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