21

Hey y'all! Hope everyone is on a spiritual high from watching General
Conference. Gotta love six hours of listening to the prophets and apostles 
on your birthday!

We had a pretty good week. Monday night we sat down with the sisters
and planned out how we were going to tackle the English class that we
want to get up and running. I plotted out twenty specific groceries
stores that I knew would allow us to post fliers on their bulletin
boards and gave ten to the sisters and ten to us. We turned it into a
finding competition. Whoever found the most new investigators while
hitting their stores would get ice cream from the other companionship.
Elder Nearon and I could get anyone until the eleventh hour when we
were on our way home that night. We were walking out of the train
station when some guys made some joke about us. Couldn't really hear
it but I went back to talk to them and we ended up making an
appointment with them. They're one big Serbian family, the one guy
says he goes to a gypsie church, the other said he was Catholic. Super
cool how the Lord allows you to reach your goals. We ended up tying
the sisters. Dangit!

I got super reviews on district meeting this week. I did a combination
of Preach My Gospel chapter 7, challenging the district to improve
their languages skills and chapter 5, using the Book of Mormon. We
each took a common question or objection we hear and had to use a
passage in the Book of Mormon to answer it or respond. We did this
three times and each time you had to explain it differently so it
really forced you to expand your normal vocabulary and way of
thinking/teaching. I have really found it helpful to practice saying
something three different ways to improve my language skills.

I went on a companion exchange with Elder Schmaltz to 
Frankfurt Oder afterwards.  We knocked doors all night in a student dorm 
and found a new investigator and a bunch of super contacts. On the way 
home that night we found another woman who invited us to boxing and soccer. 
She was totally taken aback--she couldn't believe people actually did
missionary work. She's from Eisenhüttenstadt which was supposed to be
the model DDR town so it's no wonder she had never heard of anything
like that.

Elder Nearon visited the blind lady during the exchange and she said she has
felt the Spirit so strongly when we come by and she wants to come to
church. We're going to try to pick her up next Sunday. They also had a
lesson with the German girl who said she knows we're doing the work of
the Lord and helping her. She came to the first session of conference
Saturday night. I am confident that she'll get there. I'm praying that
it's sooner rather than later.

Yesterday went really well. I had a nice 21st birthday with love from
the ward here. I had happy birthday sung to me three times! Thanks to
everyone who wished me a happy birthday!

Elder Hales', Elder Holland's, President Nelson's, and President
Monson's priesthood talks were my favorite. Which ones did you like?
https://www.lds.org/general-conference/sessions?cid=HP14GC&lang=eng

Love,

Elder Tanner Germann