here I am with the Sister missionaries after correlation meeting:
Elder Bakly and I had a super good exchange. We got up in the morning and had a great morgensport. I ran a basic-style workout ;) We had push-ups, flutter-kicks, wall-sits, lunges, you name it. We were even reciting scriptures while we did it. It was a lot of fun. Elder Bakly didn't really appreciate it but that is okay...haha. We did our studies and then we went out for the day. Our appointment fell through at the university. The investigator never showed. But it was cool because Elder Bakly had this feeling to go back so we did but on the way we stopped a young woman. She is Mexican and has been in Germany for a week. She has a bunch of Mormon friends at home. We exchanged numbers and we are going to get together this week! For the rest of the afternoon, we had three less-active members on the calendar and the plan was to visit them and do street contacting on the way, using #becausehelives. It is my favorite thing to do because it gives direction to your finding and you're killing two birds with one stone. We had some great experiences simply because we did the basics--talked to everyone, were personable, and spoke directly. We walked up to one guy and I had asked him if he had heard of the Mormons. He said yeah, I know that they are Christians. I said, "Correct!" and that we as missionaries go around sharing a message about Jesus Christ and how he is resurrected and lives. This message is especially important, seeing that Easter is this week. We would like to come by next we and share more of this message with you. He said okay! It's as easy as that! We also found a super guy from Ghana later that was really excited to meet with us and hear our message. In addition, we got in contact with one of the less-actives and set up an appointment. It was a very successful day and I was pumped because that's the type of day that they needed to kick-start their area. It was also awesome because those were the exact experiences I needed to have for Elder Horrocks' and my lesson at Zone Training Meeting. We exchanged back and I was said to my companion, "Elder Horrocks, I have our lesson plan."
Our lesson at Zone Training Meeting went really well. We were assigned to talk about the new #becausehelives campaign and how to use it. Elder Horrocks began it by leading a discussion on John 20:11-20 and 3 Nephi 11:6-14. He talked about how we have the scriptures that testify of the resurrection. I then jumped in and we did a demonstration--we demo'd that finding experience that Elder Bakly and I had the day before and we said, look, we had this experience just yesterday! We then allowed them to role play finding situations. We closed it with the end of John 20. I said what I always tell my district--"Say that you love finding. Because when you say that you love it, you will do it gladly." Blessed are we that believe in Christ and his resurrection but have not seen him. We got some good feedback from the zone leaders and other missionaries. Its kind of exciting, at this point I really don't take notes for my lessons. Maybe just a few when I am just starting planning but when I give lessons I never use notes. I really feel like it helps me speak by the Spirit. Here we are riding the train with the sister missionaries on the way to the training meeting:
We had transfer calls on Saturday. Elder Horrocks is going to Schwarzenburg in Chemitz and he is going to be the District Leader there. The second area in Bremen is getting shut down as well as seven other areas in the mission because this transfer our mission is getting a new zone from the Frankfurt mission. Elder Pilling is training a new missionary. My new companion will be Elder Despain, Elder Horrocks' MTC companion. Should be a fun time. We watched the Church's General Conference on Saturday at John's house, one of our investigators. That was pretty cool. He thought the messages were good. The Saturday morning session was my favorite. I really liked President Packer's talk on marriage/family. He has given some great talks on that topic through the years. On Sunday I watched the Priesthood session, the Saturday Afternoon and Sunday morning sessions. Nanakofi came to one of the sessions. He was kinda bored. The sister missionaries got a family of nine to show up to one of the sessions! That was crazy. Here is a picture John and part of his Star Wars collection--thousands of dollars worth!!
I am still the District Leader here in Bremen this transfer. We are splitting the other area's investigators between us and the sisters. So the district will be down to eight members and I will only have to go on three exchanges now. Looking forward to another transfer in Bremen!
Hope everyone had a great Easter!
Love,
Elder Tanner Germann
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