Liebe Angehörige,
My past couple of weeklies were weaklies (recycled puns for
the win) but that was only mostly due to me not having time. The other
reality was that not much happened besides. There were a few points that were
missed, though.
On the 25th we had our Final ZoKo with President Fingerle.
In the words of my little sister, "Sad soup." I'm going to miss that
man a great deal. There have certainly been a few rough moments with him, but
due to those I have most definitely received a testimony of the abilities of
our earthly leaders. None of them, not even the prophet, are perfect, as I've
been able to see, but the amount of love that can be developed for and by these
people is extraordinarily high; it can only be done by their righteous exercise
of the priesthood. He is a wonderful man, President Fingerle.
Last P-Day we went to the Zoo as a district, which was an
absolute blast. We got to see Harambe, sloths, and, best of all, Pandas! Among
other animals, of course, but who cares about those.I'll slap a few of those
pictures on here.
As for this week:
Tuesday we had a final street display and a final district
meeting for the transfer, all in Brandenburg.
Elder Morford has been a District Leader for a little bit,
and he has a pump up Thema that he likes to give at the end of the transfer.
That was cool, especially right before our street display.
I had a cool experience there, as well. The people had been
particularly nice that day, but no one was very interested, either. Near the
end I said a little prayer asking God for a reason for having been there. The
next man I talked to was incredibly hard to understand, and said something
vulgar about the DDR, and continued on a little rant, but eventually calmed
down and asked if I would sit down with him on a nearby bench. We then had a roughly
40 minute conversation (I got better at understanding him as we went. He was
pretty drunk and came from somewhere down south with a pretty thick accent.)
where he told me a bit about himself and about some of his problems. He really
needed a friend that day, and I was able to give him a book of Mormon and to
bear my testimony to him. That was super cool.
Wednesday was a fairly standard day of tracing. Nothing too
major happened.
Thursday we had a first appointment with Daniel, a cool guy
who the Leest Sisters found. He is studying in Potsdam, but his dream is to
move to America. He has really good English and was interested in that, but
also had many questions about our faith, to the point that our English lesson
turned into the first lesson. Super excited to keep meeting with him.
Friday was our weekly planning, and the day ended up being a
little slow because I got a pretty minor massive migraine. But, no biggie. I
feel great now!
Saturday was pretty hektisch (German for hectic 😉).
Elder Morford was needed for a Russian translation at 10, so we hopped out the
door before we finished our studies. We then had a Russian class with some
other learners to help us to not be terrible at it. Later in the day we had an
interesting appointment. We met with some Jehovas Witnesses. I was pretty
worried when we walked in; there were three old German men all set up with
their ipads and reading glasses (picture high priest quorum and you know what I
mean). I thought that we had just walked into the grand council of missionary
crushers.
And, for sure, things were initially a little tense; both
parties initially expected some form of Bible Bash to be instigated by the
other, but after a little bit of friendly small talk we had a very good, very
two sided conversation.
They established, for the most part, that they believe that there is only one
true faith, and that the generally accepted catholicism and Evangelical faiths
are incorrect and blatantly opposed to the Bible. (We can work with that!)
We taught them that we believe in the Bible (It was apparent that they thought
the contrary) and how it passes together with the Book of Mormon. We taught the
origin of the book, and ended by sharing the 8th article of faith.
On Sunday (yesterday, I guess...) we went to Leest to see a
special broadcast from the church for Europe for Stake Conference (Three of
those in three transfers, what's going on!) The best part, though, was that
President and his family came to Leest as well. I'll get to see president one
more time at interviews, but it was really nice to get to say goodbye to Sister
Fingerle and their children one last time.
Anyway, that is the gist of it. I have you all love, and I
hope that you have wonderful weeks.
Wait up, I vergaß Was, Saturday was also transfer calls. It
was a little annoying that we had to wait so long, though, because we didn't
get called until 10.
The long and short of it is that Elder Morford is going to
Chemnitz. Imma miss the kid, we had a good three transfers together. My new
companion will be Elder Kwasnicka (Trust me, you aren't pronouncing it right.)
from the Czech Republic. I don't know him super well, but he was trained by my
buddy Elder Seamons, and I'm excited to work with him in Potsdam.
I have you all love!
Liebe Grüße,
Elder Austin Spaulding
