Sept 23, 2012

Hey!  This week was basically a crazy roller coaster week.  We started the week out with tons of super legit investigators, and all of them were making good progress, and we ended the week with only a few investigators, crazy how often that happens haha.  So.... basically we are almost starting off from scratch, we are only teaching 2 families right now, luckily they are both way super awesome and already invited me to spend Christmas with them haha. 
    The people we are teaching are the Abagius from Romania, and the Mensahs from Ghana.  Basically both of these families believe everything we say.  They take it in as the truth.  Whenever the do have a small problem, like with the Word of Wisdom, all we have to do is ask if they believe in Joseph Smith.  We then tell them, Joseph Smith revealed this, so if you believe in Joseph Smith and that he was called of God, you can believe that staying away from Coffee will bless you.  And then they agree.  The only trouble that we have with them both, is getting them to church.  Hopefully we can get them coming soon! =)
    I set a goal this week, I decided I wanted to know the scriptures better, so, I set a goal to memorize 2 scriptures a day, but, I found myself memorizing 3 a day, and today I memorized 4.  I have been memorizing all of the Scriptures in the Preach my Gospel Lessons that they have you study to understand the lessons better.  Hopefully I don´t get lazy and I keep it up haha. 
   Anyway, this week was basically a normal week working hard and stuff.  Anyway, that´s basically everything, have a great week and thanks for everything!
Elder Collings

September 9, 2012

This week was super awesome.  It was actually way crazy busy too, I was all over the Mission haha.  I was in Frankfurt, Dortmund, Bergisch Gladbach, Köln, Wuppertal and Solingen.  We had a couple of conferences with President and also a few splits.  We also had a huge street display in Bergisch Gladbach.  We´ve been organizing it with the Stake for the last 2 months, it didn´t end up how we wanted it (We wanted a huge Projector showing movies, or Mormon messages) but, we were able to still bring a TV and have some movies play, and also get a bunch of pictures up.  We gave out over 50 copies of the Book of Mormon in 5 languages and hundreds of other material.  The Elders in that area got 15 new people that want to learn more, and we also found an inactive member that wants to meet with them.  It ended up going way good.
    Other than that, I´m super tired haha, I almost fell asleep in Church like 10 times, I think I need to get to bed on time, I tend to talk too long on the phone with the other missionaries, so 10:30 comes by and we still have reports to fill out.  But, things are going great =)  We´ve been doing this new workout an Elder Brought from home.  They call it the P90x Ab Ripper, I don´t know if that´s just a funny name, or if that´s what it´s really called, but whatever it is, I like it haha.  Basically I´ll have washboard abs pretty soon =P  Elder R and I have been trying to be more healthy, I love my junk food, and my workouts lately have either been going and dribbling a basketball, or sitting on the floor and shooting a basketball haha.  We decided to get something more effective.
    I´m doing super good, and I am excited for this next week, this week I´ll have another companion.  His name is Greg W, he is from Speyer.  Out here, a lot of the people who have gone on missions do "Mini missions".  They call up President and ask if they can serve a mini mission for a week.  This guy called up, and president said he could come and work with us for a week, it´ll be cool to work with him.
    Well, that´s basically it, well not really, thousands of stuff happen, I´m just really lazy with writing it all down haha. Thanks for everything that you do for me!
Elder Collings

September 3, 2012

Hey!  Sorry, I have to kinda keep this one short, we have a bunch of Reports that we need to send to President Schwartz and the Stake Presidents.  I got my new companion, his name is Elder R.  He has been out as long as I had been out when I got here, so, I have been out 4 transfers longer than him.  He´s basically a stud and it´s a blast to work with him.  Elder H was way sad to leave, I think in the end I brought out the good side of him, I sent you a picture of it =)  I don´t know why all of my companions have been so weird haha.  Anyway, Elder H was the most serious person I´ve ever met, so I am very proud of that picture.
    Anyway, we had a miracle happen this week!  We have been teaching these 2 brother from Africa, Steven and Boateng.  They have been making good progress, anyway, last week Boateng cut his thumb at work.  It wasn´t anything way bad, but, it was a decent cut.  We didn´t think much about it.  2 Days later, we came by, and his thumb had swollen to like the size of his wrist!  The skin looked really weird, and cracked, and he was in a ton of pain.  He hadn´t left his bed in 2 days, except to see the doctor once.  We took the opportunity to teach him about the Priesthood and about blessings.  He asked if we would give him one, and so we did.  The next day we called up, and he said his thumb was fine!  He was going around and doing all of his normal things!  We haven´t had a chance to go and see him yet, but we have talked with him and his 2 brothers and they all say his thumb healed overnight.  The Church is true haha.
    So, things are going great, this week I will be working in Frankfurt, Köln, Dortmund, Wuppertal, Duisburg and Düsseldorf haha.  We have a HUGE street Display planned out in Köln.  All the 22 missionaries of our zone will be there, we´ll have a street display with computers and a projector.  The members will be there too.  We´ll do that for about 3 hours, and then every missionary is going to go on a split with a member and work with the member in the city for 4 hours.  The stake president said he wants to do something like that once every month!  I´m way excited to see how that goes.
    Thanks for all of your love and support =)
Elder Collings