New Year, New Cheer!

Hey y'all! 

Well, I can't believe the year is already come to an end. I can't
still remember back last year when I was still in the small town of
Leer for the new year. That feels like it wasn't that long ago, but at
the same time it feels like a whole other life! Time is strange on the
mission, the days are long, the weeks fly by, and each transfer feels
shorter and shorter. I'm sure these next few months will just fly
right by. 

This week was just a wonderful week of Christmas cheer. We had a white
elephant give exchange at district meeting, but we did it German style
where in order to get a present you have to sing a song, or recite
something. But for us, instead of singing or doing something like
that, we used this opportunity to practice our memorized scriptures ;)
and we all got gifts from "Der Weihnachtsman!" (Santa)
🏻🏻🏻🏻

We also spent a lot of time with the amazing members here, which was
awesome, because the members here have so much love, and they're so
nice to us. Honestly without the members this would've been a sad
Christmas. We got to spend last Sunday with a family, and they fed us,
Wurst, then Monday with a family, and they fed us, more wurst. Then
again on Christmas Eve, with more wurst. Each Wurst was about twice
the size of a Normal American hot dog, and I probably ate over 30 of
them this week... So this week we only bought vegetables to make up
for it, and we're doing a "vegetarian week" to give ourselves a break
from all that meat. 

There was one other moment this week that was just hilarious.
Yesterday Elder Day gave a talk in sacrament meeting about inviting
friends to church activities. It was a really good talk, but he didn't
get to finish it, because right in the middle of it, he fainted! We
all rushed up to the pulpit to make sure he was ok, and then after we
helped him out of the chapel and made sure there was no real problem
we all just busted up laughing. It was so funny! He just locked his
knees, but when the members came to ask what was wrong, elder Day
didn't know to say that in German, so he said it was the spirit!
Hahaha! Oh, such a funny day at church :) but Elder Day is totally
fine now. Some members even took us to the hospital because they
wanted to be sure he was ok, so we went and sat in that awful hospital
waiting room for two hours, just to have the doctor tell us he was
fine and that we should go home... Oh socialism 

Well, that was my week. It was great talking to you on Christmas, I
can't wait for Mother's Day to roll around. And if you have any more
questions, just email them :) and I will answer!

 Love you! 

 LG Elder Oliphant

Christmas Pancakes!

Christmas is Here!!

Hey y'all!

Christmas is Here! Woo hoo! Man, December has just flown right by, but
that's honestly just how it goes on the mission sometimes. It really
feels like I'm still a new trainee. Crazy!!

So, this week was... Interesting. Haha, most of our investigators have
Tschüssed us for the week (said goodbye) because they're all going
away to visit their families for Christmas, or they're finishing up
with finals, or they have other excuses for why they can't meet, but
that's ok, because we still love them, and even the busiest people
have time for a quick text every day :) we've started sending out a
"scripture a day" to members, investigators, and other friends.
Hopefully that will help some of them to focus on Christ and the
wonderful message that the scriptures tell us about him during
Christmas.

Speaking of Christmas, we're going to be Skyping on the 25th, at
6:00pm our time, so that's 10:00 for you :) we'll be spending
Christmas with the bishop, and also the Kirchers, we're really
excited, and I'm really happy that I'll get to see you all again! This
will be our third call, only one more left after that!

Today we're going to Eisenach for our p-day, which is 50 km away, and
somehow is still in our area, but Eisenach is a really cool city, it's
the home of Wartburg, the Castle that Martin Luther was hiding in for
a while, and where he translated the New Testament. I'm so grateful
that I can serve in a place where there is so much religious history!
It's really helped me understand more about religion, and the
apostasy, and why Germany is how it is. I love the people, and the
culture, and here you can't understand the culture and history without
understanding the religious culture and history. It's fun :)

Well, have a great week! We'll see you on Friday! :) :)

LG Elder Oliphant

Ho Ho Ho!‏

Hey y'all! 

Well, another merry old week in the Christmas Capitol of the world! I
love Germany at Christmas time, it is literally the best! We've been
able to do a lot of work this week with the Christmas initiative,
#EinErrettorIstGeboren and we've seen some really positive feedback
from the people here from that video, and the message behind it.
Everyone here loves Christmas, and it's one of the only times where all
of the people here actually think about Christ and go to
church!(except for the members, they're doing that all the time 🙃🙃)

We haven't had a ton of time to share the Christmas initiative with
people in finding, but that's just because we've been teaching a ton!
I just wish we had more time in the day to find, teach, baptize and
keep! 

Things are going really well with Edwin. He's preparing himself for
baptism, but this week he'll be off to Spain to spend Christmas with
his family. We'll have one more lesson with him, and then he'll be
gone until January. It has been such an honor to work with him, and to
see his faith grow. Also, I've started learning Spanish so I can talk
to him better! El evangelio de Jesucristo es verdadero! Estoy
agradecido por el Evangelio!

Haha :) if any of you Spanish speakers have any tips, let me know!!

 We also had a zone conference, where we got our Christmas packages! I
got mine, but I haven't opened it yet, it's just sitting under the
Christmas tree.

I'm super excited for this week, and I'm just super happy! Oh, I also
sent my Christmas package today, so I hope you get it soon! Hopefully
before Christmas!

 Love you!

LG Elder Oliphant

Chase and his former companion Elder Williams

A reminder; these are still a bunch of boys

Christmas Market

Half of a house

Christmas Pyramid 

Hi, It seems like I just talked to you : )

Hello family!! since I emailed you on Friday i was worried I wasn´t going to have a lot to talk with you about, but then we had miracles happen! Don´t you just love those?

So Sunday morning we were getting ready to go to church, I decided to wear my lucky tie, because we had a big day planned for us. We went outside, picked up our bikes, and we were off to church. 3 minutes later my back tire was totally flat! Oh It was so frustrating. So we walked the rest of the way to the church and were a little bit late. Not the best way to start off the day, but it´s alright, because what happened next was amazing.

 As we were sitting in the priesthood meeting (they have that first here) one of our members came and told us to go outside. So, we went outside. There was a woman standing in the doorway. She said "Hi, my name in Blessing. Is this a Christian church service?" OHHH MAN!!! We were super excited, and we showed her to the relief society. A little later on we met back up with her, and she told us her story. She´s from Nigeria, has been in Germany for 3 months, and she left her house this morning looking for a new church to go to. AHHHH!!!! How cool is that?? This to me is a huge testimony builder on the power of prayer. I prayed that we could see a miracle that day, and the Lord answered my prayers with this "Blessing". After church we went back outside to the bikes, and remembered my tire was flat... man. Fortunately one of our members had a bike pump with them! Unfortunately, my tire was flat because there was a hole the size of a quarter in the tube... This was awful, because we had 3 appointments for that evening, all of which live pretty far away from each other and we needed the bikes to get to each of them. Fortunately, brother Pruin came to the rescue! He walked us back to his apartment, where he took my bike and gave us one of his to use. Hooray for members!!! What a crazy exciting day we had. Our other appointments that night went very well, and we got 3 new investigators. all in all a pretty good day. And all because of my lucky tie!! Haha, just kidding. It just shows how the Lord will help his servants, when we ask him for it. We need to make that first step, to humble ourselves before him. Then, and only then, will we see the blessings in our lives that he is just waiting to give us.

I´m loving it here, and I hope all is well with you, wherever you are :)

With love,

Elder Oliphant

East and west German christmas isn´t really different, it´s more north and south. The south has a lot of christmas traditions, like the pyramids and the räuchermenschen, and the nutcrackers, and yea. Pretty much all of them. Except for stollen. It´s a type of bread that they make here in between Christmas and new years, with raisins and nuts, so naturally our ward gave us 4 loaves of it for Christmas! Yay us

You can thank Elder Smith for all of the pictures this week

Merry Christmas!

Hallo meine familie! 

Oh it was so good to Skype with you, I loved seeing you! Also I got to see Elder Smith´s family. It was great to see you, but man. His sister is CUTE! ;) Also his family told me they read my blog, and they said i do a great job writing home. Just saying ;) Man, I don´t even know what to write you about, because we just talked yesterday. Well I can tell you about the weihnachts pyramids. Yes they are very, VERY expensive, but they´re cool, and I bought one O_O. But mine is very small, and it was only like 10€. Not too bad. They don´t have a lot of the really big ones here, those (and all the other cool German Traditions) are mostly in the south, near Leipzig and Munich. And I am literally as far away as you can get from there and still be in Germany. Sweet :)

But we still had a ton of fun this Christmas. Our ward is super fun, and. Yea :)

Now I can also tell you about some of our investigators! This last week we found a new investigator named N****. He´s from Syria, and he speaks Arabic and a little English. It´s really hard to teach him, because of a really big language barrier, but it doesn´t matter, because we aren´t the real teachers here. When we teach him it is 100 percent the spirit. He is such a cool guy. We´re actually going to teach him again tomorrow. We also have another investigator named K***** (maybe I´ve told you about her before, I don´t remember) and she´s been an investigator for 3 years. Yea, a LONG time. We had a lesson with her this last week, and it was the first time I actually led a lesson in German. Normally Elder Smith would lead and I would try to get in a word. This lesson however, I was forced to lead, because Elder Smith wasn´t there. We had an exchange that day, and I was teaching with Elder Perez, our district leader. It started off really shaky, but as we got into it the spirit came in and took over, and we taught a really good lesson, and we´re planning to commit her to baptism this coming week! Wish us luck!

This was at the MTC

Plate Lady

Ok, I guess I do have a good amount to write about. There´s so much missionary work going on here. We see miracles every day.

I love you,

Elder Oliphant

P.S. Here on my mission, the first thing I gained is a testimony on the blessings that come from OBEDIENCE

PPS. I need names of your and dads parents, their siblings, and grandparents and their siblings, if possible. We have a "meine familie" packet that we need to fill out, and I need names, birth/ death dates, marriage/divorce dates, pictures and stories for my parents, grandparents, and great grandparents. I´d look it up myself on familysearch but we have to do it during our email time, and I´d rather email my parents :) 
Also Elder smith said he has a blog. have you found it?  

 (Editor's note: if you know Elder Smith's Blog address would you please leave it in the comments?  I have looked and looked and cannot find it.  I may or may not have more pictures of Elder Smith to share ; ) )