MOIN!!

Was geht ab, y'all?  I hope this email finds everyone well.  I had a really good week this past week and I am really looking forward to this coming week too.

 

Tuesday morning I took Elder Horrocks to the train station and put him on a train to Schwarzenburg--I miss him :(  We got along really well together.  I stayed at bahnhof that whole afternoon putting people on trains/helping them make connections/picking them up.  Here is a picture of our leadership training meeting before all of these transfers:

 

That afternoon my new companion came, Elder Despain.  He grew up in Spain but his family has lived in Arizona for the past couple of years.  He is only a transfer older than me in the mission and is a really nice missionary.  We went to an appointment that evening with the man Elder Bakly and I found last week who said, "Yes, absolutely.  Come over." It was real.  The man loved the Restoration! We are going back there tomorrow.

Wednesday we had a really good appointment with a less-active member Elder Bakly and I contacted last week.  He was baptized in '06 and I think was kind of converted to the bishop and missionaries.  He stopped coming to church when the bishop was replaced.  He was mad that that happened. Our lesson ended up being on service.  It was really good.  We talked about how none of the local leaders in the church receive money for what they do--everything about the church involves service.  He said, "Oh wow, I had no idea."  We commited him to reading in and praying about the Book of Mormon so that he could develop his own testimony of it.  That night Elder Pilling and his trainee came back from Berlin and overnighted at our wohnung (apartment).

 

Thursday we had two awesome lessons, one with Peter, a super German man, and one with Grace, Fred's cousin.  Both lessons actually were about the plan of salvation.  Peter came to our appointment with questions written down, he had read all the pamphlets and had even done the question/answer section in the back!  We had a great lesson were we walked him through the plan of salvation as we drew it on a piece of paper.  Elder Despain drew it because he is a better artist....  He opened up about his parents dying.  It was a good lesson.  We were running late to our appointment with Grace so he offered us a ride!  Our appointment with Grace was super.  We did the same drawing thing.  At the end she said that she wanted to be baptized.  That evening we had a good night of soccer with a pair of investigators.

 

District meeting was held on Friday.  I had talked to the Bremerhaven sisters about focusing on placing good questions in lessons so I gave the lesson on that.  We read about Ammon teaching King Lamoni, disected a clip from one of our training videos, and role played with current investigators.  It was a good lesson.  Afterwards, Elder Despain and I went to Doris' house.  We ended up just teaching her 15-year old son Joshua because she wants him to learn the Bible.  We started off with the Bible but eventually turned it into a lesson on the Restoration ;)  He ended up being really open to it and said he was free everyday after school to meet.

 

We met with Richmond Saturday morning and taught the plan of salvation.  He is doing well.  We also met with the random guy that stopped Elder Horrocks and I in the train station a couple of weeks back.  Turns out he was actually baptized a few years ago in Leipzig and wants to come back to church.  He also gave us a referral!  That afternoon, we met with Nanakofi and taught the plan of salvation and the gospel of Jesus Christ combined.  He loved the drawing of the plan of salvation and he said he is really looking forward to being baptized on the 2nd of May.  Elder Pilling baptized his investigator that evening.  The baptismal service was nice.  Nanakofi stayed for it and even Peter came!

 

Yesterday at church, Grace, Nanakofi, and Michael were there.  Michael has been a little evasive. I have been practicing being bold and straight up, but loving and so I told him Michael, we are here to baptize you--you want that right?  He said yes.  So I told him he needs to make time to meet with us and we will gladly get him there!  That afternoon getting on the bus some German guy said, "Are you guys missionaries?"  We talked to him about what we do and are meeting with him on Friday.  Gotta love it.

 

Our days this coming week are pretty booked.  Looking forward to a busy and productive week.

 

Love,

Elder Germann

General Conference and transfers

Hello family and friends! 

 

I hope everyone had a fantastic week and a spiritual experience watching General Conference.  I had some really cool experiences this week--not the least of which was to visit this pancake ship on our preparation day with one of our recent converts:

On Tuesday we traveled to visit Richmond.  Richmond was baptized in Ghana several years ago but when he came to Germany, he had no idea where the church was or how to get in contact with the church.  Seems to be a common occurrence.  He lived next door to the chapel in Ghana apparently. We had a good lesson about the Restoration.  The bishop asked us to go through all of the lessons with him as a refresher.  He has a testimony of everything.  It's sad though because right now he is not allowed to go to work or school so he just has to sit around all day.  He doesn't have enough money so we gave him an old shirt or two, a tie, and some pants so that he can look good for church.  He was really grateful.  That afternooon Papa, an investigator from Gambia, invited all of the missionaries over for Gambian food.  It was delicious!  We had or ward missionary correlation meeting that night and following that, I began my exchange with Elder Bakly.  Here I am with the Sister missionaries after correlation meeting:

Elder Bakly and I had a super good exchange.  We got up in the morning and had a great morgensport.  I ran a basic-style workout ;)  We had push-ups, flutter-kicks, wall-sits, lunges, you name it.  We were even reciting scriptures while we did it.  It was a lot of fun.  Elder Bakly didn't really appreciate it but that is okay...haha.  We did our studies and then we went out for the day.  Our appointment fell through at the university.  The investigator never showed.  But it was cool because Elder Bakly had this feeling to go back so we did but on the way we stopped a young woman.  She is Mexican and has been in Germany for a week.  She has a bunch of Mormon friends at home.  We exchanged numbers and we are going to get together this week!  For the rest of the afternoon, we had three less-active members on the calendar and the plan was to visit them and do street contacting on the way, using #becausehelives.  It is my favorite thing to do because it gives direction to your finding and you're killing two birds with one stone.  We had some great experiences simply because we did the basics--talked to everyone, were personable, and spoke directly.  We walked up to one guy and I had asked him if he had heard of the Mormons.  He said yeah, I know that they are Christians.  I said, "Correct!" and that we as missionaries go around sharing a message about Jesus Christ and how he is resurrected and lives.  This message is especially important, seeing that Easter is this week.  We would like to come by next we and share more of this message with you.  He said okay!  It's as easy as that!  We also found a super guy from Ghana later that was really excited to meet with us and hear our message.  In addition, we got in contact with one of the less-actives and set up an appointment.  It was a very successful day and I was pumped because that's the type of day that they needed to kick-start their area.  It was also awesome because those were the exact experiences I needed to have for Elder Horrocks' and my lesson at Zone Training Meeting.  We exchanged back and I was said to my companion, "Elder Horrocks, I have our lesson plan."  

Our lesson at Zone Training Meeting went really well.  We were assigned to talk about the new #becausehelives campaign and how to use it.  Elder Horrocks began it by leading a discussion on John 20:11-20 and 3 Nephi 11:6-14.  He talked about how we have the scriptures that testify of the resurrection.  I then jumped in and we did a demonstration--we demo'd that finding experience that Elder Bakly and I had the day before and we said, look, we had this experience just yesterday!  We then allowed them to role play finding situations.  We closed it with the end of John 20.  I said what I always tell my district--"Say that you love finding.  Because when you say that you love it, you will do it gladly."  Blessed are we that believe in Christ and his resurrection but have not seen him.  We got some good feedback from the zone leaders and other missionaries.  Its kind of exciting, at this point I really don't take notes for my lessons.  Maybe just a few when I am just starting planning but when I give lessons I never use notes.  I really feel like it helps me speak by the Spirit.  Here we are riding the train with the sister missionaries on the way to the training meeting:

We had transfer calls on Saturday.  Elder Horrocks is going to Schwarzenburg in Chemitz and he is going to be the District Leader there.  The second area in Bremen is getting shut down as well as seven other areas in the mission because this transfer our mission is getting a new zone from the Frankfurt mission.  Elder Pilling is training a new missionary.  My new companion will be Elder Despain, Elder Horrocks' MTC companion.  Should be a fun time.  We watched the Church's General Conference on Saturday at John's house, one of our investigators.  That was pretty cool.  He thought the messages were good.  The Saturday morning session was my favorite.  I really liked President Packer's talk on marriage/family.  He has given some great talks on that topic through the years.  On Sunday I watched the Priesthood session, the Saturday Afternoon and Sunday morning sessions.  Nanakofi came to one of the sessions.  He was kinda bored. The sister missionaries got a family of nine to show up to one of the sessions!  That was crazy.  Here is a picture John and part of his Star Wars collection--thousands of dollars worth!!

I am still the District Leader here in Bremen this transfer.  We are splitting the other area's investigators between us and the sisters.  So the district will be down to eight members and I will only have to go on three exchanges now.  Looking forward to another transfer in Bremen!

Hope everyone had a great Easter!

 

Love,

Elder Tanner Germann

A third of my mission has gone by!

Howdy y'all!

I was really hopeful for this past week and it ended up being a really solid week where we reached all of our goals!  We did a lot of walking and train riding--almost borrowed this truck at one point!

Wednesday after a great district meeting, Elder Horrocks and I had lots of success finding--we found three new investigators. We have been really working on not using words like "maybe" or "perhaps" and just being bold, asking people straight up. We talked to this one man who said he has a Book of Mormon at home that he got it from a street display several years ago. He is Catholic and said that we are all Christians so it makes no difference. I told him, "Hey, ya know I have a Catholic grandfather at home and I can tell you that there are definitely some differences in doctrine. We want to meet with you next week and share with you what we believe." He said, "Okay!" Experiences like that really help me feel the Spirit. I love finding and street contacting. I tell my district to say that they love street contacting. It helps them like it and be excited about it :)

We have been really bold with investigators as well. We have a teaching pool of people who have been meeting with the missionaries for eons and are making no progress. It really comes back to how to begin teaching and stating your purpose clearly. We have been redoing that with investigators to help them progress.

Elder Pilling came here for an exchange with me. We had some bad luck with a couple of appointments that fell through but nevertheless we committed our investigator, Nanakofi, to baptism on the 2nd of May. We have some work to get it there but he said, "I want to be baptized in the church on Richarda-Huch Straße!" Hahaha okay we can make that happen. He came to church again on Sunday and had a good experience. Elder Pilling is doing well. He has no ceiling on his potential as a missionary. He has a gift with talking to people and speaking with the Spirit. He does well in all situations.  Here is one of the neighborhoods we worked in:

Elder Horrocks and I went to the Stelter's for lunch yesterday. Brother Stelter talked a lot about missionary work. He had some interesting ideas about getting out of the main city and visiting the villages in our area, maybe once a week. We could go to the villages where the members live, have an eating appointment and look for investigators in the village--there would be a member to teach with.  It is a good idea and Elder Horrocks and I would like to try it out.  Even so, we probably shouldn't spend too much time here--Party Night Way!!

Elder Horrocks is doing well. He is a hard worker and is a support to me. 

Take care this week!

 

Elder Tanner Germann

Making progress

Hey y'all!  How is everyone doing?!

 

We saw much improvement between last week and this week.  We got in touch with a lot more people, we found a pair of German investigators to teach, and this coming week has the potential to be super!  We had a little fun on our preparation day throwing the Frisbee around the park:

                                     

On Tuesday we had language study with Marcella, the new convert Elder Horrocks baptized last transfer.  We are going to be doing that more often because we both feel like we get a lot out of practicing German with a German who is super willing to teach.  She went to the city library and checked out a bunch of books and so she is teaching us using them in addition to our MTC study materials.  We had an appointment with John, an American.  He is really into conspiracy theories and reads a lot of bad things about Mormons but is really open to hearing from us.  We taught a lesson on prophets.   It went well and he said it made sense but he continues to say that it's not really for him.  He keeps our commitments--he read the Liahona we gave him this week.  Doris, the woman from Ghana we met on Sunday, cancelled but she wants to meet this coming week and she wants us to teach her two sons about the Bible--perfect.  After Ward Missionary Council that night, I began my exchange with Elder Rosenvall.

 

District meeting on Wednesday went well.  We did a lot of role plays--finding approaches and 5-minute lessons.  I loved the example Elders Carpenter and Pinion gave in Leadership Training Meeting (take one of your hobbies and make a person finding approach out of it), so I used that.  The exchange with Elder Rosenvall was good--we went and visited a less-active couple in Bremen Nord.  He is a really good missionary.  He works really hard and is trying to help his companion.  Here is a picture of my district--hard to believe I'm the District Leader for these great missionaries!
 

Thursday we had a good lesson with Sin-Gu, our Korean investigator.  We discussed Mosiah 2.  He keeps all of our reading commitments but he only comes to church once a month and we haven't gotten him to pray specifically about the Book of Mormon or the church.  We also met with Hughes.  He is from Ghana and is a super nice man but he is so frustrating.  He is the epidome of flaky.  He told us he wants to meet multiple times a week and come to church but he literally sleeps through everything.  The same goes for his father who we've been teaching, too.

 

We had a service project planned for Friday morning in a member's garden but she cancelled at the last minute.  We ended up trying out a new finding activity that the sister missionaries came up with.  We had chalkboards and we stopped people and asked them to write what brought them joy on the board.  We had some really good discussions but weren't able to close on anyone.  I think the idea could see a lot of success if we do it in to right place (center of downtown) with good weather.  Here was our first attempt at it, in front of the chapel:

                                     

Saturday we met with Nanakofi, another friend from Ghana.  He tried to tell us that he believed that our church was the true church but that he was just going to continue to go to the Catholic church with his mom.  We bore testimony to him and he finally committed to coming to church.  And he actually did come yesterday and stayed the whole time!  He said the church was like paradise.  We also found a 72 year-old German woman on the street that day--we talked to her for 50 minutes right there!

 

Yesterday we had a super good appointment with Grace, Fred's cousin.  Fred flew back to Ghana this week, by the way, and is in a hospital in a coma.  We took the sisters along as a joint teaching opportunity.  We read 3 Nephi 11:1-17 with her.  She loved it.  She asked a lot of good questions about the godhead.  She even said things like, "When I am baptized...."  We need to commit her this week!  We also were walking down the street and this guy stopped us asking if we were Americans.  He knew a bit about Mormons and said he wanted to learn more.  Here we are riding the train with the sisters:

                                     

Elder Horrocks is doing well.  He is so much fun and really supportive.  We are looking forward to a big week.

 

Love to all,

Elder Tanner Germann

Another week in Bremen

Dear Friends and Family,

 

This week was pretty disappointing for Elder Horrocks and me.  All but one of our appointments fell through.  We are trying to keep a positive attitude!!

 

I really enjoyed leadership training meeting this week.  I took a handful of really good ideas from it and applied it to my district meeting the next day and on my nightly call-ins as I made suggestions and gave ideas.

 

In district meeting Elders Wilde and Fitch gave a lesson on setting and reaching goals.  Elder Foster gave a lesson on using the Book of Mormon to respond to objections.  We did some role playing to practice.  I then took the last thirty minutes and led a discussion as we read 2 Nephi 33.  I really like that chapter.  It is Nephi bearing his testimony.  I posed the question--what will you say to Nephi at the judgment bar about how you used the Book of Mormon as a teaching tool?  I got good feedback on that.  Here's me, Elder Horrocks, and the Sisters getting a bite to each on our Preparation Day:

 

Wednesday night to Thursday night I went on an exchange with Elder Foster to Bremerhaven.  I interviewed Paul (their investigator) for baptism.  He was baptized on Saturday.  We had a really solid lesson with another investigator on a baptismal date and then found three investigators the next day.  Elder Foster is a hard worker.

 

Sunday we had a bunch of people talk to us as we went around the city.  One guy stopped us and said, "Hey, you're LDS right?  I am going to bring a friend to your church next week."  Okay.  That is a really cool feeling.  We went to Fred's house again.  He looks near death.  Someone is loaning him money so that he can fly back to Ghana this week.  His cousin Grace told us that she wants to be baptized!

 

I am going on an exchange with Elder Rosenvall this week--looking forward to that.  I am proud of him and Elder Bakly.  They are really working hard and slowly growing their teaching pool.  They found three new investigators this week!  The Bremen sisters had a really hard week this week--both baptismal dates with investigators fell through and said they had no interest anymore within 12 hours of each other.  The sisters took it well and are continuing to work hard.

 

I hope all is well with everyone.  Trying to keep a positive attitude as I learn more about Bremen and my district of hard working Elders and Sisters!

 

Love to all,

Elder Germann

Busy, busy, busy!

Hey y'all!

 

Elder Horrocks and I had a good week this week.  We had a couple of interesting lessons.  We had a good zone training meeting.  We had a good exchange with the zone leaders.  Here we are waiting for the bahn (train):

 

We are still trying to get to know the people in our teaching pool.  We had a lesson with a guy named John on Tuesday.  He reads a lot of anti-Mormon material and loves conspiracy theories.  We were able to explain the third lesson really well.  Unfortunately, I foresee it being really hard for him to find the will power to keep commitments.  

 

I really liked the gift of tongues videos that they showed at Zone Training Meeeting.  Elder Horrocks and I have been doing a really good job speaking 9-9.  I went on an exchange with Elder Fitch afterwards.  We got a lot of good work done.  We had two appointments fall through so we did a lot of finding.  We talked to everyone.  Since the weather was not good, we tried bahn finding which was really interesting but fun.  We were able to find a new investigator.  Here are a couple of pictures from recent training meetings:

 

On Friday we met with a man who is a Satanist.  We are probably not going back there.  Nevertheless,  we answered a lot of question and I think we brought the best spirit that has ever been in that apartment.

 

We had a great lesson with the new member, Marcella.  She is doing great and really growing in her faith.  We had a lesson with a woman who previously had a baptismal date.  She seemed like she wanted to get back to church.  Her cousin was recently baptized.  He is very sick so we let Bishop Bunting know so that the members can get over there and help out.  

 

Yesterday we had ward conference.  The stake president emphasized the basics--families and family home evenings.  We had a good lesson with an investigator after church, Bernie--he connects the Church with America and the American way of life.  There is potential there with him and his son.  His son wants to be baptized.

 

I am going on an exchange with Elder Foster this week.  I am also conducting my first baptismal interview with their investigator!

 

Looking forward to Leadership Training Meeting tomorrow!

 

Love,

Elder Tanner Germann

First week in Bremen

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