Ich grüße euch meine geliebte Familie und Freunde!
The exciting conclusion of the chronicles of Elder
Foster's Berlin Mission adventures are coming to a close. If there are any of
you left out there still reading then pat yourself on the back for enduring to
the end. Haha
Anyway, this week is just another testament to the fact
of how fast time goes in the last few months of your mission. Before you know
it, I will be passing through the missionary veil so I have to get in as much
gospel teaching in as I can get before I get back home. Except this wasn't one
of those weeks as it was a transfer week meaning that there a few goodbyes and
a few times where we had to watch out for and makes plans for missionaries that
were arriving. And fortunately we were able to get some good new missionaries
into the District. Thankfully an atmosphere of friendship was already present
at the first District meeting with all the new missionaries. So I am glad for
that, it makes it a lot easier when no one is left out or feels like they are
less than other missionaries rather that we are friends and a team and willing
and ready to help each other in whatever way at any time.
The week was a little bogged up because of
transfers and ward conference but other than that we still had a pretty good
week. This week we didn't find any new friends but we did find some really cool
contacts that we can hopefully meet with in this coming week. Which isn't
necessarily because most of the time the contacts turn into more solid
investigators than the people who make a straight out appointment with you and
then never show up and never answer their phone again which is disappointing.
But it was awesome, for some reason, other than being purely helped by the Holy
Ghost. I was able to apply the Gospel quite a bit more and more efficiently
with the people that I talked to and best of all it was with Germans! The first
was a gal named Sarah who is actually from Köln which really surprised me, and
I had to ask her why she was here in Cottbus of all places when she comes from
the West and also from a big city. Which is funny because people on the street
also ask why we are in Cottbus of all places and here I am doing the same
thing. And then the next lady's name is Janina and unfortunately she didn't
have the greatest childhood and had lost some of her faith in God but then we
had a really great conversation about the Atonement and the reasons there are
sorrows and trials in our lives which turned out great. This is also another
testament of personal study because exactly that is what I needed, I was then
ready and it helped me talk to her and say exactly what she needed to hear
through the Spirit. The third person's name is Phil, who is actually originally
from Spremberg which is not too far away from Cottbus and I think for the first
time I met someone who was religious despite being raised in a home of Atheist
parents. Interesting story, he came to his beliefs from watching a Bible
channel on TV and from listening to preachers from L.A. or something but that
was awesome and we are definitely going to meet up with him in the future.
We also had a nice little experience with a
member family in our ward this week. It was Saturday and it was hot and as
always for some weird reason everybody in the city of Cottbus decides to leave.
So there was no one on the streets to talk to, nobody was home, we couldn't
contact anybody, and nobody answered their phones or they were in another city.
So we decided to stop at this family's house that was nearby and see if we
couldn't try and help them to do some of their own missionary work and maybe
also to just get out of the heat for a little bit which worked haha. They gave
us some ice cream and some water. And then we were talking and unfortunately we
were only there for like 20 minutes because we came at a really inconvenient
time....meaning that the Germany vs. Hungary game was going to begin real soon.
Haha but it was awesome because in that short time we heard the husbands conversion
story and then it really clicked for me because in his testimony the week
before he talked about the fact that he gives out 2 to 3 Book of Mormons each
year to people he knows and is actually how he got converted was through a Book
of Mormon. One had been gifted to his mom when he was a lot younger and
simply through the power of the Book of Mormon, he was converted to the Gospel.
That was awesome and he offered to help us out with by being a joint teach in
the near future so that was nice. So it was a nice little visit.
Anyway, those were some of the high points of my week. I
hope you all had an enriching week yourselves. I love you and I pray for you!
Tschüss,
Elder Foster
No comments:
Post a Comment