Hello y'all! I survived the first week in Bremen! It was quite the change of pace so this week felt like an eternity to me. My new comp, Elder Horrocks, and I spent the week trying to get to know our new teaching pool.
I said goodbye to everyone in Magdeburg and hopped on a train to Bremen Tuesday morning. I successfully finished training Elder Oldroyd. We both learned a lot from each other and I am proud to say that he is ready to take over the program in Magdeburg. The train ride went quickly. Tuesday afternoon was spent shuttling elders and sisters coming through Bremen to different platforms in the train station. That evening we went to the church and taught English class. I need to take a pic of the church building and send it to you--this thing is huge. The church built it probably three or four years ago. It looks just like one in America.
Wednesday we went to a member's house for lunch. They live an hour away, but it was really good food. That afternoon we went to the ear doctor--Elder Horrocks hadn't been able to hear out of his right ear for the last week. We got in there and the doctor was like, "Das ist nicht Wasser. Das ist Ohrenschmalz!" He pulled out the biggest wax ball I have ever seen...disgusting. We had a little miracle that day. So a guy called us saying that he wanted to meet with us and talk about the Bible so we made an appointment for Thursday.
We had the appointment with him--he actually showed up. Turns out he was a former investigator from over a year ago. We had a really good lesson and softly committed him to baptism right there. Kinda sketchy though because he is 35 and lives with his parents and his parents want him to get baptized but not in our church. We gotta figure that out but it was kinda cool. We had a lesson with Marcella that day too. Marcella was baptized last weekend. She is really cool. We taught the first half of the second lesson. We also had an appointment with a Korean man named Sin-Gu. He was super nice and wanted to find out if this was the true church of Jesus Christ. He currently is the organist at the Lutheran church. That evening we helped the sisters get their bags to their apartment. Sister Hendricks is training Sister Ballard. Sister Ballard already knows what she is doing--she speaks very well because she has studied German for seven years now.
Friday we had district meeting. I was super nervous. I am having everyone recite a memorized scripture every week. President Kosak has a list of scripture mastery scriptures so it goes along with that and also having scriptures memorized really helps in lessons. I gave the lesson on our purpose, used 1 Nephi 8:12, and then talked about one of the eight fundamentals--How to Begin Teaching. Usually you do that in your first lesson with an investigator--state your purpose, etc. We watched a clip from The District and then did role plays. I got positive feedback. I need to work on time management. I was so nervous that I prepared too much material. That evening we had an appointment with a man named Michael. He comes from Nigeria. He shows a lot of potential. Its kinda funny but he loves to talk about repentance. Like he brought it up a million times in our lesson.
Saturday we did weekly planning. We got in touch with a lot more people from our teaching pool and set up appointments. We had an appointment fall through because the guy was sleeping. We had a little meeting with the six of us missionaries in Bremen to talk a little bit about strategy on tackling the city and me made an agenda for our meeting with our ward mission leader. Oh that's right--we have a ward here! The bishop is an American. There are actually a handful of Americans in the ward. Back to Friday--we had another lesson with Sin-Gu but it totally left us confused afterwards. In this lesson he was sounding like he wasn't all that interested in finding out for himself. During that appointment President Kosak called me. Apparently there are reports in the news about potential terrorism in Bremen. He gave me a little info about it and had me tell the district and make sure that no one was going to have a panic attack or anything. There is no threat. There is just some shady people here apparently. We are just to listen to the Spirit more carefully. There is a bigger police presence here.
Sunday we went to pick up Nanakofi for church (the former investigator that we softly committed to baptism). He was asleep and told us to go away. Not really surprised. Church was good. The members are nice. We were running around like crazy. We had a good turn out--Michael and Sin-Gu came and we were trying to translate. The bishop told us to introduce ourselves in fast and testimony meeting. That went well. We bounced after church and went to an Egyptian Othodox Christian church that one of our investigators goes to (haven't really talked to the guy yet so I am curious to see how interested he really is.). The service was cool though (half Arabic, half German). They invited is to their potluck after the service so we got fed too! Gotta love that. We headed to a new member's house to give him a blessing. He has been sick for a while. The Spirit was really strong there. He asked me to give the blessing so that was nice. On the way back this guy stopped us and talked to us. He says he loves Mormons! We are meeting we with him on Friday. We also asked a girl for directions at a bus stop--new investigator. Yesterday was a good day.
This week was overwhelming but it was solid. Elder Horrocks and I get along really well--he is a good guy. He calls Florida home but his family lives in Arkansas. We are going to have a productive week this coming week getting to know more of the teaching pool and finding new investigators. We have zone training meeting in Oldenburg on Wednesday and I will be on exchange with one of the zone leaders Wednesday to Thursday. Should be a good week!
Take care!
Elder Tanner Germann
