A letter of advice to future missionaries

Hello Young Men & Young Women!

A mission is such a cool experience; there really isn´t anything that compares to it and it´s really hard to say how you can prepare for it, but, i´ll do my best =)

I think one of the best things you can do is know the lessons. I thought that I knew the lessons when I came out, and I did, but, I couldn´t teach them. It´s a completely different thing to teach someone the word of wisdom, or to teach them about the plan of salvation than it is to be familiar with it. If you studied the lessons out of Preach my Gospel and even practiced teaching them...which seems kinda weird, but trust me it helps, I swear you will be so thankful once you get into the MTC. The only thing you do in the MTC is teach those lessons in role play situations, because, that´s what you are going to be doing in the field, imagine that haha.

I would say the biggest advice I could give though, would be to know the purpose of a missionary. As a missionary, your goal is to invite others to come unto Christ, it´s on page 1 of Preach my Gospel. That is the goal the Lord expects us to fulfill on our mission, and as we fulfill this goal, we make him proud and he blesses us for our service and diligence in spreading the gospel. This goal is actually really easy to fulfill, it is just sometimes hard to see that you are fulfilling this goal. Here in Germany, we talk to a ton of people on the street, some days we spend 4 hours straight just trying to get people to listen to the message of the Restored gospel. At the end up the day, if we have 0 lessons and 0 new investigators, a lot of missionaries would see that as a failure of the day, but, it´s not. We spent the entire day inviting people to come unto Christ, which means we met our goal as a missionary, which means our Father in Heaven is proud of us, so why shouldn´t we be proud of the work we did?

Having a greater understanding of the goal of a missionary will help you so much on your mission. I can honestly say I have been happy every day on my mission because I have been doing all I can to fulfill my goal. I know that I am fulfilling this goal with every person I speak to, even when they deny the message, I accomplished my goal that the Lord has set for me. Everyone has their Agency, they choose if they want to listen or not, and I can not force them to listen.

So that´s just some advice I´d give you, I could give more haha, but, I think that is enough. If you want to prepare to be a good missionary, learn the lessons, practice teaching them so you are familiar with them and understand what the Lord requires of His missionaries. If you do all of that, I can promise you, you will have a successful mission, and your Father in Heaven will be proud of what you have done for him.

Elder Collings

Transferred

Hello Family!

It was another wonderful week in Krefeld, and sadly it was my last =( I am being transferred this Wednesday to a place called Coburg. (which means you shouldn´t call the phone number I gave you last time, I´ll send an e-mail on Thursday saying what number to call) It is actually in a part of Germany called Bayern (By-Ern), or, in English we say Bavaria. They actually have 2-3 completely different forms of German down there, so I will speak to some people and have absolutely no idea what they are saying, but i´m kinda used to that haha. Elder Mayle actually served their for 2 transfers (12 weeks) and he absolutely loved it, he said it´s the most beautiful place in the mission.! And apparently, 20 minutes North of where our apartment is we are in East Germany which used to be communist territory. This place has a ton of history, there´s a castle there which happens to be the place where Martin Luther translated some of the Bible and a wall in our apartment that is 700 years old, needless to say, I am pretty excited to go, but also kinda sad haha.

At the beginning of this transfer, elder Mayle and I set a goal to teach 50 lessons this transfer, and, we ended up teaching 52 which was awesome. We have so many investigators that are amazing and i´m really going to miss teaching them. We stopped by a couple of them yesterday to say good-bye, and then I found out I don´t know how to say good-bye haha, I only know how to say `see ya later`. It´s been way cool to see how much Krefeld has grown, when Elder Mayle first got here, his companion was at his last 6 weeks. They basically stayed inside all day and only had one investigator, so the area was pretty dead. Then Elder Mayle got a different companion and they worked way hard, and then I came and Krefeld is super cool now haha. It went from 1 investigator and only 4 lessons in a transfer, to 8 investigators and 52 lessons, so that was super awesome to see how an area is blessed through hard work. This next transfer I could see Krefeld having 2-3 baptisms if they work hard.

Most awesome thing that happened this week was a lesson with this guy named Edmond. He comes out of Nigeria and he´s like way super Religious. We had a lesson with him in our Church on Thursday and it went way way good. At the end, once we talked about the Book of Mormon, he held it up and said ,"I know what i´m going to be doing the next 2 weeks." He was so excited about the Book of Mormon, he understood everything we taught, it´s going to be awesome to see... well, to hear, how he does.

Sounds like you all are doing great, sorry to hear about Con-Man´s mouth, i´d like some pictures please =). Where are you guys going on vacation? Conner sent an e-mail about something like that, but, he´s kind of a joker so I didn´t believe him haha. I did not get the package yet, but I have zone conference next week, so I´ll get to see all of my mail once I get there.

Anyway, I´m happy and excited to see another part of Germany, the not so industrial side, talk to you all later.

Elder Collings

Easter

Hello Family, and happy Easter, kinda haha.

We have our p-day today instead of Monday because the Germans never just have one day as a Holiday. They have 3 days of Easter. Everything was closed yesterday, so, we get p-day today to buy all of our food and stuff.

So Mother´s day is on the 8th and I am allowed to call home on that day, so this is what my companion said we should do. Apparently it´s a common thing for people to scam you with calling cards so I end up spending a bunch of money for nothing, so I can give you our cell phone number and you can just call us on the 8th. My companion says it´s best if you buy a calling card (cheapest for you) but I honestly have no Idea how it works. My number is xxxxxx and if you call me at 10 in the morning, it will be 6 in the evening here and I will just be getting back so I can talk. There is also a chance either Elder Mayle or I will be transferred next week, but, I´ll send you an e-mail if I get transferred. So, I hope that all works out!

Anyway, this week was pretty cool. For Easter we had an appointment with a guy named Prince, he is from Africa and we have been meeting with him every week since I got here. We talked a lot about authority because he didn´t understand why he would have to be baptized again if he already was baptized in the Catholic Church. He then asked us how we baptized, when we told him he said it was different than how they did it in the Catholic Church. He wanted to read how Christ was baptized, so we read in in the New Testament and then we read 3 Nephi 11 showing how Christ said we should be baptized. Then we bore testimony on how the Book of Mormon clears up some of the Bible since it isn´t so clear which is why we needed him to pray about the Book of Mormon. It was totally clear for him after that, so He said he was going to pray about the Book of Mormon every day until he gets an answer, and once he does he said he would get baptized =) So hopefully that happens fast haha

After that appointment we went to a families house for dinner. They had a barbecue and it was basically amazing and I ate so much food I felt like I was going to blow up. They have a little 3 year old girl and for some reason she thinks i´m like the strongest guy in the world, except for Jesus Christ, so whenever her Dad takes something from her she always says, "Elder Collings is stronger than you and he´ll beat you up if you don´t give it back!" It´s funny because her Dad is freaking huge and I´m sure he has eaten things more intimidating than me haha.

So that was my Easter, well, the day of Easter we Celebrated. The streets this week were basically empty because Germany has 3 days of Easter, and everyone was gone, so the week was pretty slow, but, I had fun.

This week was also pretty cool because I got another guy to say he would be baptized once he received an answer about the Book of Mormon. This guy wasn´t one our investigators though, he was an investigator from Wesel. This guy is like seven feet tall, he´s super strong, but he is like the most humble, shy guy I have ever met. He wouldn´t look at any of us in the eye, he just folds his arms and kinda looks down to the ground, he looks at us in the eye for like 2 seconds and then looks back down. He wouldn´t pray for the longest time because he said he had been away from God for so long he didn´t feel worthy to speak to him. We bore tons of testimony and talked about a ton of stuff and at the very end I asked if he´d be willing to get baptized when he got an answer and he said he would. We then asked if he´d be willing to pray right then and talk to his Heavenly Father and he said yes. His prayer was like this "Heavenly Father, thank you for this beautiful day, thank you for Jesus Christ, thank you for the missionaries and how they help me, in the Name of Jesus Christ, Amen." It was cool because that was his first prayer, and it was a prayer of only thanks.

So this week was way fun, we contacted a couple of cool guys. In particular there was a guy named Edmond from Nigeria. We told him we wanted to talk about Jesus Christ, he took a deep breath and said this was going to take a while, he walked into some shade and basically gave us his entire life story and how the only times he is happy in his life is when he focuses on Jesus. We told him we´d like to teach him some stuff about our Church and he said he wanted to learn more. He told us he would try to come to Church (the next day) and if he could´t make it we could meet there later the next week to teach him. We called him Sunday evening (Easter) and the first thing he did was apologized for not making it to Church. He is still excited to meet with us,and I ´m excited to teach him haha.

That was basically my week. it´s going to be weird to see how this transfer ends. Elder Mayle and I set a goal to teach 50 lessons this transfer, we are at like 42 right now, and we can totally get our goal if we try really hard. It will also be cool to see what changes are going to be happening, odds are I´ll be getting a new companion, but, hopefully I stay in Krefeld; I really like it here and we are starting to get some real solid investigators. I can see 3 of them getting baptized, we just gotta teach them =)

Anyway, the Church is true and I´m happy to be helping it with it´s growth!

Elder Collings

Plan with Faith

Hello Family!

This week was an awesome week, just like every week haha. The most cool thing was just seeing the difference you can have in missionary work when you are diligent and plan really hard than when you do the exact opposite. As I have told you, I have noticed my companion slowly but surely getting a little more lazy in missionary work, and that I can´t really get him to contact by himself. So lately he has been taking longer lunch breaks, riding more busses
which wastes more time, and basically when I am with him, we don´t see much success which is really a bumber, but, I get to go on a split every week. So my companion hates Krefeld, so he always goes on a split to the other place with an Elder and I get to stay in Krefeld and plan everything and do whatever I feel like doing and it is so cool to see the difference.

When I plan I really try to think of what is best and the most productive, I set goals for every hour and I make sure we follow everything planned. Our mission President said that we plan with faith so the Lord can guide those prepared to those places, then it is just our job to speak to them. I have seen that, with my companion we are lucky if we get 1 lesson in a day. This last split we got 4 lessons in a day and 3 contact numbers with 2 made out appointments. The Elder I was with spoke about the same German as I do, but, we were able to see success which was totally awesome.

I honestly have no idea how to help my companion, whenever I bring up something he says he is doing all the he can to solve the problem through prayer, and he´s exercising faith. it´s way cool that he realizes that something has to change and he´s exercising faith, but faith without works is dead and he has to actually do the things he is praying for to make any improvement, he isn´t going to just wake up one day and decide he actually likes talking to people.

Anyway, it´s good to hear from all of you, I´m glad you are all doing awesome. I´m doing awesome and I´m super happy, I haven´t had a bad day on my mission yet =P

Elder Collings

Giggling like a school girl

Hello Family!

It was another super awesome week in Germany! I had a pretty cool experience this week, I was on a split with another Elder from Gladbach, we were in my place of Krefeld. We basically had an entire day of contacting ahead of us, but that was fine haha. As we planned the day out the night before, I felt like we should go through this park that is about 20 minutes away from our house. When we got there the next day, there was only like 4 people in this entire huge park. We contacted this guy, he was really stressed out and had a lot of things going wrong in his life. We started to talk about the gospel and we ended up teaching him all about the plan of salvation and the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith.

When we told him he could pray to know all of this was true he said, "I think you two were sent from God to help me, I don´t even know why I came, I just felt like I should." He ended up saying that if he prayed about the Book of Mormon and found out is was true, he would do everything in his power to follow the example of Jesus Christ and he would get baptized. I was like giggling like a little school girl on the inside at this point because I was so excited haha. We found out he was going back home to Greece in 2 days which was a bummer, but, he would be back in a month and he really wanted to meet with us, so.... I guess we´ll see what comes out of that haha.

Other than that this place is the same, except for my companion, he gets a little more lazy every day. He takes like an hour long shower every morning so we get out to do missionary work about 45 minutes late. He doesn´t contact anyone unless I tell him to, and even then I can tell he is not doing it with faith, he´s just doing it to do it. I honestly thought that he would slowly get better, not worse, but, I am doing everything I am supposed to do and I am trying to be an example for him so I am still happy.

I am really short on time because we have an appointment with a Bishop of another Church haha, his name is Brother Aaron, I accidently scheduled the appointment during our P-Day but that´s okay. I´ll write an extra long e-mail next time!

Conman I´m proud of you, keep reading in the Book of Mormon, Kaylea I didn´t get to see your prom pictures but I will next time, I´m sure were amazing, Jessica I still can´t believe you are having a baby haha. I hope Dad decides to take me on a "business" trip in Alaska when I get back haha.

Elder Collings

AAH!!

We found out that Jessica is having a girl. She sent Steve a picture of the ultrasound and told him the baby's name will be Avery Ann Hoskins. Jessica thought his reply was so funny, she told me I could post it.

Hello Jessica!

It´s so nice to hear from you. I honestly can´t believe I am going to be an uncle. =) By the way, when I read your daughter´s future name, I laughed. Did you know her initials are AAH!? haha I figured that´s perfect for her because you randomly scream for no reason all of the time and she´ll probably pick up that habit too. =)

That picture is way cool by the way, I can totally see her little head and her little thumb and her little nose, and I can´t believe that all of that stuff is in your belly! I want to see how big your belly is because you´ve always been so small haha.

Anyway, it´s good to hear from you!

Elder Collings

Naturally Awesome

Hello Family!

This week was pretty awesome, I was on that split with the Elder that just barely got to Germany right? We just went crazy contacting like everyone we saw, we had some good conversations, but everything always ended with people saying they are Catholic and they don´t need to do anything else in their life to be happy... Which isn´t so cool, because, it´s wrong, but, we had a way good feeling about doing some doors in a place we call Shönest Nachbarshaft which means The most beautiful neighborhood, so at like 7 in the evening we headed over there. Like nobody wanted to talk to us, but, we both knew that there was a reason we were there, so, we kept doing doors. It was getting way late and most of the lights in peoples houses were off and we weren´t really sure where to go, but we saw this one house with the lights still on, so we rang the doorbell. The guy was way super interested and we ended up teaching him all about the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith and he invited us to come back. It was an awesome way to end the day and showed how God blesses us through Diligence!

Other than that little experience there wasn´t really much that happened.... We got to watch General Conference, we didn´t get to see the last session though because it wouldn´t start until midnight here, so I´ll have to read it later. That is naturally awesome haha. We got one of our Investigators to come and watch, she really enjoyed it, and then right after she said she liked it, she talked about Elder Bednar´s talk and said she´s pretty sure her testimony is going to come like the Sunrise, we´ll just have to try and help her Sunrise come a little faster haha.

This week I also gave myself a haircut for the first time EVER! I took some picture to show it off because I am quite proud actually. My companion did his own and he missed some spots and the hair on the back of his neck slopes hardcore because his hand twitched or something weird like that. I don´t really know how I am going to send the pictures, but, I have quite a few and I will send them eventually haha.

Anyway, I´m happy to be in Germany, and I am seeing blessings from the Lord all around me. It´s crazy to believe I have already been out for 4 months, which is like 1/6 of my mission already gone, I feel like I just got here haha. The Church is true!

Elder Collings