August 27, 2012

Hey!  I´m staying in Düsseldorf =)  Elder H is getting transferred, and I get to train another Zone Leader.  Things have been going great out here, we had a ward barbecue, and we got 3 of our investigators to come.  They enjoyed it so much, they all came to Church for the first time!  We also had a kid (he´s 14) just randomly show up with his father.  The dad visited our church 40 years ago, but didn´t really like it.  His son is really interested in religion, so the father said he should come check our church out.  The kid had a blast and wants to come back again!  It was a way good way to end the week, especially since the middle of the week was pretty rough haha.
       Anyway, I´m excited to stay here and keep working hard!  Thanks for everything!
Elder Collings

August 20, 2012

    Alrighty, it was another great week, and now it´s the last week of the transfer!  Man, they go by way fast, and it just hit me that I only have 3 of them left!  Never really thought about that until we visited a district meeting this week, one of the Elders made the comment that Elder H and I were the oldest companionship in the Zone, I didn´t believe it, but... it´s true haha, I´m kinda old on my mission, whatever. 
      I actually got to have the opportunity to work with a New Missionary, this elder is such a stud.  We went out and had more success in one day than they had had in an entire week.  We found lots of new people, taught a bunch of lessons, and gave out about 15 copies of the Book of Mormon.  It was super amazing.
    I don´t know if I ever told you about Bettine, but, Elder H and I talked to her on the street about 4 months ago.  When we talked to her, she told us she was atheist.  We bore testimony and did the whole missionary thing, and she agreed to meet up with us.  We taught her a couple of times, and then gave her to the Sisters because it is so hard for us to find members to come teach with us (can´t meet with women alone).  Anyway, she believes in God now, she´s been coming to Church every week for the last 2 months, and now she´s a super awesome member!  We are actually planning a fireside where converts share their testimonies, and stories of how they met the Church, and she said she would love to take some time to share her story.
    Well, I´m excited to see what happens for transfers!  I´ve been here about 5 months, Elder H has been here about 4, there´s no knowing what will happen haha.
Thanks for everything!
Elder Collings

August 13, 2012

      I was way super excited this week because we were able to go to the temple and have  HUGE leadership council with president Schwartz.  He invited all of the District Leaders also to come.   President asked each zone to take 10 minutes to talk about what the zone has done to meet the goals of the mission, and what the plans are for the future. 
     Other than that, everything was super legit!  I just finished reading the Book of Mormon in German, I can understand about 97% of the words, and I think I know the German scriptures better than the English scriptures haha. I have actually only been studying in German since I served with Elder S.  President said most of the missionaries' German in this mission is terrible, so, he invited everyone to read through the Book of Mormon in German, marking all references to Christ, everything Christ, or our Father in Heaven says, and all Christlike attributes.  I just barely finished, and now I´m going to do it again before December, I´m pretty excited. 
    I got to work in Krefeld again this week with a brand new missionary.  He has only been out for 4 weeks, he´s being trained by Elder J (I served with him in Coburg).  It was so cool.  It was just like my Zone Leader split when I was a golden haha.  We ended up having TONS of success.  We found a new family, and set a baptismal date with a lady.  It was just a great feeling to be in my home town again =)
     Anyway, we´ve got a super busy week ahead of us, I´ll be working in 4 different areas this week!  Thanks for everything you do for me!
Elder Collings

August 6, 2012

Woohoo, another great week!  I´m not sure if I have told you about all of the goals of the mission, but, the goals are that we baptized 150 YSA´s this year, teach 20 lessons a week, find 10 new investigators a week and then focus on working with young single adults.  Well, this zone was basically like... dead 5 months ago, but, we have been focusing on the things President Schwartz has asked us too, and know our zone is leading the mission!  By a long shot.  We are tripling how many lessons we were teaching, quadrupling the people found, and this last week, 5 baptismal dates were set!  We had interviews with President this week, and he said he wanted me to report to all of the District Leaders and Zone Leaders in this meeting we have on Thursday where we were, where we are, and what we did to go there.  About 2 months ago, we made like TONS of plans for what we could do to help this zone out, and, it worked!  So, the zone is tearing it up!
    This week we had some amazing miracles, we met with an inactive lady, who happened to be a referral from a random person on the street, we got to know her real quick and then left.  At the end of the week, she had been trying to call us, but, she couldn´t for some reason, so, she somehow got the number for another companionship, and called them, and told them to tell us that she wanted to meet with us.  We went and met with her again, and she had her sister with her.  She said that her sister has been going through a way hard time, a divorce, her kid is in jail, someone broke into her house and beat her up, she lost her job.... and more, she said that in this time she didn´t know where to go, she had no friends, and none of her family was helping her.  Then, this inactive member just happened to call her up and tell her about the missionaries and how much the missionaries helped her.  The Sister came to visit the member and asked if she could meet with us.  When we were talking to her, she talked about how she just had all of these troubles and how she wanted them to go away and she wanted to be reborn.  We read in Alma 7 with her where it talks about the atonement and baptism, and uses the nifty phrase of being reborn.  She read that and started crying and said it was an answer from God that we are the true church and how she can be happy again.  We set a baptismal date with her in the first lesson, but, she lives in Köln, so, the Elders there will help her the rest of the way.  By the way, that family is from Macedonia too, I don´t know why, but almost all of the people I have been finding and teaching come from the ex-Yugoslavia territories or Africa..... whatever.
    We also were teaching a black guy called Stanly.  We taught him, and he said that he really wanted to learn more, but, he had to go to Stuttgart.  He said he would be there for almost the whole week, but, after, he would love to learn more.  A couple of days later, we got a call from Stanley.  He asked if we still remembered him.  He then asked where the Church was, and when we could meet.  We told him, and then he said, "Good, I´m glad the church is there, I would really like to join your church."  We were way excited and set up a time to meet with, and then we found out he doesn´t live in Düsseldorf either which is why it was always hard to meet with him.  So, we gave him to the Elders in Duisburg, and he is praying about a baptismal date right now.
    There was a baptism in the Ward last week from an excommunicated member.  We were able to get 3 investigators there.  It was so funny, I asked 2 of the investigators if they wanted to get closer to see the baptism, and they didn´t understand, he asked, "You want me to go and get baptized now? Okay."  He started to get up to go and get into the font haha!  His brother was just laughing at him.  They all really ended up enjoying the baptism, and one of our investigators, the one that was going to go in and get baptized right then, told us he wanted to get baptized in 5 weeks.  So, basically, we were hearing about baptism the entire week haha.
    We also managed to meet the goal of 20 lessons again.  We were supposed to be home Sunday at 8 for call-ins.  We had an appointment at 7.30 and that was going to be the 20th.  We went to the lesson, and he wasn´t there!  We ran to a corner, said a quick prayer, doored a house, and found a new family =)  The Lord blessed us to meet that goal and find an amazing family from Iran.
     Thanks for all of your love and support!  Things are going great, and getting better and better!
Elder Collings

July 30, 2012

Hey!  So, I kinda gotta keep this one short, but.... We basically rocked this place and stuff.  We saw the numbers for the entire mission this last week, and we found out that this zone was the worst zone in the mission 6 months ago, but now it is seeing more success than any other zone =) That was awesome.  We´re excited to see how things continue to go up.

    This week we also go to go on a split with an area that has been struggling.  I worked with an Elder that is brand new on his mission.  We went outside and basically saw miracles the entire day.  We had 3 lessons, found new investigators, we even found an inactive member.  The inactive member was riding by on a scooter, saw us and then had a feeling like he should talk to us.  He turned around and chased us down and said he wanted to talk. 

    At the end of that split we had a service project for an elderly lady.   I was moving one of her huge doors.  I had taken it out into the hall, and then I accidentally bumped one of the glass covers that go around the light fixtures on the ceiling.  The cover fell off the ceiling and broke on my hard head.  This thing was actually big, and heavy, and it did not feel really nice haha.  The top of my head started bleeding pretty bad, it was going down my face and I looked hard core like Rambo haha.  Anyway, now I have a massive scab on the top of my head.

    We also had a zone training meeting this week.  We planned a 3 hour training meeting where we could work on the things our zone needed.  It went good.  At the end, we had a testimony meeting.  A bunch of the Elders gave testimony of the things that we had talked about during this meeting. 

    Other than that, everything is going super good.  We´re seeing lots of success, teaching, preaching and working like missionaries do.  Thanks for everything!

Elder Collings

July 23, 2012

Well, I got sick for the first time this week haha.  Tuesday Morning, I woke up and just felt a little funny, but just shrugged it off and figured I was just more tired than normal, but, I ended up getting pretty darn sick.  That day we had 5 appointments made out, the first one went great and I was feeling fine.  We then ran to a second appointment, we were teaching a family from Africa.  They were all just so loud and so excited I left that place with such a huge headache.  Oh yeah, I forgot to say we had eaten some raw fish in between the first 2 lessons.... Then after the second we decided to take a lunch break, I had a Döner with some french fries, and that´s when I realized I was really getting sick haha.   I felt drained, had a headache, and my stomach was going wild.  We had another lesson, this was with a less active member.  He has some psychological problems, so he gets nervous really easily.  His apartment is a disaster.  I can´t even describe how terrible it is.  We went there and started helping him clean, 30 minutes into it I had to sit down and just relax a little.  We finished there and then went to a meeting with our Bishop.  They had prepared some food for us.  I took about 2 bites and I was ready to die!  I couldn´t eat anymore and I thought I´d throw up, but, I didn´t.  We then got a ride to the church, we had a lesson planned for there and a service project cleaning the Church.  I was just feeling terrible, so I took a nap on a couch the entire time haha.  At about 7 they were all done, so we walked home and I tried to sleep.  My stomach and my head hurt so bad I couldn´t sleep.  I finally fell asleep after midnight, but only for a short time.  I then woke up just soaking wet with sweat!  My clothes were soaking, my mattress, my blankets even my pillow!  I thought that was pretty nasty, so, I was obliged to get up and take a quick shower and sleep somewhere else.  And, that´s kind of how the rest of the week went, except with a lot of toilet time added to that.  Actually, by Friday the headaches had gone away, and the stomach ache wasn´t too bad, so, we actually would go out and work around the apartment and then run to the toilet every now and then haha.  Not too pleasant.
    We did have some success though!  The very end of the week, we went on a split to another area that has been dead for ever.  They just got a new missionary in there that is pretty excited to work.  The 2 Elders are young, and excited.  We worked with them for a day and had a ton of success!   And for the first time in about a year they found new investigators (we found 2 on the split) and for the first time in about 2 years they had an investigator in Church!  It was so cool to see success there.  The missionaries are now more excited than ever and ready to work some miracles.
    So, that was basically everything, sick the whole week with a split at the end.  I´m feeling much better now and I´m excited to get out and work hard again!
Thanks for everything!
Elder Collings