June 18, 2012

Alright, so this week was basically super crazy!  We were in Frankfurt Wednesday and Thursday for our Leadership Training, and it was super amazing!  Basically President is inspired haha.  We talked a lot about how we can support the individual areas to reach their full potential.   We had a great Zone Conference and everyone left pretty pumped to do some work.
    We also had a special fast this week, and then another day of finding.  Elder H and I worked way hard through the day and saw no success, until the very last 2 hours.  A week ago we had talked to a couple on the street, they made out an appointment with us, and wrote down their address and everything, so we thought.  We started preparing for this day of finding, and where this lesson had been made out, all we saw was a name.  They had not left their number or address.  We figured they really didn´t have interest and just planned like it never happened.  At the end of the day, we got a call, it was the lady!  She asked where we were.  We told her she gave us no number, so, she told us where she lived and told us to come.  She ended up living just 2 houses down from where we were.  We went and taught her and her husband, and feasted on raw meat haha, there´s a meat spread out here, it´s just raw meat and people love it.  Anyway, that was way cool and surprised us.  Then, as we were going outside, we talked to these 2 guys right in front of the house.  They both had interest, and invited us in to teach them.  We taught them, and at the end, he asked when we had church and said he wanted to come.  And he did.  He came with his brother.  And then after that, we left the building again, and talked to a guy from Poland.  I think all we said was that we were talking about Jesus.  He then said we should sit down and talk to him.  We taught him on a bench and then he gave us his number and told us to call him.  So, the day ended way strong, we ended up finding 4 new investigators, teaching 4 lessons and finding 7 more potential investigators.  We are meeting with another new family tonight, who we had found on this day.  Basically it was a day of wonders.
    It´s not looking good for the family from Macedonia.  They didn´t come to Church this week, and the husband is still smoking.  All of the kids are super legit and prepared for church, but the parents always sleep in.  We had to move the baptismal date.  They also didn´t show up to the appointment to talk about marriage.  They apparently went to the wrong street and couldn´t find it anywhere.  The lady that had went to help them was furious and said that they didn´t really want help, she said they are lazy and don´t do anything and can´t be trusted and now she refuses to help them.  Now they either have to do everything alone, or we do it.  So.... yeah... now we get to take them and find out all of the legal stuff, crazy right?   I can´t help but think about what Enoch said when he got his calling, he didn´t feel like he was worthy for it, then the Lord gave him all of these promises and blessings, and at the end he said, "Walk with me."  That´s kinda what we do as missionaries, we walk with people through the path of repentance so that they can really come unto Christ.  We´ll be meeting with them tonight, and we get to set all the plans to get them married, come back to church again, and finally get baptized!
    So, those were the stories of the week!  I´m doing great, and loving the work out here.  We now have over 20 investigators we are teaching, and most of them are families, hopefully we´ll have another 6 new investigators tonight!  Thanks for your love and support!

Elder Collings

June 11, 2012

Hello Family!

    Basically we pretty much had an amazing week =)  So, President Schwartz has given us all the goal to teach 20 lessons a week, find 10 new invstigators a week, and to Baptized one Young Single adult before the end of the year.  This week we worked our tails off and almost did it!  We ended up teaching 17 lessons and finding 9 new investigators.  I put a picture of 8 of them, I forgot to get a picture with the last one.  The picture of the huge family was a miracle.  They are the Y Family.  It was on Transfer day, and we had another Elder with us who was waiting for his companion to come in from Frankfurt.  We were walking down the street, my companion was on the phone, the other Elder was talking to some guy on the corner, and I was just kinda sitting there lookin around.  A car drove by, and then stopped and backed up to me.  This guy rolled down his window and asked if we had a bible.  I told him we didn´t but we had something better, more scripture.  He said that he wanted it, and gave us his address.  The next day, we went by and he let us in instanstly.  His name is E, his wifes name is D, and then he has a 15 year old son, A, and a 10 year old son M.  They come from Turkey.  They say they are muslim... but, they don´t beleive it at all haha.  He is really interested in learning about Christians, he asked for a Bible, because the only bibles they have in Turkey have been messed with.  The people have added verses in them that prophecy about Mohammed (Their Last Prophet that received the revelation for the Koran).  He wanted to know what we really believe.  We told them everything and he was way super excited and invited us back.  We came back the next time, and he told us he had already read about 40 pages in the Book of Mormon, and he really likes it!  Then before we started, the wife said she was going to cook us dinner before we shared anything.  So we ate this amazing Turkish meal.  Right as we finished eating, he had called his Brother to come and learn more.  His brother came and brought his wife and his 16 year old son.  We got to teach all of them about the Restoration, and we are meeting with them again this next week!  So, now we have another huge family we get to help =)

    The picture of the black guy is also a cool story.  I talked to him in the bus about 2 months ago and gave him a Book of Mormon.  He gave me his phone number, and I had called him a couple of times, but we could never really make anything out.  I kinda forgot about him..... but then he just randomly called us up this last week.  He said he really wanted to meet with us.  We met with him on the street, and he brought a friend with him.  We taught both of them and they were way super excited and said they want to meet again.  The friend actually knows the bible REALLY good.  He kept pulling out all of these random scriptures to strengthen his point on things while we were talking.  We´re way excited to keep meeting with them too!

    This week we also got a new zone!   9 missionaries left, and 10 came in.  There was a Sister here, Sister B, I was actually in the MTC with her.  She served here in Düsseldorf her first  6 months, then left, and came back her last six months, so I´ve seen her basically my whole mission.  She had served in Düsseldorf for over a year so it will be a huge change with her being gone. And then all of the new Elders are super legit so we´re expecting miracles haha.

    One of the areas was white washed, meaning both of the elders were taken out, and 2 new elders were put in.  The 2 Elders that were put in, were sent to Krefeld, my first area, and one of the Elders was Elder J, my second companion that taught me German.  He has 2 more transfers left on his mission, and President asked him to come down here and be a District Leader.  I´m way excited to get to work with him again.  He is pretty worried with the work; his first day there, he said TONS of people just yelled at them and told them to leave, and 6 people actually ran them out of the apartment buildings they were in.  Sounds like things haven´t really changed since I left haha.  They are going to do way good down there.  Transfers were actually way crazy, 4 Elders ended up sending their bags to another city on accident haha.  We also managed to make a train 45 minutes late because it took so long to transfer all of the bags, but, at least they got here =) 

    Today the Family B (Macedonian Family) is going with a member to see what they can do to get married!  They should actually be there right now!  I hope they figure something out.  They all still want to be baptized, and they tell everybody  about it haha.  This last week we went over with a member to teach about prayer.  We taught about it and at the end we asked if anyone had any questions.  The husband said he prays many times every day; before reading, after reading, when he wakes up, with his wife and for the food, but that he was missing something.  I was pretty nervous what he was going to say, and then he said that every now and then he gets a warm feeling when he prays.  When he gets that, he knows that the Holy Ghost is comforting him, but, he doesn´t always get that when he prays.  He then said, "I need to be baptized so that I can always have the Holy Ghost to comfort me and tell me what to do."  We haven´t even taught him about the Gift of the Holy Ghost, but he already knows he needs to be baptized to be able to experience his influence every time he prays.  He then bore his testimony to us and the member that he wanted to get baptized.  This family is legit haha.

    Anyway, things are going great, thanks for everything you do for me!

Elder Collings

 

 

June 4, 2012

Wow, you only have one more child at home to get rid of haha.  I can only imagine how quiet it is getting!  This week was super awesome, as a Zone we had more success than we have had in the last 4 months.  It was a good end to the Transfer.  We ended up losing half of our zone for transfers.  I know all of the new Elders coming in and they are all way super awesome, I´m way excited to see the changes that come.  Elder H and I decided we are basically going to just tear this place up with righteousness and stuff haha.  We set a goal to teach 120 discussions in the next 6 weeks, we should also have at least 7 baptisms haha.

    The Familie B is the family of Macedonians that wants to be baptized, today they are meeting with a member to see what has to be done for them to get married.  We met with this member on Wednesday to discuss everything that is going on, the problems that they have is that they may need to leave the country in 2 months, they can´t legally get married, and they all want to be baptized.  Our member asked what their biggest concern was, the father said his biggest concern was to get married so that they can be baptized, perfect answer right?  One of these days I´m going to have to take the time to write out their story so that you can really see all of the miracles and how prepared this family is.  

    This week we also had a WAY amazing lesson with that family, we were on a split, I was working with one of the other  missionaries.  The family was feeling a little down because they didn´t think it was possible for them to get married, so we decided we were just going to read in the scriptures with them instead of teach something.  We started reading and the spirit was just super strong.  Everyone in the room could feel it... and then I looked out the window.... There were 2 pigeons like trying to kill each other!  It was so violent, like, I didn´t know birds could be so ferocious.  And it was only like 3 feet away from the mom´s and dad´s heads!  They had no idea what was going on, and then I totally did something stupid, I nudged my companion and told him to look at what was happening haha.  Right as he looked, one of the birds jumped on the other one, and they fell off the balcony.  So, I decided I should probably try to focus again haha, then , like 10 minutes later, I looked out again and they were fighting again!  They just kept coming back and pecking each other, and clawing!  We were right at the prayer at this point, so I wasn´t distracted for too much at the end haha.

   

    Anyway, things are going great!  I´m way excited to be able to be out here and spread the Gospel!

Elder Collings

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