Sacrifices and Blessings

Sorry for the late email, we had kind of a hectic Pday. But, we played
a few games of laser tag with our mission leader and his wife and a
bunch of other people we didnt know.

In attempts to get get more appointments, we sacrificed some cookie
and brownie mix and made it for some people we wanted to get
appointments with. We didnt give it all away, that would be silly...I
miss American snacks way too much. Well it worked with one of the
people, and turns out she is actually American herself. She is
actually is from Utah, but has lived here for the last little while.
Unfortunately we didnt really have a lesson, but we brought our
mission leader who is also American, and we had a really good time and
she says she wants to come to church again. So that was cool.
Unfortunately we still havent had anything with our miracle couple,
but they said we could come by this week after we gave them some
brownies, and just before sending this letter they contacted us and
set up an appointment!! But as of right now we still haven't met.

This last week the announcement was made that in our zone, we will be
going for 16 baptisms within the next two full transfers and now. They
said that they prayed about it, and that it is totally possible. I
actually got a pretty good feeling about it too. Well, the very next
day we got a call from our branch president telling us this lady had
questions about baptism in our church, so he gave us her number that
was in her email to him. We called her and her only question was if
she could be baptized on the 25th of August! She came to church on
Sunday and we talked about some things, and she wants her children to
be baptized too, but they are actually not old enough since in our
church we baptize starting at age 8. So, because Elder Draper was the
one on the phone the first time, and because we didnt ask directly
during our short meeting at church, we arent 100% sure that she
herself wants to be baptized. But, I prayed about her being baptized
on the 25th, and I think we can have some good things happen in this
area!

We also got an email during the week telling us to check our referrals
since the system has been acting strange for others. Well guess who
had 3 new referrals! We went by on one of them and she was an exchange
student in Arizona for a year with a Mormon family, and when she saw
us she knew who we were. Super friendly and said we can meet up
sometime. I hate to say it, but I hate when people just cant commit to
something on a certain day, just because I feel like it means it will
flake out. We will see though, she said she would come to Offenbach
sometime soon. The other two referrals are actually pretty cool. One
is a member already, and the other is his friend that was taking the
lessons from the Missionaries down by München. They are here for some
sort of clinic, and then they might stay afterwards, so we will see
what happens.

Alright, I hope this emails cuts it since I didnt have a whole lot of
time to write it. We feel like Offenbach has a lot of potential all of
a sudden. We have been doing a lot more contacting and stuff, but
really all of our miracles have been coming in other ways...like this
lady that emailed our branch president. Hopefully the next couple
letters home are action packed! Well have a good week everyone, thanks
for the love!

Kevin

Happy BIrthday to me!

Hey everyone, another great week here in Germany! Unfortunately I
don't have an update on our golden investigators from last week, but
we are determined to start meeting this week now that they are out of
the hospital and on the road to recovery!

This week we did a lot of contacting, or rather we spent a lot of time
doing it but we didn't actually talk to that many people. It's not so
much that we didn't want to talk to anyone, but rather because when we
had it in our minds to contact everyone was gone! On a good note, we
had a pretty good contact to books given out ratio. The only way we
knew that was because they were so close together!

One of the days we went contacting was in Aschaffenburg while waiting
on a contact from a previous week to show up for a mini lesson. I
don't know why, but I felt almost unable to contact anyone, and elder
draper was super tired because he had slept on the train. I felt like
going over to the castle that I sent photos of last week, and I found
somebody I felt comfortable contacting. Unfortunately she didn't like
us, but the guy down a few benches without a shirt and earbuds in
ended up talking to us for like 25 minutes! He talked to us about how
he and his friends loved discussing religion, and gladly took a book
and gave us his number, so maybe we will meet with his group.

On a similar note we actually did meet with a religious group of
people around our age. We met this cool guy Ahmet in the bus, and he
really respects what we do, so he invited us to this multi religious
group that just likes talking about god. It was really cool how all of
them accepted us and how comfortable we were, and we all got along.
Turns out one of the girls there is actually from Davison Michigan, so
that was pretty cool!

In other news, I turned 20 this week. It was pretty strange thinking
that it was the last week I would ever be a teenager, but hopefully my
20s will be a lot wiser and even better!

Anyway, I hope everyone has a productive week and I'd like to thank
you guys for the birthday wishes! I miss you guys more than you think,
so lots of love from Deutschland! Have a great day!

My best missionary experience yet

Hey everyone, this week was great! I could hardly contain my
excitement this week, so I hope you all enjoy this letter!

Since I arrived in Offenbach, we have been really cracking down on
contacting, and it has actually been going much better than I
originally anticipated. There have been multiple occasions where the
contacts themselves go great, and we end up having fun.

Ok, here's the big story of the week. Basically everything in the
morning on Friday fell out rather unusually. Because we had had plans,
we decided to do a group contacting activity during the time that we
should have been doing our former plans. We had two amazing contacts
that actually wanted to listen! It was the coolest thing ever! One of
them actually thanked us for stopping her and taking the time to talk
to her, how cool! After finishing up, we decided to go by on a woman
in the hospital. The unusual thing about this visit, is that it was a
woman from the ward in Darmstadt, so we dont know why a woman from our
ward told us to go visit her. The visit went ok, but nothing
spectacular.

As we were leaving a woman outside said hello to us, which was really
kind of strange. Well after thinking for a second, it hit us that it
was a lady that Elder Draper had doored and then we had gone by on. We
had visited her and she invited us in but there was not a third man,
so we didnt go in, and when we went by with a member she told us that
she would just come to church sometime. Well, she never did, and so we
called and left a message.

So here we were talking with this lady outside the hospital with her
boyfriend who happened to need surgery the next day, and was staying
in the hospital while this lady from Darmstadt was. They told us how
they had meant to call back, but had never gotten around to it. They
then agreed together that because of our strange meet up they would
start meeting with us. They started saying things like, "We have
researched the church online a lot, and we feel it is the church for
us", "So if we want to join the church, should we get married then?",
and "We like the church because you are always trying to be better, so
we are quitting smoking". Then the guy showed us how he had changed
his phone background to CTR (choose the right) to constantly remind
himself that he is on the way to a better life with all of the
changing he wants to do. How cool! Also, the woman told us how
surprised she was that we didnt come in the first time we met her, and
she explained to us how she feels uncomfortable when her boyfriends
friends are over without him. This setup is amazing and is totally
falling into place.

So he ended up getting his surgery on Saturday and so we went and
visited on Sunday and he was pretty happy to see us. He told us how
his dad had looked pretty seriously into joining the church, and how
hes ready to make changes and settle down. We also got invited to go
and BBQ with them and then give them the discussions! This has been
the coolest missionary experience in my life, and I am so excited to
help these two wonderful people learn more about what makes me happy.

There are other cool experiences that happened during this week, but
this one trumps them all. Never did I ever think that two people would
ever tell me they wanted to join the church before I even told them
about it...especially in Germany of all places! Super happy to be
here, and the work is about to get a lot more exciting I hope! Have a
great week everyone!

Kevin