Thursday, August 4, 2011

Half an hour of something about William...What?

Received July 18, 2011

Why was it necessary that I listen to a man talk unendingly about a false prophet? I have no idea but watch out Los Angeles. Apparently he was caught up in a pillar of fire...maybe I understood that part wrong. Maybe someone can explain to me what really happened there. Otherwise, hello family on the other (comfier) side of the world. In our apartment we have taken to using the pull code on the fans since the dumb lightswitch is broken. I have already fixed it once and it's not worth electrocution just to fix a dumb light. Also, only about half of the bulbs in our apartment still function normally. We should probably do something about that.

This week we went to three eating appointments in two days. The first two were on Monday. We essentially went straight from our morning activities to the Henkels in Bretzfeld and then left there to get on a train to Ohringen. We walked a little bit in Ohringen but that was pretty much it. The food was great as always, but it is just too much sometimes. The next day we went to the Zander family in Waldenburg way on the edge of our area where the Prince of Waldenburg still lives. The Zanders are always so awesome and Bru. Zander and I engaged in a 20 minute conversation about modern opera literature which pretty much went way over the head of Elder Sills and the two grandsons that were there. On Wednesday, Elder Sills left Offenburg and I met my new companion Elder Pexton. He is from Colorado and was a swimmer, wrestler and gymnast. He's really cool and has a guitar. So far he has endured the onslaught of my music and unending talk of musical things. We decided on Thursday to go and see if we could come in contact with Schw. Soare. She is from Romania and was baptized in Tubingen. She went inactive because of some problems with the members and one day after moving to Heilbronn she saw the Elders and said that she was a member. The Elders got her records transferred to Heilbronn and since then we have tried to get her to come back to church. She had talked to Elder Sills a few times on the phone but usually we would have long periods of not hearing from her at all. We also tried coming to her house many times but she was never there. Finally I decided to go again on Thursday and Elder Pexton and I pushed her klingel (call box). Just when I was about to give up and turn to go home, she poked her head out of the window and seeing that it was us she let us in. Having no other adult male around, we went outside to talk with her. Lots of things have happened in her life and she is just not too trusting of people anymore but she does trust the Elders (since they are American). We talked for a long time and we finally convinced her to come to church. We then committed her to become active and prepare to go to the temple so that she can find some of the purpose that she has been looking for in her life. On Saturday we had the opportunity to go to Pforzheim for a street display. Sister Chappel got transferred to Wien with Sister Lind who speaks wonderful German and will be a great influence for her and we got Sister Carroll from Wien. It was a happy reunion for us since she was actually on the train to Wien when I was first sent there. She has a lovely voice too and when we sant as a group as part of the display it was really awesome sounding. We talked to tons of people and I almost got an Italian man to take a Book of Mormon in Italian. He wasn't willing to meet though since it has caused trouble in his family before since his family is very Sicilian and very Catholic. He said that he would look at the website and the pamphlets though. One Sunday we got on our first bus to Allee Post which is where we take our bus to church. Upon arriving at the stop we saw Schw. Soare sitting there dressed for church and ready to go. We were so happy that someone finally kept their promise and came. She really was cautious at first because she doesn't like Schwabisch (Swabian) people. As the church started to fill up a member family from Switzerland came in and added about 9 people to our congregation. Brian, Michelle and Jessica came and they actually stayed for the whole three hours. It was an awesome time in church. Schw. Soare even had a really good time in Relief Society talking about eternal marriage and the other members really liked her. We were invited afterward to the Lichners house where they got to know Elder Pexton a little better. Christoph Lichner got his mission call and will be serving in the Berlin Mission. That will be good for him and I think he is excited. It was a whirlwind of a week and way wet since it pretty much rained almost every day. I hope you have a nice week and that it doesn't rain as much as it has here (actually I really like the rain). Tschusss!!!

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