April 16th and 23rd

April 16th

 

Wow, this was probably the slowest week on my mission haha.  Elder C was sick the WHOLE week.  He threw up a TON and was basically just feeling terrible the whole week.  He lost all appetite and ended up only eating 1.5 bananas and half a yogurt and a couple of mouthfulls of food in 4 days.  He has lost 15 pounds, but, now he is doing better =)  I can´t really say anything happened last week haha, I just read, ate and worked out all day every day, not much else I could have done.  This is Elder C´s very last week in Germany, luckily he is feeling much better, we´ll be getting some calls this week to find out who I will be working with this next transfer. 

    I don´t know if I told you how this area was when I came in, but, it was basically as dead as every other area I have been moved into, this last week we weren´t able to teach anyone because of the sickness, but, last night we made a ton of calls to get this last week going good.  We are expecting more than 20 lessons =) it was a way big change in just 5 weeks.

    Anyway, I´m doing great, thanks for everything, I´ll get ya some sweet pictures next week!

Elder Collings

 

 

 

 April 23rd

Hey Family!

    This week was pretty awesome.  It was actually pretty weird haha.  Elder C leaves this week, so he has been packing, doing paper work, and saying goodbye to all of the members and people he has met.  So this last week we met with TONS of people.  We also had a couple of awesome miracles.  There have actually been 2 people baptized the last 2 weeks by the sisters in this ward, and one of the ladies that was baptized loves doing missionary work.  She asked if she could go out and do doors with the sisters.  She can´t speak any German, but she really wanted to do her best to tell people about the gospel.  They sat on a train and some guy apparently smiled at them.  This girl looked at the sisters and said, "He smiled over at us.... I´m going to give him a card"  so she just walked over and tried to say something in German and give him a card, he actually spoke English and gave them his number haha.  So he came to the baptism on Saturday and we got to meet him.  He is like 6 foot 4, like 220 pounds, and it´s like solid muscle haha.  He worked for the special forces in Egypt for a long time.  He is way open and told us he knows Christianity is the truth (He was born and raised Muslim)  He liked the baptism, came to Church the next day, and wants to learn more.  Our Mission President came to  our ward and talked to him.  A is way nice and said he would love to help with anything possible, apparently he has a bunch of connections, so people can travel easily to Egypt and stuff.  President Schwartz asked him what talents he had to see how he could help out, A said, "Well..... I don´t think you need anyone killed, but, I can do that"  He laughed a bunch, but.... I believe it haha.  So, we´ll be meeting with him Tuesday, I´m excited =)

    We also had a great lesson right before the Baptism with Herr F.  We found him a little while  ago and haven´t met with him too much.  But we taught him about prayer and scripture study and it was an AMAZING lesson.  At the end he offered a kneeling prayer and in his prayer he told God that he thinks he has found the right path for his life.  Then at Church our members were super awesome and nice and talked to both of them for about an hour after all of the meetings.  I´m way excited =)  We have been seeing a lot of cool miracles, we had a random guy come up to us and basically say he loved coming to church 5 years ago and now wants to learn more, but now he´s married with a kid.  So, good things will be happening in Düsseldorf =)

    I am doing great, I´ve only been working in Düsseldorf 5 weeks, and one week was spent in the house haha, but I´m excited to take it over.  My new companion is also a new Zone Leader, it will be his first transfer as a zone leader.  I actually already know him from the MTC, he is VERY quiet, but a spiritual giant.  It will be fun to work with him.  Things are going great and I´m having a blast.

    Thanks for everything you do!
Elder Collings