Hello Family!
Well, this week was probably the legitest week so far since I got out here, and I´m not even joking. Basically this week was awesome =) And basically, I have nothing but good to write. I don´t really know where to start, but, I guess I´ll start out with a story; so, basically Elder H is the worst bike rider I have ever seen in my life. From the very first week I told him he shouldn´t ride in the middle of the road because it makes people mad, and I told him he shouldn´t ride in the middle of the road going the wrong way on a one way street. But, Elder H is one of those people that just really doesn´t have a care in the world, so, he did it anyway. He almost got hit by 2 cars, and this week... He did get hit by a car. It was on that one way street that I always told him not to ride in the road on. Another car turned onto the one way street, they only looked to the right to see if another car was coming, there was nobody there, so, they pulled out onto the road right as Elder H rode in front of them. Elder H was perfectly fine, but, he scratched up the car a lot and put a couple of little dents in it. The worst news about it was that the car he hit was a brand new Jaguar, they are even more expensive in Germany. Elder H was 100% at fault and our President isn´t sure if our insurance covers that accident, so......He might be paying for it. The guy took it to a shop already, and the estimated cost is 2,000€-2,500€. I tried to warn him before, he just never listened.
Anyway, this week was not super awesome because my companion got hit by a car, it was super awesome because we set 2 more baptismal dates =) The first one was with that lady that I found in the contacts list on the phone. Basically I called all of the people we didn´t know and she said she wanted to meet with us and be baptized. We met with her for the first time, she´s way legit, she already planned out her baptism and sent geneology work into the temple to get her parents sealed together, and she wants to be sealed to her family. The only thing, is that she is 84 years old and not in the best of health. She wants to tell her entire family in person that she is joining our Church, but, she won´t be meeting with them until Christmas. So, he baptism is scheduled for January. We don´t even know if she is going to live that long haha. So, we are meeting with her and seeing if he can help her decide to do it a little faster, but, she will get baptized either way =)
The next guy that we set a baptismal date with was actually this morning... about 4 hours ago. We found him by going through the area book of old investigators and calling everyone up to see who had interest. The missionaries stopped meeting with him because he was really busy all the time. He never lost interest. When the missionaries stopped meeting with him, he started investigating other Churches.... when he investigated one religion, for some reason they thought that he worked for the NSA. He said that he didn´t, they didn´t beleive him, so they hooked him up to a lie detector haha. That obviously didn´t go down well with him, so, he stopped investigating them and said he was going to sue them, but, they forked over 800€ instead so now he just sends anit-information against that religion to everyone he knows (He asked us to give some of the information to President Monson haha) He wasn´t really a super legit investigator, but, he came to General Conference, felt the spirit, and now he wants to be baptized. He asked a ton of questions this morning, and he is 100% okay with everything, except, he is worried about tithing. He said that he is in debt right now and that he doesn´t have a lot of money... if any. And the economy in Germany isn´t looking too good. He said he wants to join our Church really bad, but, he doesn´t want to join it if he can´t keep a sacred commandment. So he said if he can´t afford to pay tithing he would rather not get baptized, so that he can still be good friends with the Church... Obviously there´s a little misunderstanding in here, but, we´ll help him overcome his concern and he said that for now the date we set for him is good =)
We also had 2 other miracles happen. We had 2 lessons fall through one night (Same night Elder H ended up getting hit) As we walked outside of the Church from the second missed appointment, we contacted this guy right outside of the Church. We invited him inside. We showed him the Church and he loved it. We showed him the Restoration and he felt the spirit. He wants to find out if what we are sharing is true, and he said he wants it to be true. He came to General Conference and loved it. He has read in the Book of Mormon and said that it always makes him feel good when he reads. He is basically way legit, we meet with him tonight, and we are planning on setting another baptismal date =)
At conference one of our members, Sister Höch brought her neice along. (Sister Höch has a way cool conversion story, she saw an angel!) Anyway, basically Sister Höch is the most missionary minded member I have ever seen. She brought her Neice with, her neice really enjoyed conference and felt the spirit. She told me she believes that our Church is true, she has been reading in the Book of Mormon regularly for the last couple of weeks and praying with her Aunt. We invited her to pray alone to know if the Book of Mormon is true, and we are planning on also inviting her to baptism very soon =)
Things are definitely going well in Offenbach, I´ve never seen so much success. We had a zone conference not too long ago, and President Schwartz showed about 4 different prophecies of Germany. All of them basically said that the day will come when Germany will be opened up to the Gospel, and a work greater than any other on the planet will go forth. President Schwartz said the time is now. Basically 3 weeks ago our entire mission had a total of 20 baptismal dates, as of today, our zone alone (There are 6 zones) has 14 baptismal dates! The other zones haven´t exploded in the same way, but, they will =) Everyone said Germany was a tough mission before I came out here, but.... I am still seeing a lot of success, I think people are just coming out with the wrong expectations in mind. Ever since I decided to look for Baptisms instead of just a good street contact, we are finding baptisms, and that seems to be the same story with the other Elders here in the zone.
Everything is going awesome, I´m excited for this next transfer, just like every transfer haha. Hopefully I can write so many success stories every week, and hopefully next week I can write about some more baptisms =) And by the way, you should pray for our baptismal dates: Sister Koch, Steffen, Brother Hoffmann. And we actually had to delay Steffen´s baptismal date because he got in a car wreck....... but he´s okay and still wants to be baptized =)
Elder Collings
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