I'm beat!

Hey mom, I just want to apologize in advance, I'm really really tired.
We woke up this morning at 4:00, and caught a train to Berlin.
President wanted to talk to my companion, and man, I'm super glad that
he did, because I got to say goodbye one last time to president Kosak.
What a great guy. I'm so glad I've had the opportunity to work here
with him, he's great! After our meeting we had permission to go out
and see some sights in Berlin, and we did! We saw the Brandenburg
gate, the holocaust memorial, a couple other cool buildings, and the
Berliner Dom. Wow. So pretty. And, because we're clergy, we could go
in for free! It's a really pretty church, and there's a ton of
symbolism in everything, most of which points to the savior. It was a
great experience. We wanted to check out checkpoint Charlie, but we
didn't have time... Nächstes Mal!

So, that was that. This week. It was pretty good! Two weeks ago we
were looking at our work, and trying to find out what we could do
better. After a lot of prayer and discussion, Elder Benitz and I
decided that we needed to work on our finding, and we set a goal in
faith that we would find 12 new investigators before the end of the
month. This was a pretty big goal, considering that last month we
found 2, but we knew that when we worked hard, the lord would help us.
Since then we've found 7 investigators, and have 4 new potential
investigators that can become real investigators this week! We've bee
working super hard, and the lord has been blessing us. I just want to
tell you about one of these guys, his name is Sam. He's from Africa,
and when we met him on the street he was super excited to meet and
talk with us. We met him on Sunday, and he completely excepted
everything that we taught, and at the end of the lesson, he prayed and
said "Lord, thank you for the truth that we have learned today." We
are really excited to see where things go with him.

This week we also had our first sport evening, and we played
basketball. It was great. For the first time since the MTC, I got to
put on my basketball shoes. Oh it felt so good to finally play again!
We're going to be having this every week. This week, we had two
investigators there! And I hopefully this week we'll have even more!

Ok, well I'm going to try and sleep a little bit now. Please have a
wonderful time on your vacation, take lots of pictures, and say hi to
Riley for me 

Tschüß!!

Roller Coaster!

Hey mom!

So, this week was a roller coaster! That's the best way to describe
it. So, let's break it down.

Monday: Berlin! We had a little bit of time to see part of the city,
and man, it was so cool! There is a ton of history in that city. We
were just in a place called Alexander platz, but in this little area
they have giant malls, PRIMARK, and some other pretty cool stuff. It's
a really pretty city, and I hope I have the opportunity to serve
there.

After our little time in Berlin, we were picked up by the elders that
we were staying the night with. We stayed in a part of Berlin called
Marzahn. Guess who serves there? Elder Glissmeyer!! And then Elder
Winkel also stayed the night with us there. Oh we had a fun night.

Tuesday: Zone conference. What a Great experience. Elder Adler of the
3rd Quorum of the seventy came, and we had a great, very spiritual
time with him. But it wasn't all fun and games. We also had to say
goodbye to president and sister Kosak. It was really sad, I'm not
going to lie. President Kosak has taught me so much in my short time
with him. He has been a great example to me. I will truly miss him.
But really, it's ok. President fingerle is going to be awesome too!

So... The conference was in Berlin. Do you remember what happened the
last time we were in Berlin? Well, this time we decided we were going
to plan better, and we did. We found a train route that would have
gotten us home a little after 9. No problem, right? WRONG! We left the
conference, and walked over to the bus stop, but, of course, the bus
didn't come! So... We ended up walking to the train station (only
about 2 kilometers) and we missed our train. We were a little upset,
but we found another train that left an hour later, so we took that
one to Leipzig, and funny enough, we were on it with the exact same
people as last time. Small world, right? So with this train we would
have just enough time to catch our train to Freiberg, and be home at
10. Still not too bad. Well... Our train to Leipzig was late. So we
missed our train to Freiberg. We thought we were going to have to stay
the night again, but the zone leaders just told us to go home, and we
got there at 11:30. Let's just say I hate Leipzig.

Wednesday morning. Woke up, and it was my birthday! And it was one
I'll remember! I LOVE the package you sent, thank you, it was really
nice :) with the next one you send, can you send me some more inserts
for my shoes? I have destroyed all of the extra ones I brought, and I
haven't really found any good ones here. Thanks 

One of the families in my ward brought us a giant pot of soup, and a
bunch of chocolate, and then one of our Chinese members gave me a set
of really nice chopsticks. We were super tired because of how late we
got back, but it was a good day still.

Wednesday afternoon - Saturday morning. We had no appointments so we
set off and went finding, and man, it was awful! No one would talk to
us. Everyone either said "Nein, danke" or "Keine zeit" (no time). It
was really hard. I didn't understand why no one wanted to talk to us.
And on top of that, the weather all of a sudden decided to be summer
and it was 90 degrees in the shade! With no air conditioning. Not the
best.

Saturday afternoon. We came back to the apartment to take a little
break and rehydrate, and it was hard not to just stay in the apartment
for the rest of the evening, but I knew that there was something that
I needed to learn, and that the lord would send blessing when we just
worked hard. Well, I was right! We went out and after 15 minutes met
"John and Matt" they're two super cool guys from Ghana! We asked them
if they believed in Christ and they got super excited! Then when we
told them about the Book of Mormon, they were even more excited! It
was so cool to meet them, and we're going to keep teaching them! Then,
that night, a man that we met on the street a couple weeks ago called
us and wanted to set up an appointment. We're meeting with him on
Tuesday :)

And finally, SUNDAY. So, in our ward we have a "monat des einladungs"
(month of invitation) where the bishopric printed out a bunch of
really cool invitations and gave them all to members to pass out.
Well, the first week in June was a big success! We had 6 people at
church who were invited by members, 3 of which now want to start
meeting with us! It was so cool to see all that, but that's not all!
Right after church ended two families walked into the church and
wanted to learn more about the temple. What??? We asked them why they
came, and it turns out there's an exchange program for students in
Provo to come to Meissen! Two kids on this exchange told their host
families about the temple, and they wanted to come see it, and learn
more.

Wow... This week was jam packed full of fun. It had its up and downs,
just like life. Yea. Loved it!

Hope you have a great week!



Sent from my iPad

"I Didn't Know You Were Going to be Talking about God"

(Editor's note--I felt bad recently that I was so hard on Chase and told him about it)

Mom... You don´t need to apologize. You are the perfect mom for me. God sent me to be with you and dad, because he knew that no one else in the WORLD would be able to give birth to me, raise me, teach me, feed me, and love me like you did. Mom, you are awesome! I was in an interview with bishop before I left and he told me he didn´t think there were other parents in the ward who cared more for their children than you and dad. That´s not a lie! You are awesome, you´ve always been awesome! All of those rules prepared me to serve a mission here, in one of the most obedient missions in the church! That´s what Elder Kearen told us. Not everyone can serve here in the Berlin Mission! It´s tough! But I love it :) You taught me how to work hard, how to keep the rules, how to cook(and my companions have been very grateful for that) and so many other amazing things. Don´t think you need to ever apologize to me. You prepared me for my calling now. You prepared me to be a servant, and a tool in the hands of the Lord, and I am so thankful!

I love you mom. You´re the best.

So, this week was a lot of fun! We had an exchange, and I got to go work in Meissen for a day, the prettiest city on the Elbe. Seriously though, it it so gorgeous there! They have the oldest castle in Germany there, built around 905, and the Elbe river runs right through the city. I went with Elder Drazin, from Orem, Utah. He´s a fun guy, I really like him. He actually really reminds me of John. He looks very similar, is super athletic, and just a great person. We also found out that you can´t delete the photo booth app on our iPad, so... we had a little too much fun on the trains and in our free time. Haha, yea...

Other than that though, this week was pretty normal. We had a lesson with Y****, he´s doing alright, but he told us that he´s pretty sure there´s no God, and he won´t pray or read to find out. It´s really frustrating sometimes. I have this amazing thing here, that can bless this man´s life so much, and he is actively choosing not to have it. Man, super frustrating, but it helps me to understand more about how heavenly father feels about me when he gives me something that he knows will bless my life, like a commandment, and I go against it. Missions are great learning experiences.

We did, however, have one fun experience. We received a referral from Elders in a different city. They had spoken with a man who lives in Oederan, a little village about 15 minutes from Freiberg. They set up an appointment for us, and told us to go and teach this man. Well, we got to Oederan, and we found the street. Easy enough right? WRONG! There were two streets with the same name. In the same city. So we asked about 23 people where this place was, and eventually we found it. We knocked on the door, and a very nice man invited us in. He introduced us to his son and wife, and then took us downstairs to see his "hobby." Honestly, at this point I was a little worried what his "hobby" might be, but I didn´t feel a warning from the spirit, so we went down to see. This man a giant room filled with model trains! It was really cool! He told us all about how he´d spent the last 40 years or so collecting them, and how he just loved the trains. It was really cool to see. Then we went upstairs and they asked us about our message. As soon as we started talking, the son just went off on us! He was telling us all about how religion is just there to suppress free will and take money, and how there´s no God, because a loving God wouldn´t allow all the bad things in the world to happen. They did not want to here anything that we had to say. Finally I just asked them why they invited the missionaries to come, and the man said "Well, I didn´t know you were going to be talking about God, or religion." We left, and then called the elders who gave us the referral, and asked them what they talked about with him. Of course, they asked him about his relationship with God, and If they could come by another time and talk about Jesus Christ. Yea... Really this experience was pretty funny. I felt Kind of like Alma the Younger, when Korihor is going off on him. 

We also made brownies this week, and they´re delicious,

Love you! 

P.S. German companion is good for my German, but bad because... well... He´s German, jk