The year mark

Hey gang! How's everyone doing this week? That's right, I went into the Missionary Training Center a year ago on Thursday. I'm now one of those missionaries that has been out for more than a year. Even with that exciting thought, I'm still working hard!

We're battling through cancelled appointments right now but still are able to collect some good experiences in between. Tuesday we met with a struggling member. We felt inspired to share with him Alma 46. I love Captain Moroni and the title of liberty. We can really apply the story to our lives today. Despite all of the temptations and struggles in our lives, we can remember the good things we are fighting for. My favorite part--the people came running to join the righteous cause.

I was planning on exchanging companions with the zone leaders this week but we ended up doing it a little unexpectedly so we were jumbled up Tuesday night and Wednesday night. Elder Friebe came with me to Marzahn. He's a really good guy. Wednesday we had a good district meeting. The zone leaders led a really good role play focusing on extending the baptismal commitment. Afterwards I had to go register which was a fiasco. First of all, getting an appointment weeks ago was nearly impossible. In addition, they required me to have some other form that I've never had any other time I've registered so they sent me away. Cool. That evening was interesting. We had a really good conversation with two brothers on the street that originally said 'God be with you' to us. We then had a power visit with a member. He's been working on bringing his girlfriend to church. He is also meeting his biological mother this week for the first time in 45 years--pretty cool! That evening we had a lesson with our friend from Nigeria. He hadn't read the chapter we left him so we read that together and made a really good lesson out of it. Alma 32 is just a great lesson to discuss! We talked a lot about what faith means and the blessings that come from it. He committed to reading a page in the Book of Mormon a day. Hopefully! We went to Teirgarten to exchange back but it was too late so we had to stay the night. I didn't have any stuff with me. Lame.

 

Super busy day this past Thursday. We had a couple of lessons including one with the man that has been coming to church for ten years but has never been baptized. This week I really want to ask him why he doesn't want to get baptized. He has avoided my questions about praying specifically about the Book of Mormon, etc. so we will see how that goes. He fed us really good food though!  That morning I called someone up on a list and invited him to institute and he came! He's a super nice guy from Kenya!  He said he's been going to a church here but liked the lesson on the Restoration...at least of the German he understood.

Friday we helped an investigator move. I think he was so impressed that we were so willing to help. In shirts and ties nonetheless! That evening we played soccer with a bunch of Germans. Super fun, super fast paced.

Saturday was not the greatest day. We were going to meet with the German girl but she ended up cancelling because she went out of town. The other three appointments we had that day fell through, too. We went to the baptism of an investigator that Elder Glissmeyer found and began teaching in Tiergarten. Yesterday was a normal Sunday. Good talks on the family and marriage in sacrament meeting. 

Tomorrow we are taking some preparation day time to go to the concentration camp just north of the city. I'm really looking forward to it. This is something I've wanted to do my whole mission. 

Best wishes to another week,

Elder Tanner Germann

Just chuggin' along in Berlin

Hey fam and friends!

I'm just chuggin' along here in Berlin. We are slowly making progress.

Monday night we went back to the Christian community for a woman's
birthday party. She was really happy we came. Unfortunately, I don't
think we will go back because we we haven't really made progress there
with anyone. One of the Assistants to the President actually grew up in a 
community like that in Canada before he was baptized. He really wants to 

go meet the American girl that is there but we called off that visit.

Tuesday morning someone finally came and fixed our water heater. We
had been without warm water for about two weeks.

District meeting on Wednesday went alright. I like the idea of running
it like a companion study to exchange ideas and better our study time 
but it needed refining. I switched companions with the Frankfurt Oder
elders afterwards. I went there with Elder Greaves. We went to a
lesson with one of their investigators. He is the boyfriend of a less
active member. He is a stud guy. We talked for awhile about the Air
Force because he served in the DDR Air Force. They fed us some of the
elk that he shot last week for dinner. Super tasty. We taught the
restoration. I really liked the approach Elder Greaves came up with.
We taught the first lesson backwards--beginning with the Book of
Mormon and ending with God is our Heavenly Father. The man liked it,
asked good questions.

Thursday we stood on the border of Poland. The missionaries in this area
are allowed to go there if they have an investigator.

Friday was a super good day of appointments. We met with one guy we
just found on a list of contacts. We also had an appointment with a
man we met at church. We thought he was a member but turns out he
never got baptized. He is a strong Catholic but has been coming to our
church for the past 10 years. I'm excited to start teaching him. We
also had an appointment with the German girl where we finally got her
to open up more. We read in John 10:3 and Nephi 11 and then watched the
Mormon Message 'Hope of God's Light'. She said she could really relate
to that video. She then proceeded to pose a bunch of questions so we
were able to touch on things like the temple.

Saturday was the baptism of the sisters' investigator. The ward was on
a temple trip so the turn out was not great. Elder Glissmeyer was
asked to baptize him and I was asked to give the talk. I took 15 or so
minutes. I related the story of Alma's conversion/Mosiah 18. I then
encouraged him to write down that night how he felt that day and also
to do the same Sunday night after his confirmation. I also shared a
pair of personal experiences. I think it turned out well. We went by a
less active member's house that night who said he really wanted to come 
back to church and committed to come next Sunday.

 
Yesterday I was able to participate in the confirmation. In Sunday
school we talked about the sacrament and what it means to take upon
ourselves the name of Christ. I referred to my old license plate for an
example--MORMON! We also had our ward mission correlation meeting last night.

Today we went over to Potsdam! Check out the gorgeous Prussian palaces!

Love,

Elder Tanner Germann

Religion is important

This week was an interesting week of appointments, zone conference, and study.  Here's a pic of me visiting one of the Protestant cathedrals in Berlin:

 

On Wednesday and Thursday we had appointments with two different guys that we had randomly contacted and set up times with to get together. They both had somehow come in contact with missionaries in the past. The first one is from west Africa and has a Muslim background but is not active at all. He really liked what we had to say, especially when it came to prayer. He had never experienced a prayer where someone was really speaking to God from his heart. He even had the courage to say the closing prayer in the way we pray. He did a great job. He is trying to move right now so we are going to help him with that.

 

The other guy is from Nigeria and did not really have a good idea of what we believed. We showed him the Mormon Message 'A Book of Mormon Story' which he liked. We expounded upon why the Book of Mormon is important. He committed to read Alma 32 and is excited to meet again. We think institute would be great for these two guys. There's institute every week at the Tiergarten building.  We are allowed to go if we have an investigator with us.

On Wednesday we met with a man that is strong in the Muslim faith but is interested to meet with us.  We talked about the importance of baptism since he had asked about that the last time we met with him. I have begun studying the New Testament and I really like the way Christ's baptism is recorded in Matthew 3. We used that and John 3 in our lesson. We also used Matthew 3 in another lesson this week to talk about the godhead--we see the evidence of the three separate beings (Christ being baptized, the Holy Ghost descending in the form of a dove, and God speaking from Heaven). Beautiful.  Here's a pic of me at the New Palace at Sanssouci--built by Frederick the Great 1763-69.

 

The girl we had on baptismal date earlier came to church yesterday! She had texted in the middle of the night a couple of days ago asking, "Why did they kill Joseph Smith?!"  We met with her and our ward mission leader yesterday after the meetings and explained to her a bit more of church history. She asked good questions about prophets and the organization of the church. At the end we bore testimony of Joseph Smith and President Monson. She said she's excited to see us again this week.

 

Zone Conference on Friday went well. President Fingerle did a good job and is a super nice guy. The whole focus of it was the family and how that should be our focus when we are teaching someone. He challenged us to give out the My Family pamphlet every time we teach the Plan of Salvation as well as setting a goal with investigators for when they will go to the temple to do baptisms for the dead following their baptism. Usually this should be about 4 weeks following their own baptism. He also quoted Alma 37:6-7 which is something Elder Bednar heavily referenced when he was here last October. He told us to make little adjustments/improvements. 

This past Monday we went to the second of the two bible groups that we got invited to. Turns out, this one is a Christian community. They live together and the women wear traditional clothes. To support themselves they make and sell wooden toys and run a kindergarten. Very interesting experience. There was a girl there on "exchange" from her community in upstate NY. She asked some questions that in turn fueled some research of mine this week. She asked us what the church teaches regarding education and work. I thought back to all those times I read For the Strength of Youth as a kid and answered that education is valuable and that we should get as much as we can. My understanding is that when we keep the commandments, God will provide a way for us to get a good education and job to support our families. It got me thinking about, on a bigger scale, what kind of role religion plays in our world today.

I found some really good recent talks by Elders Holland (Faith, Family, and Religious Freedom), Oaks (Witnesses of God), and Christofferson (Moral Disipline) addressing the world today and our freedom to exercise our religion. Essentially what we are taught is that religion has played a massive role in determining how prosperous a nation is due to the morals and values that it teaches and as our society moves further and further away from God we become less and less prosperous. We see in the Book of Mormon that the members of the church were blessed with prosperous lives and riches as they kept the commandments, etc. Prosperity is a blessing from God. 

Love you all!

Elder Tanner Germann

It was a finding week

We decided during our weekly planning last week that this week would
be spent finding. It was much needed as our teaching pool was old and
dwindling.

We had a killer day on Tuesday. At the end of the day, we had five new
investigators, a handful of really high potential contacts, and had
joined two bible groups. It was a cool day and I really felt like we
were in tune with the spirit. As I've gotten older on the mission, my
finding/interaction skills have definitely matured. I felt like we
were really listening to people and were comfortable standing there
and holding a solid conversation. One guy said, "Yeah, you guys wanna 

share the Book of Mormon with me? Come
over next week!" We attended one of the bible groups that night. It
had the same feel of Younglife but in German.

Wednesday in district meeting we had discussed the importance of the
Book of Mormon and how it can be used to respond to objections and
questions. We also met with two different members Wednesday and
discussed repentance with both. We read from the talk "His Grace is
Sufficient" by Brad Wilcox. It has easily become my favorite talk and
has helped me better understand not only the concept of grace, but
also the Atonement as a whole. I actually met Brad Wilcox once. He was
the keynote speaker at my first Youth Conference at ECU. Everyone
should look up that talk!

We found another new investigator on Thursday. We were following up
with some old investigators in a college dorm that had been found by
missionaries last year. The guy we were looking for wasn't home but a
friend was. He let is in and gave us food. Without asking he said,
"I'll come to your church."  He said he really respected what we did
trying to make the world a better place.

We didn't celebrate the 4th of July. We had a service project and lessons
all day. This week was not fun with 100 degree heat. There's no AC
anywhere either so it was really bad. They shortened church to only
fast and testimony meeting.

I hope everyone a great week!

Love,

Elder Tanner Germann

First week in Marzahn

Dear All:

It was a bit of an overwhelming week trying to get accustomed to
Marzahn. I thought Bremen was a big city but compared to here, it's
minuscule.

Elder Glissmeyer and I met with our investigator who has a baptismal
date. She is a very educated, young German girl who is prepared with a
questioning soul. She had texted us at the beginning of the week and
said that she wanted to know everything about Joseph Smith. We began
our lesson by reading Alma 32 together and discussing it. We talked
about revelation through prayer and that was our tie into Joseph Smith
and the Restoration. We watched the Restoration video together. Her
reaction was...different. She said, "Well that's interesting." She
was very candid and said it is a very fantastical story and she
understands that a lot of people would just shy away and not want to
find out if it's true or not. We bore testimony and she committed to
praying about it. She says she wants to find out if it was true. I
really believe she will recognize an answer. She has had many positive
experiences with prayer in her life.

We also wanted to fire up some work with less active members in our area. I went
through some names on Sunday, called them up, and got an appointment
with one. I think this brother realized that our visit was inspired.
He really appreciated what we said concerning church attendance. Our
approach on it was according to what Elder Bednar taught in the
October 2006 general conference.

We are going to hit the pavement this week and focus on finding. As a
district we really struggled with that this past week.

Love you all,
Tanner

TRANSFERRED!!!

Hello family and friends--that's right, my time in Bremen is up. I am
headed to the big city of Berlin!!! My new area is Marzahn! I'm super
excited.  Here's a pic--lots of apartments in this part of Berlin

I feel like I really finished strongly in Bremen.  I feel like I am
definitely leaving the area way better than I found it and there is
still some great potential there.

My new companion is Elder Glissmeyer.  He was in my district in Magdeburg
for three transfers (about four months) so I know him well.  He is the super tall one. My
district will also have Elder Greaves and his trainee in Frankfurt, Elder
Oder. Elder Greaves was Elder Pilling's comp in Bernburg so I also
know him well.  We have two really good sisters, one of them being the
Sister Hill who was in my district here in Bremen last transfer.  I will be District Leader
there as well. Yay. I think I'm finally figuring out this job.

District meeting went really well this week. I ended with talking
about accountability/reading in 3 Nephi 7. Nephi had so much
faith and was such a powerful missionary that the people couldn't help
but believe on his words. So cool!

We had a really good teaching appointment with a woman from Nigeria--a member joined us. We
brought Michael (the man we baptized recently) along and he bore powerful testimony to her. That was really important because they had an immediate connection--they're
from the same tribe in Nigeria!

I'll email you next week from Berlin!

Love,

Elder Tanner Germann

Bremen Bremen Bremen

Hello again friends and family!  Another week has flown by here in Bremen.  I am going to keep this week's letter short as I am running out of time so I will hit you with the big stuff.

 

This past Wednesday I went to Hamburg for Leadership Training Meeting.  The lessons focused on technology, working with members, and placing good questions.  I really liked what Sister Kosak suggested--we should be planning the dinner table topics at eating appointments with members.  I had never thought about it.  We were talking about problems that we have seen with the iPads.  I raised my hand and talked about how they are a distraction in meetings and that now is the time for us to learn how to pay attention in church meetings.

 

Thursday we had district meeting.  I read from Alma in the Book of Mormon about Captain Moroni and the Title of Liberty.  I then coordinated a visual demonstration with the Zone Leaders which was supposed to be a little team building exercise but it ended with us locking ourselves out of the church....  I traded companions with Elder Siddoway, the Zone Leader, from Thursday to Friday.  

 

I went to Oldenburg and worked with him there.  We taught some good lessons together.  It got hot and humid this week and in the Oldenburg area, the missionaries ride bikes. Not the most fun for my first bike experience on my mission.  Friday night we had a dinner appointment at one of the bishopric member's houses.

 

Saturday we had a street display.  It was kind of wierd because the place we were given was right across from the huge Evangelishe Dom (Evangelical cathedral).  We didn't see have much success from it because it rained for half of the time.

 

Yesterday in church I was asked to take 15 min. in sacrament meeting to talk about member missionary work.  I did that gladly.  It was pretty much the same talk I gave in Magdeburg a couple of months ago but I shared the example of my license plate back home that said 'Mormon.'

 

This morning we toured the Mercedes factory for Elder Despain's birthday!  I was in heaven.

 

This Saturday we get transfer calls and find out if anyone from our district will be transferred to another area.

 

Best wishes this week!

 

Elder Tanner Germann