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 14th 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
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