A baptism!

 

Add Elder Chambers me and Andre´, Andre´ is the guy that just got baptized 

picture of the Baptismal Font... with pass a long cards in it, Elder Chambers was leaning over to feel how warm the water was while we were filling it up, and all of his cards fell out of his pocket into the font.

district picture, Elder Chambers, Elder Jensen, me and Elder Woodall, he´s going home in 2 days.

me giving a book of Mormon to Al Capone

Hello Family!

    This week was pretty much weird and awesome at the same time, we were so busy with planning stuff that it felt like we didn´t have any time to actually go and do the normal work we are used to haha.  

We had 2 splits this week, and one of them was terrible.  The Elder that I was with has no desire to do anything.... including taking a shower....It was so hard to get him to get outside and do some work, and then when he was outside he would walk SO slow, we missed like 3 buses because he just didn´t care. That was not a lot of fun, but, we made it through the day. Then I went on another split with the Zone Leaders in Nürnberg, it was pretty cool. The first hour I was there we set a baptismal date with a guy that they had been teaching, he actually basically asked us what he needed to do to get baptized haha.  But, the coolest thing this week was the baptism that we had in Würzburg.  Andre´got baptized and confirmed this week which was basically amazing.  He is way cool, he called us up and he had already planned everything out.  He knew which songs he wanted to be sang, he knew who he wanted to talk and baptize him and everything. The only thing he didn´t plan was who the witnesses were because he didn´t know about them.  I talked to him after the baptism about how he felt, he of course said that it was awesome, but, he said that as he walked into the water he had like 1,000 thoughts going through his head, but then as he was immersed, everything was just clear, he said he felt warm everywhere (probably because we worked so hard getting the water the right temperature haha) and he said everything just felt right.  Then during the confirmation, the spirit was so strong, he stood up afterward and had tears in his eyes, he was speechless and couldn´t explain what he had felt.  So that was basically super amazing awesome haha.

    This week we also found out Friday evening, that we were going to be giving talks in Church.  We had no idea, and I guess they basically didn´t know either until they saw us walk into the Church to clean the Baptismal Font. They just figured they´d have us speak, so, we were already way busy, and then we were a little busier haha.  But, the talks went way good, at the end of Sacrament meeting we had 6 different families invite us to dinner.  I think the Ward has started to warm up to us, they didn´t really like the missionaries that were here before, but, I think they like us now =)

    Not much happened other than that, our 2 most legit investigators were both sick this week, and then another one had a son that needed surgery, so,  hopefully all gets better for this week so we can keep helping them come close to Christ =)  And, that´s just about everything, Elder Chambers and I are both staying for another transfer, this transfer is only 5 weeks instead of 6 though... I don´t really know why, but, things are looking good, so hopefully we can keep having success.

   Thanks for all of your help with everything, I'm happy and doing great!
Elder Collings

They came to church!

July 18,2011

Hello Family!
    This week was pretty crazy, and didn´t really turn out how we thought it would haha.  Basically none of our plans fell through, but, we got this guy named Werner Martini to Church for the first time in the 8 months he has been investigating the Church, and we had a guy that we contacted on the street 2 weeks ago come to Church with his friend which was awesome.  Our Bishop asked the visitors to introduce themselves in Priesthood and Werner told everyone that he is searching for the truth and the path that God wants him to follow, I think he found it, he just hasn´t realized it yet.  The other 2 guys ended up having so many questions after Sacrament, we ended up meeting with them after sacrament and gave them the restoration lesson, they liked it, so we meet with them again in about 4 hours =)
    This week we have Andre´s baptism, I´m way excited for it.  We have been going through the commandments with him, and he has absolutely no problems with anything, he ended up basically bearing his testimony to us at the end of our last lesson on basically everything that our Church believes in.  He´s like way prepared for his baptism this Saturday.
    Other than that, not much has happened, we are really looking forward to this week, we have a ton of appointments planned out, so we will be pretty busy.  Transfer calls come this Saturday, I really hope I get to stay.  This place has really changed and I´d like to help it keep changing =) so, I guess we´ll see what happens haha.
    Everything is going great, thanks for your help with everything!
Elder Collings

Teacher and Translator

Hello Family,

    This week was awesome like usual, I´ve gotta keep this one kinda short, sorry, but last week I said we had more success in Würzburg than it has had in a LONG time, well, this week was even better haha.  We are pretty confident we are going to get another baptismal date this coming week which is always awesome.  We are being blessed with so much success, it is wonderful.  I ended up teaching Elders quorum for the first time, and it ended up being the easiest lesson ever haha.  I don´t know why, but, everyone had so much to say in our lesson.  The lesson was about Eternal Families, I probably only spoke for 5 minutes and asked about 4 questions, and then the rest of the time was everyone discussing the topic, it went way well, and super easy haha.  I also ended up translating for someone in Church for the first time.  Someone from the States was visiting and he couldn´t speak any German, he asked if I would be willing to translate for him, I tried my best.  It is so hard to listen to what is being said and then try and tell someone what they said, while the person in still speaking, so, I don´t know how much he got out of it, but, I understood almost every word which was awesome haha.

    Anyway, sorry to keep it short!  Thanks for everything!

Elder Collings

The one where we are all wet was a couple of days ago.  We walked outside and it was raining a little bit, that happens way often in Germany, it rains so little that it´s almost like it isn´t raining, and then it stops after a couple of minutes.... but, this time it didn´t stop.  We didn´t grab our umbrellas because we thought it would stop. Like 5 minutes later it started pouring, and it didn´t stop for 2 hours, and we were outside the entire time haha

The one with the cookies were some cookies we tried to make but ended up being terrible.  I didn´t really think much about what I was doing, so when I put them into the cooking thing I had the scoops all different sizes, some were big, some were small... So, after a couple of minutes some were burning, so we took them out, the big ones were like not even close to being finished, so when we took them out they all kinda oozed together, except for the ones that were burnt, they just stayed as they were haha.  The cookies did not taste good haha

The Elder with me in the other picture is Elder Woodall, he is probably the biggest BYU fan I have ever met.  Everything he owns is BYU, he knows absolutely everything about BYU, I can´t even begin to explain how much stuff he knows, because he knows everything.  He goes home in about 2 weeks.

The picture with the creepy guy holding a picture of Jimmer is Elder Woodall, the BYU fan.  That is his planner that he modified haha.

And then the last picture is just a random picture Elder Chambers took of me and I figured you´d love to see my pretty face, so I put it up for you =)

Another Great Week in Würzburg

Hey Guess what?  It was another great week in Würzburg, like every
week haha.  This week was way cool, we set a baptismal date and we
taught more lessons this week than this area has seen in a LONG time.
The cycle before had a total of 27 lessons in 6 weeks with 1 new
investigator.  We´re on week three with 26 lessons and 5 new
investigators =)  So, things are going up and not down like they
should be haha.
    We got our new mission President this week, President Schwarz.
For the first time we had an entire zone conference in German, and, I
actually understood almost all of it (almost, not quite) he compared
Germany´s growth of the Church with Chile´s growth of the Church,
Chile is growing like 100X faster than Germany, but, he is positive
that Germany is ready to basically explode with righteousness, and I
think I´ll help haha.
    So we set one baptismal date this week, and, we really hope to set
another one this week, we have an investigator that has been
investigating for about 6 months, while we were reading his teaching
record, we noticed he had never been taught the commandments, and
after he had been taught the first three lessons, the missionaries
have only been reading a chapter in the Book of Mormon with him 2
times a week, so, he loves the Book of Mormon which is good, but,
since he has only been taught the first three lessons that 1 time 6
months ago, he has forgotten a lot of it, and he has no idea what the
commandments are.
    We saw that, and we decided that wasn´t right, so we decided to
re-teach stuff so he remembers it, and now we just started moving on to
the commandments.  He has told us he wants to know if it is true, so,
why not show him the commandments so he can choose to follow them and
get more blessings?  That´s what we did, and our last lesson with him,
we spoke about baptism, after 6 months he is starting to progress, and
so, hopefully after this week we will help him prepare for baptism.
    Andre is the person whose baptismal date we set.  He´s the 25 year

old that has been coming to church for the last 2 months and
already knows everything haha, we just have to go through the lessons
with him.  We had a little ward party last Thursday, and I ended up
talking to him for a long time, and he actually has already started
thinking about serving a mission, he is 25 right now, which means
technically he can´t, but, we have heard of some people still being
able to go at 26, but, it is way cool that even though he isn´t
baptized yet, and he doesn´t know everything about the Church yet, he
knows that it is good and has thought about serving a mission.  I
invited him to come on joint teaches with us, and he actually wants to
haha, so, we don´t really have a lot of worries about him, he´s
basically amazing.
       Everything is going good, I´m happy and doing awesome, thanks for
all of your support!
Elder Collings