Hey family and friends! How are you doing? I hope you had a lovely week. Everything here went well for the most part. We are just chugging along.
Last Monday we had a good Preparation Day. We went to family home evening at the Wlokas' house with the other two missionaries. We ate some good speghetti and played that German version of SORRY again. I am losing my touch at board games because I lost miserably.
We had a successful day on Tuesday. After study, we went out finding and found a man from Afghanistan. We invited him to our German/Engish class that we were holding that night and he came! It was reeally frustrating though. He spoke no English and a little German so trying to teach him German without a language in common was nearly impossible. That afternoon we also went and visited the Winklers. They are 80 years old and have lived in Magdeburg forever. Bro. Winkler has actually lived here his whole life and they live in the same house his grandfather built. Pretty cool. They met each other when Sis. Winkler served here on her mission in the 50's. They are super sweet and love the missionaries. She gave us egg salad to bring home which is to die for. I've been living off of that this whole week.
Wednesday we had district meeting per usual. The zone leaders came this week so I got to reminisce about USAFA with Elder Thorley. He's going home in early May because he still has to do summer programs at the Academy. After lunch we did a little finding competition. Elder Gibbs and Elder Morton took one side of the street and Elder Oldroyd and I took the other and whoever found an investigator first got ice cream from the other companionship. We won :) We won the last time we did it too but still haven't gotten ice cream yet. I am keeping a tally. You gotta love a friendly finding competition. That afternoon we had an appointment with Johanna. We talked about the temple and the blessings that come from it. She shared her experience of going to the temple for the first time a couple of weeks ago. Then we got her signed up on familysearch.org and got her started on her family history. She is really starting from square one. Familysearch.org didn't have any records from Cameroon. In addition, her dad really doesn't know many names of ancestors, let alone dates. The Romneys took us out to dinner that night. They are so nice! Here's a picture of our district:
Thursday we coordinated with President Romney and made a surprise visit to the towns of Güterglück and Barby. Members there are not good with answering their phones/calling back so making surprise visits is the next best thing I guess. We were one for two. The one family in Güterglück was home but the Jaffkes in Barby were not. When I finally got a hold of Sis. Jaffke that night, she told me they were on vacation. (Right now the state of Saxon-Anhalt has two weeks of vacation). We made an appointment for tomorrow. Daniel's baptism is supposed to be this week but the last two weeks they have been scarce so I think we are going to have to move it back again. That afternoon we stopped by the church and one of the members of the branch (he is from Iran) was practicing the Iranian bagpipe. I was so confused. I didn't even know there was such a thing. He showed us some videos, though, of him and his brother. Apparently his brother is a professional bagpipe player? Who knew? On the way home, we found a new investigator that afternoon as well. Here are some pictures from the ferry ride to Güterglück:
Friday following weekly planning we had a lesson with Marion. It was a really awesome lesson, I think because it was just us three so there were no outside distractions. We fielded a lot of his questions about the Book of Mormon. He is in 2 Nephi now and scriptural language is quite difficult to understand. He asked questions like what is a burnt offering, what is Zion, why did God tell Nephi to kill Laban. We asked him how he felt after bearing his testimony last Sunday. He really opened up and said, I mean it. I know this is the direction I am supposed to go it. He told us about how this week his feet were hurting and so he prayed asking Heavenly Father to help stop his feet from hurting and the pain went away. They have also been praying as a family. They prayed together last week and asked that the move to a new apartment would go well. He was so suprised at how well it went and how happy everyone was to help. It is so cool that he is already having these experiences with prayer and recognizing that his prayers are being answered. So happy! :)
Saturday morning we had an appointment but it fell through. We thought it was a false address but we found out later that day that you had to ring under someone else's name. We are going to go back though. But while we were trying to find that address we passed a crazy lady on the street. She took one look at us and said, "Get off of this street. Nobody wants to see you here ever again.“ Keep in mind, that was her response to me saying "Guten Tag!“ I responded very nicely, "No worries, we're just looking for someone here.“ She said, "I have lived here for 34 years. Nobody wants you here.“ At this point I was just like, wait this lady is serious. I said, "Uhh you're being really rude.“ To which she responded, "I'm not being rude, I'm just telling you to get lost.“ So that was my Saturday morning. Marc came from Leipzig and bought us lunch. He is the person Elder Morton and I skyped with when we were in the Missionary Training Center in Provo. We were supposed to play soccer that afternoon but nobody said they could come so we did some contacting. We made one quick sweep of the main drag, found two new investigators and a couple of contacts, and then went and dug through our area book. We had a bunch of records from the same part of the city so we just went and visited those folks for the rest of the evening trying to see if they still lived at the same addresses. Most of the records came from 2008 and half of them don't live at the addresses anymore.
Yesterday we had church. Playing the piano went well. One of the counselors from the stake presidency came and spoke and did a good job speaking about building on the rock of Christ. After church Marion and Galia invited the four missionaries over for lunch. We had potatoes, meat, and vegetables on this fondu type of thing. It's a combination between fondu and the Pizza Pizzaz maker. It was really yummy. Last night we were at the church and ended up sitting in on one of Elder Gibbs' and Mortons' lessons. It went really well.
This week it was super cold outside. It snowed a bit but it never really stuck and then it was gone in a couple hours. Hopefully this week will be a little warmer. Hopefully we can really get Daniel to the point where he is ready to be baptized this next week or next week. I hope everything is going well at home for everyone. Take care this week!
Love,
Elder Tanner Germann
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