Floods and repentance!

I’m happy to report that this week was not as empty as last week! Let
me start off with something kind of funny. Lately our shower drain has
been really clogged, so I decided to take off the cap and clean out
the top of the drain. As I finished, the screw holding the cap onto
the shower floor fell down in the pipe. I kind of just shrugged my
shoulders and said, what’s the worst that could happen. Well, I’ll tell
you! The next morning right after Elder Sommer had finished showering,
I got a knock at my door, and it was our neighbor from down below! I’m
sure you can guess what happened next!

We went down stairs and to our horror there was water all over her
floor and still coming down from the ceiling. Luckily she was calm,
and not at all mad. Apparently it has happened two other times. We
cleaned up, and I tried to explain that it was my fault, but her
broken German didn’t allow for her to understand. Oh well?

Later that day we went to the store to buy a new screw, and on the way
there I saw a guy wearing a University of Michigan shirt, so of course
I had to contact him! I contacted him in English, even though I knew
he wasn’t from America, but it worked! We ended up having a great
conversation, and we showed him the Book of Mormon and he asked if he
could keep it! He then gave us his number, so we need to set something up for this week.

Trying to explore our area while doing missionary work, we went to
Seeligenstadt to scope out the city for pday all the while contacting.
It didn’t go so well just because all of the people were tourists and
its a smaller area. But! As we were going through and doing some
doors, this guy stopped us and asked if we were Jehovas Witnesses.
Quite determined to tell him the truth, I gladly and quickly told him
no. He then asked us if we were Mormons, to which I even more
excitedly replied, yes! We didn’t talk much, but he took a book and
told us that in his 15 years in that city, we were the first LDS
missionaries he had ever seen. Pretty cool, right?

Last story! We had another lesson with sister Young, and it went so
well! We talked about repentance, because that morning I kind of had
an epiphany. Repenting for me has always been associated with the
thought telling God that you fudged up, and I have heard for the
longest time to repent daily, but I could never figure out what
about. I was and have been a good kid, and I never got how one was
supposed to repent daily unless he had knowingly messed up. Well
lately I've been really trying to focus on developing a stronger
relationship with Christ, and I've been praying and looking at the
scriptures to see how that's possible, and at our district meeting
this week it was brought up that we draw nearer to Christ by
repenting! I had always heard this but as I heard from general
conference, hearing is not always understanding. That morning I woke
up and thought on Ether 12:27 which talks about weakness, and It
occurred to me that the reason I sometimes feel that I haven't had
much personal growth on my mission or grown closer to Christ as much
as I could have, is because I was relying on myself to propel myself
and make changes on my own, rather than rely on the lord and his
atonement to help me. I learned that repenting is in fact setting
goals with Heavenly Father and relying and asking for his help to make
positive changes in your life. As I shared that the spirit filled the
room and she told us that she wants to make changes in her life too. I
had feared that she would be offended, but with the help of others and
the spirit, it couldn't have gone better.

Good week this week, and I'm hoping this next week will be better!
Hope you all have a nice day and enjoy the crisp, cool, autumn air.

Kevin