May 29 2012

Hey this week was pretty spectacular with a lot of other crazy stuff that happened haha.  So remember that family that wants to be baptized?  They all made it to Church this week, we met with the Family again yesterday and they said it was wonderful and can´t wait to come back again.  There is a problem though!  They all want to be baptized, the Husband has gone without smoking the last 3 days so Word of Wisdom is not really a problem, but, they are not married to each other.  Normally that wouldn´t really be too bad, they can just go get married, but, the Husband has no citizenship anywhere in the World.  He was born and raised in Yugoslavia, after all of the Wars and everything and after they all separated into their own countries, he was left without being a citizen anywhere.  He found his wife when he was 18, had the traditional wedding in Macedonia (They invite all immediate neighbors and family)  and had a good time.  Then they went to get the paper that says they were married, the people looked at his papers and said he can´t get married.  He has been with his wife for 20 years now and has tried several times to get married, but they have no idea what they can do.  We sent a letter to President Schwartz, he also didn´t know what to do, so he sent it further to the area Presidency, one of the counselors replied that they also didn´t know what to do, so... we just gotta wait.  This family is like so legit, the Father told us yesterday that it was his greatest desire to get baptized.  I really hope we can figure something out!

    This week we also had the opportunity to fast for finding, and then have a day after just full of finding.  We went out, and in the zone we found more investigators in one day than we have ever found in a single week.  The story was the same in the mission, we found 50% more investigators in one day than we normally find in an entire week.  It was way awesome. 

  

    Anyway, things are going great, this will be the last week of the transfer, that means next week 5 missionaries will be going home from their missions in this zone, and we will basically have a totally new zone.  I´m excited to see how everything turns out.

 

Thanks for everything, you´re all awesome!
Elder Collins

May 21, 2012

This week was a super awesome week of miracles.  I don´t know if I told you about that family from Macedonia that we have been teaching, but they all want to be baptized =)  We met with them last week to see what they thought about Church, the husband, Bekhirl said that as he walked into the chapel he felt like he knew the people already even though he had never met them.  He then told us how much he loves the Book of Mormon.  He used to be Muslim, and he would study the Koran every day.  He said he never really felt anything special about it, he just found it interesting, so he decided to read the Bible.  That was the first time he actually felt something special.  He then decided Christianity was true and Islam was not.  He said now whenever he reads the Book of Mormon, he just has a feeling come over his whole entire body.  He reads for hours non stop, he is already through Alma and we´ve only known him a couple of weeks.  We read about the Waters of Mormon with him and asked him what his thoughts were, or if  he had any questions.  His only question was, "When, when should I be baptized?"  We told him he had to quit smoking first, he said that ever since he had been meeting with us, he has started to quit, he is already down to 5 cigarettes a day, he was at 3 packs.  He told us, "If it wasn´t for the cigarettes, I would be baptized right now!"  So, all 7 of them want to be baptized as soon as the father quits smoking =)

    We also had a super awesome time at Church this week.  There was a lady that got baptized a year ago, she had her very first talk on Sunday.  She was so excited, she made out invitations for 30 of her friends, and about 15 came!  We had about 30 non members in total in our sacrament meeting last Sunday, it was absolutely amazing.  The ward is getting so excited, maybe we can get them to go out and do some doors haha.  Jake Howard just sent me a letter and said the members in Argentina knock on doors, I´m so jealous haha.  So........ things are going super duper good and I am having a blast!

    Thanks for all of your love and support!
Elder Collings

May 14, 2012

Thought I´d send you all some pictures =)  I kinda talked to ya like yesterday, I could tell you couldn´t really understand me haha, your interpretations of my speaking was pretty off most the time but whatever haha.  I don´t know what was wrong with the phone, Elder H used the same phone and his family understood him perfectly but......yeah =)

    Everything is great just like I told you yesterday, we´re tearing it up, teaching tons of people, finding tons of people and really seeing a lot of miracles, I´ll keep this one short and actually answer some old e-mails I guess haha =)

 

Love ya´ll lots!

Eler Collings

 

 

May 7, 2012

You know, it´s pretty weird starting all of my letters, I never really know what to say other than this week was awesome haha, but.... it´s totally true every time =)  This week was awesome.  It has been way fun working out here with Elder H, we have already seen a bunch of success, and things are getting better and better every day, Düsseldorf is now completely turned around and is having tons of success again.  We had the opportunity to ride a train down to Frankfurt for a Leadership Training, almost all of my old companions are Zone Leaders; Elder A from the MTC, Elder J my second Companion, Elder Ch my Third companion and then of Course Elder H my current companion.  President shared a lot of the impressions and feelings that he has had for where this mission is going, he put up 5 numbers, 150, 20, 10, 5, 1.  The 150 is a goal he set for 150 Young single adult Baptisms this year in the mission, 20 is how many lessons he wants us to get in a week, 10 is the number of new investigators he sees us getting each week, 5 is how many people he wants prepared for an investigator before they come to church and 1 is all about focusing on the individual.  Each one of those actually comes from different prophecies that have been given, Elder Perry said he was thoroughly convinced that if we were teaching 20 lessons a week baptisms would double, re-activations would double and we would have "Real Growth."  President Kopischke came and gave his own little prophecy and said that if we internalized the first principles of finding, and got a good attitude, we would find 10 new investigators a week, 5 is something president Schwartz has been prompted to tell us, and 1 is about something Elder Bednar said.  He told a story about when he was in BYU Idaho as the... I can´t think of the position name haha, the dude on top =)  they had a fireside on a Sunday and there were 250 people.  BYU Idaho has 12,000 students.  Elder Bednar challenged them at the end, he said that an apostle will teach according to the preparedness of the group he is speaking to.  He invited them to prepare themselves, dress up in the best attire they had, and then invite 5 people to do the same, but, to invite those 5 to invite 4 and those 4 to invite 3... so on.  Tuesday came and over 12,000 people were there all in suits.  He said at the end this principle of focusing on the 1 will touch 1,000s.

    So.... we decided we had better get to that haha.  This last week we actually had over 20 lessons made out.... but only about 13 went through.  So we are going to do our best to really set an example for the rest of the Zone and show them that these super crazy high goals are possible.  Just so you know, the zone right now averages 4 lessons per companionship, and .67 new investigators per week per companionship.  Much work is to be done haha.

       We had a couple of super awesome miracles this week too.  So, one that was way cool actually has 2 sides.  So, we have 2 sisters in our area also.   They were crossing a street and passed by this kid.  They were all the way to the other end when one of the sisters felt like they should talk to him, so they turned around and just ran at him yelling excuse me.  She didn´t really know what to say so she just said God loves you.  The kid said that was really wierd haha.  But he then started to cry and said he had planned on killing himself that day because he did not feel any love of God.  He had gone to a Catholic church to pray but felt nothing so he figured there was no God and saw no point in living anymore.  The sisters made out an appointment and we were there so we could start teaching him.  It was one of the most spiritual lessons ever, he started to tear up a couple of times and of course the sisters cried haha.  It went way good and we´re meeting again on Wednesday. 

    After Church we were talking to some members.  One of them asked about an old investigator and said that this investigator had had a baptismal date and came to church every week for like 6 months.  We had no idea who it was, so the member said he would send him a text message.  Later that day this  random person called us up, it was that guy the member had been talking about.  He said that he wanted to come back, but this time he wanted to be serious.  So we´re meeting him again on Wednesday also. 

    We have an investigator named Siegfried F.  He has been slowly making progress but he has always had a hard time coming to church.  He has a lot of financial problems so he sleeps terribly and he has a hard time waking up.  We taught him about why church is important, it was a way awesome lesson, but afterwards he showed no greater desire to come to church.  On Saturday we called him up to ask if he would be coming, he said that if he wakes up in time he will, but he is not setting an alarm..... we went ahead and called up a bunch of members to pray for him so that he would make it.  Sacrament meeting started and he wasn´t there, but then right after the opening prayer, he walked in =)  It was so awesome, and the members got way excited too because they had prayed for him to come.

    There was also this way super drunk guy and girl that we talked to the other day, they didn´t really know what was going on... but they sure liked us for some reason.  They kept asking about what we do as missionaries and then they would tell us how much they liked that and respected it.  They went on forever about how terrible the world was and told us how wonderful it is that we have faith, anyway that was just kinda weird, but, our bus ended up coming we got in but quickly found out it was the wrong bus, the right bus was directly behind it.  We got out and that drunk guy had no idea what was going on, he thought the driver kicked us out because we were missionaries, he started yelling, "They are talking about faith!  They are talking about faith!  That is discrimination what you are doing! Discrimination!"  We got in the right bus and he put his head in the window and told us we didn´t have to take that, we could call the police haha.

    Anyway, I am doing great, thanks for all of your love and support!
Elder Collings