Monday March 23

This week was very different, different than any other week of my mission. Our entire teaching pool except for 2 families were sick with the flu! We´d been working really hard to build up this pool, and we couldn´t teach them this week. It was sad, but we found other ways to use our time wisely. We did service! We have one investigator, his name is Michael, and he´s a really cool guy from New York! This last week he was rebuilding his patio in his backyard. He hadn´t had a whole lot of time to meet with us before, so we took this opportunity to serve him, and as we were serving him we were able to teach him, help him finish his project, and help him build up relationships with ward members who volunteered their time to come and help us with this. We also had service projects with some active and less active members, and we really did a lot this week to help people out. It was a great experience and Elder Timmerman and I learned a lot.

Michael also took us out to that American restaurant this week as a thank you. That was one of the FOURTEEN eating appointments we had this week! We are feeling so fat!

I love this work. This week there were some hard times, and I really questioned what I´m doing here. Fortunately, for every hard thing, there´s a blessing from God right around the corner. One of these blessings was seeing the Frömling family back at church. We really haven´t been doing to much with this family, we´ve only really been there for support and to be a friend, but the Lord doesn´t always work through his missionaries, sometimes he goes through his other tools. I love this family, I´ve really learned a lot from just watching them, and seeing how members can help other members. It all started because Timmy, Marvin´s brother, invited them to come to a fireside with the stake Patriarch from Hannover. After this fireside, Marvin´s wife decided she wanted to receive a patriarchal blessing, and that caused them to start coming back to church, so she could be worthy to receive one. The Lord works in mysterious ways, but they´re his ways, and they´re the ways we need to follow.

Had a great week, and I´m looking forward for the next too!

Love you

Elder Oliphant