New area

Hey everybody! Feels really weird to think back on last week and think
that i was in Bayreuth. Seems like that was so long ago! It was but at
the same time it really wasnt! It was a bittersweet moment. I was
ready to go, but I was hesitant to leave the people I had learned to
love. But, this is a new area, with a new companion, and a new start.
I have new challenges and will have different experiences that will
shape me to be the young man the Lord wants me to be.

Offenbach is my new city, and I was a little nervous to come, but I
have had nothing but good experiences since coming here, well...I did
get called a Satanist, but I actually thought that was kind of funny.

On the way here I overnighted in Erlangen for one last time, and then
the next morning I said goodbye to Nürnberg. We all hopped on a bus
and it was a big party since a lot of the people I was with were
really good friends. Not to mention we had Wifi the whole trip, so we
were sending each other all sorts of ridiculous photos and videos.
Once we got to Frankfurt central station, it was just a big fest. I
saw Elders I havent seen for about 6 months, and it was just awesome.
We stayed and just talked for about 90 minutes, and I got to say
goodbye to Elder Dean before he took off to go to the airport as well
as see Sister Funk from my Köln days.

So my new companion is Elder Draper, and we are now the Offenbach II
elders. We have the most incredible apartment I have ever seen, and we
even have a small upstairs...its so crazy. Its too much for us, so we
just store stuff upstairs. We even have a dishwasher for a change, and
it was rumored to be broken, so I just turned on the water and the
problem was solved. Lazyness prevails!

I got to meet our new ward mission leader, and he wants me to help him
slide on his longboard. Hes american, and we are actually teaching his
wife, so we are hoping she will get dunked soon because she is just
golden. Im pretty happy about the ward, because now instead of only
like 25 people we have about 50. We actually helped one family with a
move, and they had a cherry tree filled to the brim, so we had a
cherry pit spitting contest in between breaks.

Sorry that this is kind of boring, but not a ton has happened yet.
Anyway, I hope everything is good back in good the states, and I wish
you all a good week!

Getting transferred

We totally hit it off with our neighbors this week when we brought by
some cookies that elder Andrus had baked. After we took them over they
invited us to go see the smallest house in Bayreuth, which is pretty
dang small. I held out my arms and my arm span was almost as big as
the width of the house. Then on the weekend I baked them some brownies
and took them over to which they invited us inside! We talked for
about an hour and we might do something with them today after PDay.
There is so much potential in this area, and I'm so upset that I'm
leaving but at the same time I'm pretty excited to start a new
adventure.

Unfortunately in a little while the temple will be closing down as
well as the other one in the other side of Germany, so both temples
will be closed at the same time in the country. Normally it is
tradition at the end of your mission to do a temple trip, but because
it is being closed nobody is going to be able to go anymore. Because I
was already up in Frankfurt I asked president if I could go, and we were
allowed to go before the conference! It was super cool, and so pretty.
Getting home after was very hectic though and we
had delay upon delay the whole time, but we eventually got home, just
barely catching one of the last buses of the night.

This week we had a very special experience with frau brown. She's
been having problems with her eye and needs surgery, but because she
is blind in her other eye, it is very high risk. She has been having a
lot of pain and a lot of trouble seeing so we decided to go over and
give her a blessing. She said when we laid our hands upon her head
that she felt this heat go throughout her whole body, and that it felt
like somebody was cleaning her out. It was super cool to see that the
spirit was working with her the way that it was. She also told us that
when she came to church last week she felt that when she entered the
door, all of her problems had been left at the door. The gospel is
pretty cool!

On my very last Sunday in church I gave my testimony and got pictures
of most of the members in the ward, which really weren't that many!
After church we went and visited family and they stuffed us with some
pretty good German food, and they also gave us some Mountain Dew to go
down with that! We shared a pretty nice spiritual thought and we had a
lot of fun with this family.  And it was just a nice way to kind of
conclude my Sunday services in this city.

The city has been a great place for me to learn and grow, and I have
made relationships here that I will never forget. I'm super happy that I
had the opportunity to serve here and I have definitely grown a lot
here and I'm excited to move to the next portion of my growth, even if
I Think it will be hard.  I would just like to tell you all that there's
no place that I would rather be than here in Germany serving these
people, and I know that what I'm doing is right and helps people,
including myself. I wish you all a good week and hopefully things are
a lot warmer in the states, because all we have had is rain jacket
weather. Take care everyone and thank you for the letters.

Kevin

Sweet moments

Not to get you down, but this week was tough. The beginning was
super hard! We just about lost Richard, and we just lost Francesco and
possibly his friend Lorenz. It’s been kind of a hard week for us, but
there were still some sweet moments I would like to share with all of
you.

After having a pretty rough lesson, we went back to our house kind of
discouraged and we just didn’t know what to do. I had always heard that
closing your eyes and opening the scriptures and pointing worked, so I
gave it a go! When it opened, I opened to these verses, "Therefore,
follow me, and listen to the counsel which I shall give unto you.
Behold, and lo, I have much people in this place, in the regions round
about; and an effectual door shall be opened in the regions round
about in this eastern land. Therefore, I, the Lord, have suffered you
to come unto this place; for thus it was expedient in me for the
salvation of souls. Therefore, verily I say unto you, lift up your
voices unto this people; speak the thoughts that I shall put into your
hearts, and you shall not be confounded before men; For it shall be
given you in the very hour, yea, in the very moment, what ye shall
say. But a commandment I give unto you, that ye shall declare
whatsoever thing ye declare in my name, in solemnity of heart, in the
spirit of meekness, in all things. And I give unto you this promise,
that inasmuch as ye do this the Holy Ghost shall be shed forth in
bearing record unto all things whatsoever ye shall say." Pretty long,
but we thought it was pretty cool.

Split with Elder Coombs! For some reason weird things usually happen
on splits. So this lady contacted us on a bus and I had no idea what
she was saying because she was pretty much just whispering. She
started asking us if we were scientologists, and if we had heard of
the 4 angels on earth and that was about what I got. She got off one
stop later and came up the window opposite of where we were sitting
and just stared at us emotionless! Elder Coombs felt awkward so he
waved, to which she did. She then stopped mid-wave and raised her hand
up above her head. I have no idea what the heck was going through her
head. Only a little bit later, we saw a guy laying head first on an
escalator! He then began to tumble down and a lady went to help him,
but we think he was just drunk. Oh, Bayrueth!

On one of the days, the guy that rents us our apartment came over and
we just talked for a while. He then told us he was going to bring us a
ton of food! We graciously accepted! He brought us alcohol free beer,
white wurst, sweet Sauerkraut, liverwurst, and a few other things. We
were so excited, so we gave him some American candy and a Book of
Mormon. We have talked to this guy and his family tons of times, and
we almost always get asked questions about our beliefs. Right now we
are trying to start a tradition with them of making goodies for each
other. Hopefully it will turn into a dinner appointment some day! Who
knows, but they are an awesome family.

So as I am writing this, I guess I am realizing I had a better week
than I thought. A few big things that happened are that we had our
first street display, and Frau Brown came to church for the first time
in like 15 years...and loved it! Another thing was that BreAnn and her
American friends were having a few people over for an "American
Thanksgiving". We wanted to go but then decided not to go because we
figured some of the kids would bring alcohol. Well, nobody brought
any, so we went and had our dinner hour. It turned out great! Two
German guys were talking to me the whole time asking me all about what
we teach and believe. It was a lot of fun after a hard day of stubborn
people.

So there’s the week. Hope you can enjoy the tidbits from my week, and
hopefully you had a good week yourselves. Take care, and have a good
day! Love from Germany!

Just a quickie this week!

Another email coming your way! This week was great, and Elder Andrus
and I were able to set personal bests this week at church with how
many people we had visit that we happen to be teaching! Maybe this is
a little more usual in America, but we had 3 of our friends there! It
was fantastic!

So quite a while ago in February or so, we were on our way to Nürnberg
when a guy contacted us and then later met up with us. After that, we
never really heard from him again, but last week he was at church and
then this week we met up and taught a very simple but detailed lesson,
which went great. He was one of the 3 people at church, and he spoke
Arabic, so he automatically got along with the other 2 since they are
studying the language for school.

Well guys, I accidentally had my first bit of alcohol this week. Yup,
Germans like it on everything, which includes ice cream sauces. Kind
of tasted like cough syrup, so I only had a small spoon full. I have
no idea why anyone would want to eat that on ice cream!! Anyway, I
made it 19 years...darn haha.

We had one very full day this week where we met with the
boyfriend of the lady we talked with at the central bus station, as
well as our friend Lorenz, and a college professor that committed to
read the whole Book of Mormon! He met back with the missionaries 30 or
40 years ago, and so we meet about every week or so. Super cool!

Sorry I have to cut this short, but I have to go catch a train. This
week we saw some pretty cool things and had some cool little miracles,
I wish I could share them with you all. Thanks for the love and emails
guys, you’re great!

Kevin

The Lord has a plan.

Hey Everyone –

For those of you who know the Book of Mormon, you will recognize this scripture
pretty well, but it pretty much sums up most of this last week. 1
Nephi 4:6 "And I was led by the Spirit, not knowing beforehand the
things which I should do." This week we had a few white days and
also days where everything just kind of went wrong, but luckily the
Lord has a plan.

I’ll make this short today since I forgot my journal. One day that was
completely blank we just planned to go to a certain place at a certain
time and said we would just go and talk to random people. Well...we
weren’t looking forward to being rejected for 6 straight hours, but
after about 30 minutes we ran into a guy and he was just sitting on a
bench so we talked with him. He told us he had no interest, but was
really nice and wished us luck. As we worked our way around the park,
we noticed that the guy had moved, and as we came around a corner 10
or so minutes later, he stopped us as we passed a different bench. We
ended up having an hour or so conversation and it was just super cool.

We had all sorts of other experiences as well, I just can’t remember
them all. One of them we were walking to go do a goby, but we were
focusing on contacting people. We were coming up to one lady and I
felt we should talk to her but I asked myself why I should contact her
of all people. In my mind I kind of thought, "Well she is a daughter
of God isn’t she?" I am sorry to say I didn’t talk to her, but luckily
Elder Andrus has my back and supported me when I mentioned that to
him. He said, "Yeah I had a similar feeling, lets go back" and so we
did. Ended up talking for 15 minutes and turns out she met once or
twice with the missionaries! How cool!

Last experience. The week before a woman contacted us on the bus, but
Elder Andrus wrote down the address wrong. Well, I wasn’t too excited
to teach her because she might be a little off. Shame on me, but those
were my thoughts and I can’t change that I thought that. Anyways, two
days ago we were at the bus station and she walked passed us with a
man. I let her pass, but then I just remembered how I stopped
believing in coincidence. I pulled myself together and chased after
her haha. We got to her and when she saw us she told us how she told
her boyfriend that she ran into us! Well this guy she was with was a
long time investigator that we don’t even have record of. How cool is
that!! We are going by tonight to hopefully have a good lesson with
the both of them!

This week I think the Lord taught me how to be a little more humble.
Just a little! Anyway, I was forced to do the things I didn’t want to
because I was too uncomfortable to do it, didn’t want to, or was just
always too busy to do it otherwise. I learned though that when we
really desire to do the Lords will and lean on him with our full hope
and reliance that something good will come out of it, it can and will
happen if it is his will.

This week wasn’t my favorite week, but I really loved the outcomes from
it. I love these people so much, and although I miss home sometimes I
am so glad that I am here. I am exactly where I am supposed to be.
Thank you all for your support and love!

Kevin